An adjustment or an exponential shift - Vivek Malhotra decodes post-pandemic times

The marketing world moves at the speed of light. But after the pandemic that speed has further increased as brands are enthusiastically geared up for the festive season. Adgully hosted the third edition of CMOs’ Charcha 2022 in Bengaluru yesterday (August 10, 2022). Keeping in mind the post-pandemic revival story, the theme for CMOs’ Charcha 2022 is ‘The Festive Blueprint for Brands’. 

With businesses and brands bullish on growth, expectations are high for the festival season this year, which will roll out with the Raksha Bandhan-Independence Day-Janmashtami-Ganesh Mahotsav period, before flowing into Onam and forward. As has been the norm over the years, festive season is the period when brands rev up their marketing activities and tap into the positive consumer sentiments. A major part of the annual sales happen during this period. Thus, not surprisingly, all eyes are on the festive season this year, as it would be the marker for how strong the country’s economic revival is post the pandemic and also set the future course of growth. 

The third edition of CMOs’ Charcha 2022 saw Vivek Malhotra, Group CMO & COO - Consumer Revenue, India Today Group, deliver a special keynote address, where he posed a very pertinent question on whether the current situation is an adjustment faced by everyone or an exponential shift.

According to him, the decision is choosing between minor adjustments like optimisation and the need for imagining new pathways, the need to build new bridges or the need to think totally differently. The pandemic brought with it changes such as that of social distancing, time away from the family, work from home and the disruption of the supply chain. It led to everyone coming up with new ideas making the world a different place. He further laid emphasis on the business of fake news, which poses a new challenge, where the news brands and brands connecting to customers at a trust level have to oversee this new reality and deal with it accordingly.

Malhotra said, “In the past, I used to communicate with the customer and collaborate with new technology. Today, every time I am faced with the decision, I go with the fact that I’m communicating with technology and collaborating with the consumer. A lot of decisions become easy with this.”

According to him, companies who are customer-centric have to ask themselves about the things that the customer is willing to pay for, whether it will work on the small mobile screen or not and whether it will be timeless and shareable. “All these will help us look at this period not as a dramatic upheaval, but as a boom,” he said, adding, “As we approach 75 years of Independence, we also welcome 5G, where G should stand for growth.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete keynote address watch below:

https://www.linkedin.com/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:6963084594065629184/