Ep #42: How Tata CLiQ stays true to their core guidelines while evolving as a brand

Speaker A: From Rocketium. This is spilling the magic beans. Building a brand is no easy task. You have to develop the brand guidelines from scratch, build a collective vision for where the brand is going and execute on it perfectly. But paradoxically, scaling an existing brand might actually be even more challenging because you have to stay true to your brand guidelines while continuing to evolve the brand and to learn more about how to continuously improve your brand while growing traction with customers. Our head of sales here at Rock tm, Kunal Sharma, uh, spoke with Shashir Kataria, who's the head of brand marketing at Tata Click. And we start off the conversation by learning a little bit more about Shashir's role at Tata Click.

Speaker B: It's been less than a year since I joined Tata Click. So I joined Tata Click back in January 2022. I had brand marketing here, which essentially means that I'm responsible for building brand driving new consumer acquisition, both sort of organic and paid and building consideration for consumers to visit the platform. I mean in a nutshell if I have to say, it's essentially doing all the things which will drive intent in the consumers to visit Tata Click for the next purchase. That's I would say what my role would be in a nutshell here. And also I also take care of consumer insights, the media buying for all the awareness campaigns and all the PR initiatives on the site. But mostly it's all about making sure that tataclick remains a mental available brand for the consumers. So whenever they are thinking about their next shopping purchase or next sort of purchase cycle, they are taking Tata Click as their preferred destination.

Speaker C: What are some of the KPIs for a brand marketer in a role like this?

Speaker B: So there are three big KPIs I would say one is of course all the organic traffic which comes on the platform. So essentially all the intent has to essentially convert into organic visits. If I like Tata Click enough, if I like the app enough, if I like the brand enough, I would at some point going to open the app on my own. And that's essentially what we call as organic Visit which is not attributed to any of the paid marketing initiatives. So how is the organic traffic and organic installs and organic visits growing? That's one of the hard working KPIs. There are two other soft KPIs. One is all the brand equity scores which we track via third party tracker. So how many consumers think of data click when we ask them what shopping destinations do you know of and what shopping destinations do you prefer online? So how is our scores moving in that which are essentially a standard top of mind, spontaneous awareness sort of tracks. And the third important thing is how is the uh, share of voice growing in the online conversations and online searches? So if the entire E tail or retail shopping uh, searches are X million, then how is our share going on sort of a month to month basis in the shopping search space?

Speaker C: Now let's talk a little bit more about growth marketing in an established brand. What does a growth strategy look like for a brand that's slightly more established, that's deeper into its journey of becoming a brand, or is already an established brand and has a fairly well established base of customers?

Speaker B: Sure. For big brands and mature brands and mature categories, I think it's important, Kunal, to always be on the lookout for new customers. And when I say new customers, they could be new customers into a brand or into category. I think we have to understand that for most of the big brands they have a very strong relationship with their existing customers because they're mature brands. So if a customer falls out of the brand, that means there is something very, I would say jarring happened to the relationship between brand and consumer. And hence it may be very tough to get the consumer back because this is the stronger the brand, the stronger the love between the brand and the consumer. Uh, so if the love interest is broken and the consumer has decided to move on to another brand, or it could be simply because they have grown out of the life stage or the state of the category or the brand, it's tougher to get them back. And hence, huh, it's very important for big brands and mature brands to always sort of expand their horizon into I would say newer or adjacent categories. I mean just to give some example. And I've worked in both FMCG and sports. In sports I used to work with cricket and I think there is no bigger brand uh, in India than cricket. I think I would say it's as big as common sort. I mean people just love cricket in India and they watch it in courts. So for example, if you want to grow uh, a big FMCG brand, let's say a big sports brand like cricket. So the principles are the same. Either you expand to new geographies, which is done by both fmcg, or in terms of cricket, where you can see ICC going to sort of now associate nations and trying to develop cricket there because they feel that uh, the major nations have sort of come to a saturation point like India, Australia, England. So they're always trying to sort of expand the horizon into newer markets. All by solving existing need states. That's true for again, both FMCG and sports. Right. I mean from my early days when I was working with Kraft Heinz and Gluconte used to be the market leader in the glucose category. The adjacent needstate that we sort of discovered was that people were done with the whole powdered and making it their own uh, sort of drink. So the whole agency instead of a ready to drink glucose drink.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: That emerged during that time and that's what we serviced and that helped the brand sort of disproportionately grow versus uh, the last few years. And the same can be seen in sports also, right? I mean the whole evolution From Test to ODI to T20 to now 100 world cricket, it's all about people have lesser time. I don't have the sort of neat state or the automated bandwidth to watch a five day cricket or even like a day long cricket. Hence the emergence. I think that the last growth strategy for an established brand is always about increasing occasions of consumption because there's always a lot of customers there. So it's always tough to get new customers into it. So if you're struggling with the new customers always trying to find new occasions of consumption. Right. For example Brush twice a day is a great example what happens in FMCG brands. I mean we all started with that morning doing a crush in the morning. Then all the brands move to Lake Brush twice a day. For LDT it's all about increasing occasions of consumption. Same with IPL and cricket. What we see essentially the IPL has expanded from 8 teams to 10 teams which is about nothing but making sure more matches and hence more occasions of consumption. So I think these three areas about expanding to new geographies, about increasing occasions of consumption and going to adjacent lead states.

Speaker C: Where do you think established brands actually go wrong in their brand marketing?

Speaker B: I think uh, what I briefly touched upon in my earlier answer, trying to hold on dearly to the existing customers or the existing need states which they're servicing. I mean losing customers is inevitable for a brand and customers also evolve with time and hence if a brand is not catching up with the changing consumer mindsets, I mean ah, they are destined to sort of decline and die. I think history is prepared with examples of how large brands did not survive the changing mindset. I mean the example of you know, Blockbuster and Netflix, right. Blockbuster was this Entertainment behemoth in 90s but they did not understand the changing consumer needs it and the changing consumer type of streaming. And hence Netflix came and became the king same with BlackBerry and iPhone, right. I mean BlackBerry just refused to work on a touch enabled phone. And that's where the world was heading, right? People just wanted more convenience in their gadgets. Same with, I would say, you know, film cameras and digital cameras. Kodak again, it refused to sort of develop digital cameras and essentially it's a sort of catch 22, right? Because the bigger the brand is, the more established the processes is and hence we want to move to a newer category or a newer needs state. Right. You have to essentially tinker with all the processes which you have built over decades. Hence the larger the brand is, I think the lower the flexibility or agility is, uh, for a brand to change direction or change course. And I think that's where uh, the sort of big brands sort of die and decline. Not being agile enough to service the emerging consumer times, emerging consumer mindset. I mean India, look, all the banks, all the retail banks, they had decades to come up with a wallet system, but who came with a wallet system, someone like paytm, who has no banking experience. This catch with processes and changing processes which are there for the years and decades, I think that's, that's one big barrier which comes in sort of way of growing big brands and big categories.

Speaker C: You work with a sporting brand and hotstar we all know is crazily synonymous with ipl. Uh, right. And during your stint at hotstar you launched hotstar do campaign, right? Can you walk us a little bit about that campaign, why that campaign was set, what is the objective of that campaign and how did the whole strategy fall into place?

Speaker B: I think just to sort of add on to it, uh, I think when I reflect back on hotstar, I would say it's less of a campaign and more of a product innovation that was done in the entire cricket streaming service. I think, look, the biggest thing when it comes to streaming sports on hotstar is about differentiation versus tv, right? Because you are essentially competing with TV out there. The fundamental questions that people are asking is why should I pay to hotstar to watch IPA when I can watch it for free on my tv? I mean, yes, there are. Access and convenience are the key drivers. I don't have access to TV or I cannot take the TV to, let's say when I'm traveling, when I'm going to my bedroom to sleep and I want to chill in some other room, I have to be in the living room. So lack of access to TV and convenience over TV are the two big drivers which we felt when we were working on Hotstar. Those that were saturated as drivers. Hotstar was streaming IPL since back, since 2015, 2016. After, uh, four or five years, all the consumers, all the cricket fans in India who have those needs rates have been, I would say, serviced in quite a saturated manner. And as the question was that if you want to get new customers to watch IPL on hotstar, we have to differentiate ourselves from the TV experience. And hence that was the starting point of, uh, the hotstar ghost. Then the question emerges is what differentiation you can bring and um, who should the differentiation cater to? Should it cater to core fans or should it cater to a lighter set of fans who are not very regular with watching cricket? It was a highly contested topic and we all felt that a core fan is never going to miss the cricket experience. Ah, so if they have access to tv, they will continue to watch on TV because TV is superior right now. Uh, and if they did not have access to tv, they have been already converted. So hence our thought process was we need to service a lighter or I would say more of a non core fan of the sport with hotstar. Those and then eventually did consumer research that, you know, what motivates you, uh, what makes you watch IPL and look all the fancy that they watch IPL for the love of cricket. But I think the degree of intensity and entertainment just differs in the mindset of a core. Like core fan is very focused on rivalry of teams, rivalry of peers, the mix of Indian and foreign. I think a light affair is more what I just love the nature of entertaining cricket at ipl. So many sixes, so many fours, so such colorful, uh, sort of, you know, affair, uh, and I just love it for the entertainment of it, right? And then the whole idea was that what will make it more entertaining? And everyone said that, you know, what if there could be. Anyway, we tested a few concepts like, we tested a few concepts like will you find it more entertaining or more value driven if you're also playing like, you know, a fun quiz on the side, right, which was sort of a watch and play, uh, would you find it more entertaining if what, we add the tarka of entertainment into commentary also, while it's already there in sport, how about having a very, very fun, entertaining commentary also? And a lot of consumers responded very positively to that. And that's when we realized we have a winner on our hands. And uh, we went ahead and developed the whole hotstar dose where the proposition was that your favorite entertainers like Zakir Khan would come and do the commentary, uh, on the IPL matches and that was the whole genesis of the product in campaign. We wanted to keep it very simple. I think the idea was to make sure that there's enough intrigue in the consumers to come and try the feed and let the feed speak for itself. And also it was a bit of funny situation because the product can only come into existence when IPL starts, right? Because of commentary feed. So how do you even demonstrate the product to somebody before the IPL starts? So we said, you know what, we will only market this once the IPL starts. We'll make sure we reach out to the lighter consumers which we knew from our hotstar viewing data and we nudge them to go and try this feed, right? Like hey, are you watching ipl? Why not watch IPL with Zakir and let the consumer get funneled into that feed and let the product speak? Exactly right. And one week into the IPL we cut very, very fun snippets of all the fun action which had happened in the comm box, right? And we sort of uh, made them into nice 10, 15 seconders and we sort of served them to the existing Hotstar Cricket watches. Uh, that was, I think it's a great tactical strategy to sort of tactical initiative rather to sort of funnel more consumers into it. But yeah, that's been the journey, right? The journey of finding a differentiation for light consumers and then demonstrating the product in the right way.

Speaker C: When I've spoken to brands, I've always come to realize one thing. In India, if you want to make a brand go to cricket. That's where majority of the eyeballs uh, are. That's where majority of the nation is focused on uh, with such a cricket loving country. But that was uh, you know, some years back and when the format was different there was one day internationals, uh, Sachin Tendulkar was the God of cricket. Is this still relevant that you can create a brand off the back of cricket in a format like P20 as well?

Speaker B: I think uh, at least at my stint at Star Sports, I have seen a lot of new brands coming into the category and established categories and establishing new categories on the back of ipl. I mean what works great for a brand on cricket and especially IPL is getting access to 400 million eyeballs. That's the average number of Indians which watch IPL. And I'm only talking about TV, right? TV plus Hotstar would be close to 450, 475. So getting access to all those eyeballs in just a 50 day period of time, I think that's what brands come to cricket for generating mass awareness on mass scale within a very short period of time. So I think that strength of cricket is going nowhere. There's no other sport, forget sport. There's no other content in entertainment industry which commands that sort of eyeball side. And that's why the advertising rates of IPL keeps increasing on a yearly basis. I mean there's no denying that. And that's why the right fee also just keeps increasing. The IPL sort of rights option recently happened. We've all seen the numbers. So I mean there are brands like Swiggy. And Swiggy is a great testament of how they build a brand on the back of ipl. Credit is a great example of how they have built a brand on the back of uh, cricket, uh, they have been associated with cricket, with ipl. So yeah, so I think that strength is going nowhere. What it gives a brand is to have, uh, multidimensional conversations with consumers, right? If a brand wants to leverage cricket but wants to speak in different tones, right? Brand is just like a person, kuna, right? If a person is only coming and talking to in one same tone and one same example, you're going to get bored. Like what A boring person always comes and talk, keep talking about the same stuff, same things, same tone. So multiple cricketers, like you take Hardik Pandya, you take Virat Kohli, you take Rohit Sharma, right? And you can tell very different stories because they're such different personalities, right? And the dream 11 does it the best, right? You guys, you have seen Dreamlearn campaigns. They have like all these personalities, different personalities talking in different tones. And it gives brand that much flavor in the minds of the consumer.

Speaker C: While different uh, cricketers have different personalities, right? There are also different channels available and different screens also available like Hotstar, you can watch on your phone, you can watch on your laptop, your desktop. You can even stream it now on your smart television. And Hostel is just one channel for a brand to uh, rely on. There are multiple other channels and everything's becoming coming on different screens. Now for a brand, is it important to maintain the same consistency across different channels, across different screens or should you adapt to the nature of channel and the screen?

Speaker B: I'm a great fan of tailoring the message and adapting the message as per the audience and as per the channel. And I'll go back to my earlier corollary of uh, brand being a person. Imagine you're meeting a friend in a bar or let's say in a formal work environment or let's say uh, at A wedding. Those three are very different situations. And you would want to have different interactions with that person, not just the same kind of formal environment. You would like to have work conversations at a bar, chill and everything. And when you're betting, probably with more about friends and everything. And same as with the brand. Brand is speaking on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Consumers don't expect the brand to say the same thing because they understand the environment is different, the channel is different. So the, the worst thing you can do is take the same tweet and just copy paste it across channels. I think that's the worst thing to do. You have to tailor. Uh, suppose you are talking about, let's say about Seir also, right? Let's say if we give an example of Canada, if the sale has come, uh, on Instagram, it would be essentially how you can tell a great story via video. And essentially at Twitter it should be uh, about something which is buzzworthy and trending at that time on Twitter. And how do you tailor that and wrap that and get the conversation into mix on LinkedIn. Though I would never promote or never propagate doing a sale forward comms on a like LinkedIn. But hey, if you're doing it, find a smart way which talks to all these, uh, sort of, you know, networking enthusiasts and corporate enthusiasts. The only thing I would say you should be uh, consistent in is some form of brand identity. So find it one brand identity which makes sure that people know it's coming from the, from the same person or say for the same brand. And even if that's just your brand logo or a simple sign off or a simple hashtag, that is good. Otherwise I would say feel free to adapt and tailor as the audience as the format.

Speaker C: Uh, in one of your earlier answers you mentioned about capturing the right metrics, the right KPIs. Uh, but how do you capture customer feedback and utilize that in your campaigns? Is that again one of the important KPIs for a brand team to measure?

Speaker B: Yes, yes. I think there are two kinds of customer feedback, right? Uh, one is the claim feedback which is the claim behavior. And the second is the actual behavior which has been observed when the consumers interact with the campaign. So essentially how I break up, um, any campaign, Kunal is into four buckets. And that's standard for any campaign in any category. Uh, there's audience, there is the message, there is the medium, and then there is the format. A campaign is a mix of these four things. Uh, and essentially you have to analyze your campaigns in each of these buckets. When we put out a campaign, there are qualitative feedback service also which, uh, a lot of deployment uh, channels now do, which are essentially called your brand drift service and your brand surveys. And we also have our own third party service running that. Hey, have you seen the ad? What do you think of the messaging? But those are all claimed behaviors. That's what consumer is claiming, what he or she felt at that time. Uh, when you're. So I think, and I'm a big fan of actually what the actual behavior was from the consumer, which is what kind of clicks was the campaign generated, what kind of conversion the campaign generated, what kind of funnel overall funnel the campaign generated.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So just measuring these metrics, these metrics across four buckets and more into actual and less about uh, claim. That's one thing. The other thing is for uh, any campaign it's very important and I've seen this happening, this mistake happening across uh, the years is people don't define very sharply what the campaign objective is. Sometimes it's very vague. Sometimes it's like we think of it as the campaign. Let's just launch the campaign. We want to drive an awareness campaign. That's it. Let's just launch the campaign. Or we want to get more orders, we want to get as much orders as possible during this year. That's my campaign. But that's very wrong way to look at it because then you are struggling to think what to measure in this campaign. It has to be as sharp as I want to increase my orders in the upcoming sale by making sure that I go to my existing customers and increase my frequency order frequency from 1.2 to 1.5. Then you know that I have to measure my existing customer cohort. I have to measure the frequency of how they've ordered their hands, uh, how many exposures the campaign had over them, you know, and what kind of messaging I take, even the messaging. Also I want to increase my orders in X customers Y frequency. This by telling them that the footwear category is it never before discount.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Then I'm very clear that I have to focus on the footwear category. I have to talk about the footwear category and I'm just not doing a paint and spray and hoping for the conversions to happen. So I think defining the objective to the T and dotting all the sort of crossing the T's, dotting the I's, I think that's very important. And pre align that, that, that objective with the stakeholder. You know, this is what I'm going to do to support him for pleasure and let's, uh, all be right.

Speaker A: We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Spilling the Magic Beans. Week after week, we take you through case studies of the most successful marketing campaigns on the planet and give you tangible frameworks as well as anecdotal experiences that act as valuable lessons. If you enjoyed this episode and want more exclusive behind the scenes looks into the top marketing teams in the world, make sure to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform.