Owned & earned media will be critical pegs to push the narrative: Ameya Velankar

Uber’s mission is to create opportunity through movements. They started in 2010 to solve a simple problem – How do you get access to a ride at the touch of a button? More than 10 billion trips later, they are building products to get people closer to where they want to be. By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.

The company also found meaningful ways to cater to the evolving needs of its communities, while creating livelihood opportunities for drivers on the platform. The focus shifted to move what mattered most: serving frontline healthcare workers, facilitating essential trips for citizens, supporting vulnerable communities, and keeping vital supply chains moving.

Over the next few years, Uber’s focus will be strongly towards digital in a big way, where one can create opportunities to show their value to the customers and also read the trends that will drive customer transactions. Finally, leaders who embrace the shift will have an opportunity to discover more innovative ideas, strategic thinking and directions that will make the difference to the company and its customers.

Speaking to Adgully for their column MARKETING MINDS, Ameya Velankar, Head of Marketing for India South Asia, Uber, speaks about the company’s plans to move forward and bounce back from this bumpy ride to regain the glory of the pre-COVID-19 times.

How is the role of CMO undergoing a major transformation amid the pandemic and an increasingly digital-first focus?

The COVID-19 crisis has heightened the value of chief marketers who can tap into the customers’ mindset and leverage those insights to drive growth. The role of a marketer is to be the voice of the customer, and the COVID-19 crisis has heightened this value. CMOs need to be data-driven, focused on the customer, and able to anticipate needs people didn’t even know they had. Today, those qualities are in greater demand. Agility is at a premium, because the needs of the customer are practically changing overnight.

For the longest time, marketers have had to lean into data, bring insights back, and generate creative solutions. The pandemic is demanding full circle of the marketer from data, to insights, to creativity, but it is spinning faster than ever before. A CMO’s role is to pick up signals from the vast behavioral data available and dig deep into the consumer psyche behind the behaviour in order to effectively engage with them.

In the next few years, we will likely continue to see a greater focus on digital. Marketing leaders who embrace the shift have an opportunity to drive more strategic and commercial impacts. They also have an opportunity to show their value in reading the trends that drive customer transactions.

What are new rules for creating effective branding in a volatile world?
These are challenging times for both markets and brands, with no precedent to follow. The pandemic has forced us all to rethink how we approach our work and brand strategies.

A powerful brand is led by purpose. It needs to solve problems that affect its customers and communities. At Uber, we want to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. During the pandemic, we served our communities by Moving What Matters. It meant moving essential and medical workers during the lockdown. It meant mobilising a driver care fund. At Uber, safety of our customers has been of utmost priority. We have distributed masks, PPE kits to our drivers, offered free rides for vaccination, and we are continuously educating riders and drivers on the safety guidelines so that we can make Uber #SaferForEachOther.

Given the constant flux in consumer behaviour, especially in pandemic times, what is your go-to strategy to understand your customers’ unique wants and needs?
It is extremely important to be agile in understanding the ever shifting consumer needs during the pandemic. Lifestyles, work patterns and even industries have been disrupted. It’s important to keep talking to customers at regular cadence to understand these shifts and understand the intersection points between the category and their needs. It is equally important to dig deep into data to see shifts in customer profile, use cases and their behaviour. Understanding of the behavioral shifts deeply is key to addressing customers’ needs with the help of product, on-ground initiatives and communication.
How do you plan to woo your customers back? Any new marketing and communication strategy in place to win them over to start using Uber?
As we gradually transition to the new normal and resume normal lives, the biggest challenge brands face is winning back customer trust, confidence and loyalty.

Our last campaign, #SaferForEachOther, aims to underscore that safety, too, can spread if each rider sanitises their hands, wears a mask, and doesn’t travel when sick, thereby making the entire platform safer for the next rider. The campaign highlights ‘self-care spreads safety’, and that riders can start a chain reaction whereby each rider makes the platform safer for the next one boarding the car.

As India continues to recover and vaccination gathers momentum, we are encouraging our riders and drivers to get vaccinated. More than 1 lakh drivers on our platform have been vaccinated at least once. In March this year, we pledged Rs 10 crore worth of free rides to help people get to and from the nearest vaccine center. In June, we announced additional Rs 3.65 crore worth of free rides to facilitate transportation of life-saving oxygen cylinders, concentrators, ventilators and other critical medical equipment, through partnerships with several NGOs specialised in mobilising emergency assistance to save and sustain lives. We are leveraging different channels to communicate these initiatives so that more and more customers feel safe requesting an Uber.

Finally, what’s going to be the engagement strategy with your audience? How do you plan to work on your media strategy?
The need will be to focus on campaigns and communication, which is authentic and one that reaffirms safety measures being taken by the brand. From a comms perspective, it is the owned and earned media, which will continue to be critical pegs to push the narrative.