#PitchBrandTalk 2024 | Mastering Brand Salience and Trust Among Tech-Savvy Audiences

0:00 [Music] um thank you so much for having us here and the first thing I want to say is that we have a really really really diverse panel from leaders in the smartphone space the PC space and the auto space out here to talk about a great topic uh but before we jump in I wanted to start with a small story so how many of you have heard of the name Michelin for tires yeah how many of you know that Michelin tires and Michelin star is related wow so um The Story Goes that in the late 1800s there weren't enough cars and the two uh individuals who started Michel and ties actually started a small magazine to tell people in Paris about the nearest stops where they could go

0:45 and have good food where there were good mechanics where there were good gas stations because remember in the late 1800s Google and Google Maps did not exist right obviously and uh gradually they wanted to actually uh tell people that this is a genuinely good place and that was the birth of Michelin star so who could have ever thought that a company that actually made tires would tell you which is the best restaurant to eat food in right so before we get into the seriousness of brand trust I just want our panelists to tell us that if they could make a decision to enter a completely different business with their brand like Michelin went from tires to restaurants what would you envision it to be like a new space to jump into like I'm sure HP started with calculators and PCs and is today leading AI Innovations right so so where would you see a new industry where you would like to make a

1:35 Mark I think from a Vivo perspective uh I'll prefer automobile as a personal interest given that uh the level of innovation which is possible in that particular sector is a different level sorry mg I mean competition right here I know I think uh since you talked about Brands really diversifying and we talking about brand trust I think one place where you really need the trust to come through is the kids segment so I think if I wanted to get HP to get into something unrelated be about kids yeah okay a great great that's a great answer and for mg so mg um you know we've been a Pioneer in Innovation and breaking land speed records and you know innovation has been a core centricity we call ourself as an autot Tech brand so

2:22 the alternative path would be a tech company you know and how we are working as a tech company to solve consumer problems so it's not like it's a food uh it's a particular area but how you can Embrace Tech to solve consumer problems that would be one area that mg can Pioneer uh in solving specific use cases absolutely I I think great Industries to uh get into Auto of course close to my heart as well um now coming back to the topic at hand um there's a very interesting quote which reads that trust takes years to build seconds to break and forever to repair and uh you know all these brands that we have here today are very very very uh Legacy brands with a lot of trust so can you shed light on

3:09 the steps uh it takes not only to build trust with a new audience but to maintain it with your core audience that's been with you through the years um you can pick it up as it goes questions open to the floor yeah um so it's great that you you know you mentioned the quote because honestly I don't think trust is something which is about one Activity one minute one day uh it's about coming through at every interaction with your customer and know exactly like a relationship right you do one thing wrong and the trust breaks yeah uh nobody remembers the 100 things you do well by the way right everybody remembers the one thing the one day you didn't come through the one call you didn't pick up uh so so for Brands it's exactly the same thing um and that's why

3:55 I feel I me trust isn't about doing well one activity I think it starts and finishes through every part of the funnel and because I know this audience is marketing heavy and you know a lot of marketeers would want to really see this come alive uh see when I communicate at an upper funnel level with my customer the idea is to be honest right when I make claims are they corroborated are they true or is everything hidden in my disclaimers and my fine print right that's the first point where people are are forming their perception of brand uh trust you know today our consumers are disbelieving right people actually go and say you know you tell them you have a promotion running they'll say two two stores on this particular

4:43 model on this color for the first 50 and when he reads a big shiny ad it's like oh my God they're running such a great promotion and then he realizes you're just fooling him or her right um I think that's where you start losing brand trust and people lose that for Brands overall because there are certain compulsions of say the competition space and everybody tells us no no you must talk the same way we must look as shiny as good um but that's when we start cheating our consumers so you know I think the first Mark of a good trustworthy brand is when you're not misleading your consumer right um when the consumer goes down into the research and evaluation uh uh phase you know I think people have started trusting a lot more of people like themselves versus

5:28 big names you know again those brands have lost their trust because they've sold everything for money right so so the customer says everyone can be paid money you know they reading all the influencer stories so they're saying must have paid right must have given money so that's why they're talking such great things right um so it's it's a lot more about getting evangelists from within your customers and when somebody is buying it's really the ability of your network to be there because what is the customer looking for can I come back to hold someone resp responsible yeah which means does after sales service show up right because that's when they'll go and tell another 100 people uh that this is a great brand right and that's when you'll really when you go and ask you know in fact you'll realize brand trust is one of those

6:15 metrics if you measure it through your brand researches while it moves with communication it'll fall exactly the same way the other points don't come through right uh so while you might while there may be ways to move it through communication through research and evaluation if you don't stand by it at the points in the moments of Truth um it'll never really stay for you so therefore Brands who built it uh have built it across various points right and and for a brand like HP you know 700 stores or 24/7 um support post post sales um you know having those channels where people can come back to you uh besides what comms does besides what comms says and the fact that what it says is also honest clear um you know

7:02 and not misleading I think all of those things really create brand trust for you and maintain it over a period of time mayank what about you from a Vivo perspective I think I 100% agree with Shani given that uh the trust is something which just can't be built a day or a moment I think it takes a long long time to do and you have to deliver each and every time so for Vivo it's we celebrating 10 years in India right and coming from a background which is being backed by China it was was always difficult to get into a trust issue out there but I think we did a wonderful job given that the 10 years of celebration in terms of we are celebrating to be the highest market share for past three consecutive quarters I think that's what we take at a back of us secondly also in terms of trust when it talks about it's

7:47 any Communications from a brand angle or from a brand uh person putting any moment any comment any idea behind it should be very well being acknowledged by the brand and hence we believe a lot in our after sales also so given that we might have lot of retails marketing happening into it but from a service point of view each and every service center is directly owned by Vivo so that's why we say okay there is one you buy second is we there to if there is a problem because that comes as a habit it it's a responsibility if I give you a product to give you a genuine service is my responsibility and accordingly when you are buying a product trust me we have some 35,000 people standing on stores we talks on our behalf and and say okay this is the product and they claim okay if this is the component and

8:34 this is the configuration this is the price it is come directly from the brand and that's how they started keeping trust on that and as it said it's not taken over a time it takes 10 years for us the kind of relationship which we have built with retailers with s 35,000 people standing on the shop and the million of people who are associated with the 35,000 people is just because of the trust which we have earned over the time so hence I think it's every moment then you have to prove yourself as a trust part to it yeah udit for you I mean buying a car is more of a family decision than you know buying a phone for yourself or a laptop for yourself so it's more Family Trust No so I'll I'll first start with the basics so we are not a 20 year old 30y old brand in India

9:20 so mg started its operations in 2019 we started selling cars officially in 2019 uh like M said we had a back bage of Chinese origin but we've been doing a great job in terms of reinforcing our origin of Britain which is Abington Oxford share so how do we build trust with that is one of the key you know key responsibilities that we had during the launch of mg brand and mg Hector in India but coming back to the fundamentals you know excluding the comms Automotive is a fairly fragile space if the product experience is bad and you know if if you're stuck on the road if you are you know not being taken care of when you look at the brand tracks the most important source of

10:08 awareness is not TV Billboards digital it's Word of Mouth your maximum car sales are coming from referals so the leading principle in my opinion while we are formulating the brand remains how you are being authentic to the customer in your communication so authenticity is one of the key key factors in each and every piece of communication and I'll cite this with an with an example shortly the second part is listening and response management plays a very very key role and it is not about a om Command Center who's sending you a robotic response saying that we'll get back to you in 10 minutes how you are building functions in after sales and in

10:55 a quick response manner where if a customer is stuck on Road RSA how are you taking care of that customer if there is a breakdown happening are you giving a you know a complimentary car service during uh that period so while core objective is to sell a car but the Driving Experience is driven through authenticity after sales is a key role but the listening and response management part from an after sales perspective is really important the last thing is when we look look at car buying it is still the second most aspirational purchase in the country and a normal churn happens every 5 years so if nowadays within 3 to 5 years you're

11:40 switching the car if your product is not delivering if your staff is not trained if you're not authentic to the customer even in let's say repair bills even in service cost that brand tust diminishes within the third to fifth year and you will not get a repeat purchase uh in the life cycle of the product one example that I would like to cite here is with our recent Windsor launch where we introduced battery as a service uh model where you know you're not paying for the battery and you're paying battery rental every person from the media asked us catch so we went down to the extent of educating everybody that there is no catch you know there is no uh cap on

12:28 kilometers you can even buy bass program at 0 kilomet plan as well so there were a lot of doubts wi is just launched we just started deliveries on this era so everybody in in the industry said you know there's a catch CH you know competition was saying no sir this is you know you you're paying actually more but for use cases which were smaller of 500 km run 750 km run they were actually appreciating bass as a product so we went down to the extent of educating everybody saying that there is no catch you can buy it at even a 0 kilom use plan and there is no capping that is there so I think training being authentic and continuing to listening to

13:14 your customers is building brand trust it's a pervasive function and it doesn't end in one day or it is not one iota of activity that will Define trust for your brand absolutely I I I think that from the Brand's perspective there's a lot happening right right with the way you're putting a customer first approach or having a very well-trained staff or having 24/7 support for PCs if it breaks down in the night and you're working on a US shift but communication of that trust has changed I mean uh maybe a few decades ago you would read about all this information in a trusted publication or it would come on their online version gradually we shifted to television we've now come online and now we have we are surrounded by leaks and rumors and a lot of misinformation so

13:59 how do you use the current crop of communication channels to you know build trust with your existing audience and try to get new audiences into your pool we can start from here this time so um first of all um leaks because you started with that um I think in automotive it is um no matter how much we try uh leaks are bound to happen because the product is being tested on the road whether for government certification whether for IAT whether for Ari whether for you know validation of the product across different terrains and features so in our case most of the leaks are authentic but whether that product will be validated or launched in India is subjective where the media

14:45 speculation comes into the for specific to automotive industry uh 70 to 80% of the product disc Discovery has already happened online uh and in our observation over the last 5 years the new age creators are playing a big role uh you know like sh Shivani said that from the authenticity persp looking for people like me u a 20-year-old who's recommending the car to the father may not know uh an overdrive or an auto car but he may know an askar Guru who he is falling for let's say authenticity so there in our touch points of content while there is awareness and familiarity

15:31 coming from let's say mainstream mediums like print television CTV uh and even the recency factor coming from always on digital I think influencer marketing from a product recommendation perspective plays a very key role in automotive uh and thereby the real consumption that we feel is happening through the media reviews how do you sustain that conversation post a media drive post the product initial phase is over I think continues to be the pervasive Pro uh you know process when it comes to the mix perspective because my U humble submission is you cannot be always on on ATL but with the rise of the Creator economy there is a substantial Frugal Innovation that you

16:18 can do and leverage it on a pervasive basis I'm sure Shani and uh my uncle first say stop covering our leaks on 91 but but I'll let you take the floor for the control of information yeah uh no I mean I think um completely agree with udit on the fact that you can't be you know everywhere at all points in time so you know just picking up from that um and and probably my would agree like at least on the tax sides I mean we call it the messy middle okay um the the consumer is spending four to six weeks researching and evaluating um therefore the touch points are so many uh that it's impossible for any brand to cover those right um I think therefore one

17:03 thing which is very important which is beyond the uh you know the media discussion or the content discussion is that brand builds enough trust for your recommendations to have Merit right uh for the buying to be so easy so decoded that the customer is able to say oh you know they'll guide me right um however the times that we live in even if I say 100 times and I go out in the most credible media and say you know I've got the best recommendation engine the conflict of interest reduces the believability right no consumer wants to listen to the same brand saying I'm going to tell you the best like you've got to sell me your product you'll never tell me someone else as a better product fair enough right um and that's why I think who you have to choose lies as a juer position of your brand values and of your consumer's trust right and and

17:49 their engagement with that consumer right um the consumer trusts you and that's why you're a good Legacy brand uh but because you survive in an industry they want an impartial view right in that now today you need to rank right we found ugc have a lot of value we find communities having a lot of value uh then maybe there's credible Tech Publishers like yourself right and then there's influencers right because that's the order in which they see uh money having a value uh for these people right uh therefore you've got to see who your consumer is trusting um within that space who are the people who can if evangelize your brand in the right way right like if I'm looking to sell a gaming laptop um I should talk to somebody who has gaming credibility

18:35 who's a gamer who's in gaming communities who's seen there who's heard there respected there and has engagement with that so it just isn't a function of reach right so somebody comes to me and says this guy has 25 million followers but has no hold with my consumer set then he has no value for me he or she has no value for me and I think the idea is to ensure that the people that you are trusting with that can Drive the metric you're looking for because you're looking at also response you're not looking at just how many people here but how many quality people here so sometimes it's important to go after those niches and not really go after Mas because you know they'll drive reach yeah so I think you really have to drive it from the objective of your brand who you want to talk to and who has the trust of those people that you really

19:21 want to talk to um where you know they can drive mileage for you so I think that for me then is the order based ugc Community publisher uh this thing but yeah the messy middle will remain to be soled right I think phones have it the messiest with leaks going on throughout the years man how how do you deal with that first I think because Shani said I have to second so I will second her okay that's part one but yes you rightly said given that uh leaks are the biggest thing for the mobile part and uh as because Shani also said in terms of you know what your consumer follows right so from a from exper experience point of view you should know in terms of which all partners are you getting associated with are leaks part of the plan yes leaks are part of the plan but leaks to

20:08 the people whom your consumers are following into see if there is a miscommunication in leaks also it gives you a bad imagery for the brand and for the tech publisher for any other partner giving that right so it's better to channelize those why because your consumer is looking for those particular leaks so it's better to be a part of the plan similarly for K perspective also one is Def there are like heavyweight lifters who have the fan followings and sorry to say we being a marketer point of view Because Of Reach and XYZ things we have to go and collaborate but at the same time there are actual consumers see if from a VI point of view we build on our camera right we have a z partnership wherein we build okay our camera is totally out of the world and it's actually GI a dsli type of images so it's either two option we do we as a

20:53 brand and say oh here's the camera here's the output or here there are few people amongst you among the consumers who capture those images and they have a notification which says or maybe a foo holder which says shot by May on his x00 and that's comes the value when consumer says oh this is something captured by a normal human being a normal ecosystem and hence is being captured by the device so if you are able to channelize all the communications which build more trust and more authenticity in terms of what is being communicated the consumer is fa to trust on those consumer will believe yes this is happening and this is true and hence let me follow the brand yeah so uh I mean for car Henry Ford said any color will do so long as it's black but uh in in the field of

21:38 innovation he said if I asked my audience what I wanted they'd say Faster Horses um so keeping that in mind I mean all all the brands we have out here today have some great Innovation from Battery as a service to the partnership with Zeiss for cameras and even the foldables that are so great to aipc is making people's lives just so much more simple how do you communicate that innovation I know you've spoken about this a little bit for battery as a service but if you can you know maybe shed some more light on you innovate something and then you have to build that trust with the audience saying my aipc is not a gimmick my partnership with the camera really does give you DSLR quality you know so I guess we'll start with Y mayang so building that trust while keeping new Innovations in the focus so I think uh it a brand speaking out oh I am this cannot deliver

22:23 this it is about the consumers we have to do and hence I think the K will uh brings a lot of vages there and when I say k these are like people who are actual consumers we have almost thousand of people who have who are part of our k Community and they are actual consumers we send them phone we tell them scenarios where they can go and capture images similarly for the people who are actually Gamers and we say okay you are from Gaming Community you please play games and put it on your own social media so that's how I think we channelize that particular thing and that's what Innovations come into any see Innovations in something which keeps on happening every day everything and we don't we call them Innovations but are they actually Innovations for me I think AI is one thing which has changed the world post the smartphones now but in

23:09 the AI ecosystem the way AI is being used for Innovations it's a challenge lot of fake things happening lot of fake Communications happening so that's also a responsibility which comes so I think if you use the right channel put up the right sweet spot in terms of what is the Innovation for the consumer not for the brand and you feel able to communicate that innovation in a day-to-day scenario which will connect to the consumer I think that's what the right communication and right Innovation Justice happens okay this is innovation for the consumer which he can relate to his day-to-day life and hence it for him it's an innovation it's not an innovation for the brand yeah yeah know I think um completely agree with myang on that one uh see I feel there's a lot of innovation for the sake of innovation right um and

23:55 consumers will see through that right so so so there is isn't much point in stressing over that kind of innovation right uh but I think Samir on the other front um you know when you have Innovation I think you need to be a little patient okay uh because I think what happens is that with short-term sales being a very important goal um we forget to you know concentrate on the basics and the foundations which which like my young said you know three WS what am I selling why will someone buy it and who is that person right I think you have to get that right yeah um and then invest in that consumer education because that person will get it right because see when you launch an innovation in Market there's always some

24:41 early adopters there are always some people who pick up their hand and say I've got to try this they're not waiting for the ratings and the reviews to go up on a platform because the ratings and the reviews will then never go up if there is nobody who does it first right um so I think those early adopters need to get it and that's why you need to get uh your the who why what very very right because you spend and invest on educating them right you invest your time in creating those evangelists who will say why do they really need it because see especially this is true for a field like technology because it's complicated right uh minus of those who really get technology the others are still grappling to say do I really need RAM this size do I need storage this

25:28 size they they still haven't answered the most basic questions right they're like oh now let's go buy the latest because guess what not that they have a use case the latest is going to last them 5 years and guys this is this is our Indian consumer who's looking at value for everything he's very clear right and and that's why I should get the latest not because the latest is serving a purpose right um that's why I think when you educate the consumer you create a lot of those use cases which prove and and you know we doing some of this at HP with you on AI uh where we actually taking to the consumer and saying how will this help you because the guy saying after 2 years you like I bought this fancy laptop you know and and what happens is he tells another 10 people you don't really need it and then you're like oh

26:14 but yeah there was so much noise I thought it'll help me sorry no but you didn't find what it could have done for you right because you saw fancy communication but the brand missed the fact that it needed to take some education to the customer saying what kind of change it'll make to your life uh so I think that's the investment that the brand needs to do right uh when you expect Innovation to pick up absolutely you hit the nail on the head because keeping the PC in mind it was when you move from hard drives to ssds which are just faster they were like and you're like no no but it's a little faster right and coming to cars also I still think that that what what Shani spoke about with the old school audience with with auto I think it boils down to no matter how much Technologies there there must be some set of audience that completely comes and says but you

27:01 know and then how do you match those expectations of new AG stuff keeping this audience in mind so I think it boils down again to the U brand values what you set out to be as a brand when mg launched in India uh we introduced India's first internet car which was MD Hector until then if you go back there was not even a concept of Internet car now the question is is the technology a utility benefit for you or is it a hoax now I'll give you one example of a hoax era also when nfts came everybody tried the nft projects metaverse still came went by so or is it driving some kind of utility for you when we launched

27:49 internet car in India we ensured that using Voice using internet inside your car you have accessibility to entertainment your t itics data you use voice to open sunroof and do a you know utility of tech is something that you need to Define when you are launching a product if it is not giving you any utility as a consumer then it is all marketing garble you know it's not solving for anything for the consumer similar examples are there when we introduced Gloucester with autonomous cars it had Auto autonomous level one techn technology what it is solving for the customer is passive and active safety features so every time mg tries

28:36 to create a communication for its customers how is Tech solving a problem for the consumer in the autospace is the key objective not to say that okay we've got great Tech but so what so that is one analogy that we keep on uh you know uh facing and it's also a Poise challenge because if we go by a Deo um survey that has recently come while most of the tech is encapsulating the buttons of the car but people want buttons back inside the car so that's our product feedback that we are working that how do we get buttons back inside the car people don't want everything on the head unit so again going back to Tech is solving a problem is innovation really an innovation to benefit a consumer

29:22 problem and how are you proactively listening back to the problems that the customer has to build your next set of products uh is something that we can solve for absolutely and um those were all the questions that I had but uh before we end I just wanted to say you know Arthur C Clark said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic and I think all the three brands out here have created products which are genuinely magical and uh I can promise you that if you go back even a decade and show this to someone and say this is what's going to be there in 2024 they will all be shocked and stunned from uh internet enabled car to phones that flip and fold and don't break to a laptop that you know could be Javis next year from Iron Man so thank you so much to the panel for having us and back to you guys in

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