India is surely the highest in terms of ad growth: Shubhranshu Singh, Tata Motors

“India is growing and it is the only trillion-dollar economy that's growing at roughly 7 per cent rate annually. This means every 10 years India will add another India to itself. We are assuredly the highest ad growth market,” asserted Shubhranshu Singh, Vice President-Marketing-Domestic and International Business, Tata Motors, at the e4m-Xaxis Programmatic Summit 2022.

Singh was delivering the keynote address at the summit. He engaged the audience with humorous anecdotes and punches lifted from his personal life and experiences and presented unique points of view on marketing.

“People did not think that online transactions would become a reality. I am happy to say that in the last one year, 12-20 per cent of our sales depending upon the category of commercial vehicles is happening via digital channels,” Singh said.

Highlighting the crux of his own marketing strategy, he said, “We have gone aggressively vernacular purely online in which Jagran (Hindi Media group) and NDTV.com may have been part of our media mix.”

Looking at the future, Singh advised, “What happened in the world in 2020 right after the pandemic was that everything boomed. Now, it looks like it's falling into gravity and going to bust. We must have a local fit to solutions.”

Sharing more on the local strategy, he said: “The reason it's important is not that I'm trying to communicate with the right in the right language or in the right context. But it is because the data stack itself changes when you cross borders even within India. Andhra Pradesh is very different from Bihar. Bihar is very different from Jharkhand.

Highlighting that the way to approach data and the context are crucial, thanks to India’s diversity, Singh said, “Bihar has lots of first-time vehicle users who want to just get a vehicle because they're not getting viable employment. They may want to run a business and earn a living out of that. Jharkhand is a major mining state selling tons of tippers and key account management becomes a focus there.” 

“If your tech stack is ready and if you are conscious of inventory data and the algorithm, who are you doing business with and how to balance the organic and inorganic growth, then your planning side would be good,” he added.

Talking of creativity, Singh said that creative ads are important in digital advertising as well if you want consumers to click the ad, get them to your website and e-commerce platforms.

People tend to believe that whatever works for my sales results and gets me the most efficient conversion, is best. And then they realize three months down they realize that the scenario has completely changed. In our lead generation exercises, we find that the plateau comes time again. It's like a cascading plateau due to changes in monetary policy, and fuel prices, he noted.

If fuel prices go up or down, CNG versus diesel vehicle mix will dramatically change, Singh said. “So, these things need to be factored on top of your programmatic plans. You can make actionable outcomes with the help of your data, be it a first or second or third party.”

According to Singh, there has to be a CRM strategy that lives and varies the programmatic strategy. “You have to keep it kaleidoscopic so you change the same set of data points to get different realities. But then you must go to people, dealers, sales executives, territory sales managers who know what's happening at the last mile and then bring that back into your origination into the plan origination,” he added.

Singh notes that advertising is shaping up like a bouquet and there are a variety of options people exercise, and the problem is that everybody regresses to the average and the average is the data that is published everywhere.

“The average has a full spectrum. So, there is an extreme positive outlook and then there is a very perverse negative outlook as well. Everybody tends to look at the average. Everybody thinks that we are a young and hopeful country but things don't work out quite well often,” he pointed out.

Quoting former US President General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Singh told the marketers, “Plans are useless but planning is very important.”

Explaining the remark he said, “Planning is important because no sooner do you actually start engaging with the realities of the marketplace, the plans all change. But if you have a planning mindset and if you look at data from a planning input standpoint rather than a functional execution standpoint, the perspective will be very different.”