The Pitch CMO Summit Delhi edition took place yesterday at the Leela Ambience Gurgaon. Speakers at the summit included Vijay Mansukhani (MD, ONIDA), Sudip Ghose (CEO,VIP Industries), Amit Tiwari (VP- Marketing, Havells), Shankar Nath (Sr. VP- Marketing, Paytm), Ajay Kakar (CMO-  Aditya Birla Capital) and Tim Castree (Global CEO, Wavemaker) who delivered the Keynote Address. In addition to talks, the daylong conference on ‘Generating Brand Love – are you really listening to your consumers?’ also had a panel discussion on the ‘Art & Science of listening’. Jagdish Mitra (Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Tech Mahindra) was the session chair for the panel. The panellists included Naseeb Puri (Director Marketing, Mountain Dew, PepsiCo), Sanjay Bhutani (Managing Director, Bosch & Lomb India), Shilpa Dureja Puri (Director Marketing, Digital & Experiential, Microsoft), Anshuman Goenka (Marketing Head, Bacardi India Private Limited and Category Head - Whisky, AMEA Region) and Prashant Sinha (Co-Founder & COO, Momspresso) These industry leaders underscored the need for listening to consumers in contemporary times, elucidated what constitutes ‘effective listening’ in a rapidly changing global market and elaborated on knowing how to decipher the insights collected. “Neither listening nor hearing is as important as knowing what to do with the insights that you have heard/ collected." Ajay Kakar. “When people ask me what I think about creativity vs effectiveness, I tell them that both work because when you want to reach the customers’ wallet his heart is a great way. They say the best way to reach a man’s heart is through his stomach but that advice is for women, when it comes to marketing and advertising, I think the best way to the wallet is through his heart,” said Kakar during his session on ‘Listening to your Customer: An Art? Or A Science?’ Vijay Mansukhani in his talk on ‘Reinventing an Iconic Brand – The Onida Story’ spoke about the birth of the iconic brand.  He highlighted the challenges the brand faced and its subsequent resurrection. Speaking about the much loved Onida advertisement featuring the ‘Devil’, he said the mascot was this arrogant, lovable and aspirational devil who everyone adored. And the tag line ‘Neighbours envy, owners pride’ struck a chord with people across the country. He stressed on the fact that success comes from focusing on finding the right opportunities. Sudip Ghose, CEO, VIP Industries in his talk on ‘Brand Love: Combining Trust & Magic’ emphasised on the importance of building a quality product to have the consumer connect with the brand emotionally, “In this highly cluttered market, the only mantra that can work for a brand is to make a great product. If the product is strong, it will give customers a good experience and they will come back to buy your product.” He further spoke about effective listening, “We started listening to consumers and we realized that there were categories where we were not represented in. So, we entered the backpack segment, and we sold 3 million pieces in just four years. Today, we are the biggest backpack seller in the country and we are not only competing with luggage brands, but also with brands such as Nike, Puma and Reebok.” All the other sessions as well threw up interesting marketing facts. Watch this space for synopses of all the sessions in the coming week.