Markshastra 4.0

4.0 Markaholic Creation Featuring Ideas and Expert opinions from Industry Experts, Academicians, Marketers and students from premier B-Schools in India! @markaholic_ifmrgsb High On Ideas! Ma r kSha s tr a Annual Marketing Magazine of IFMR GSB Evolution of Marketing The Timelapse Adopting The Change is One of The LAWS of Marketing

01 Contents 02 03 04 Meet the Team Markaholic Message from the Dean How to Seize the Market in Metaverse? How to Leverage AI to Up your Marketing Game?

Contents 05 06 07 A Blueprint on How Brands Generate Engagement! Is your Marketing Future-Proof? -Towards Sustainability How Marketing is Fueled by Big-Data?

Nisha M Varun Toshniwal ManiKalra Akshay S Jayaraj JiteshGupta SreeramThejas KrishnanandKS Meet the team 1 Markaholic

2 LakshmiKumar Dean |IFMRGSB,KreaUniversity It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to IFMR GSB at Krea University. IFMR was established in 1970 to provide cutting-edge research and training in economics and finance. Several luminaries of stature have walked in the portals of IFMR. In 2000 we decided to begin the MBA program with the view to train managers with skills and ethics. Over the years we have become synonymous with quality finance education. In 2018, we were renamed IFMR GSB and became part of Krea University. The students have had a keen interest in marketing mostly because of inputs from our faculty. Students and faculty are critical to the thinking in any institute. Without doubt, Markaholic, another positive initiative, has become central to the marketing area. It has always been open in their outlook and forward thinking. It contains an anthology of articles, interviews and discussions which contribute positively towards the knowledge base.

A Proud Moment for IFMR! It’s an immense pleasure and a proud moment for Krea University to announce that the Former Dean of IFMR GSB and visiting professor of Economics at Krea University, Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran has been appointed as New Chief Economic advisor for India. We wish him heartily congratulations and good luck for all his future prospects as a New CEA for India. Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran Chief Economic Advisor for India 3

Our experienced faculty members have PhDs from highly regarded schools in India, the US, and Europe. They also bring a wealth of experience from international business schools and the corporate sector into the classroom. The 40-acre green campus in Sri City, 70 kilometres north of Chennai, is well equipped with the latest technology and infrastructure to enable the use of the most effective andragogical techniques and facilitate a wide range of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Markaholics, the student Marketing committee, comprises a group of student leaders who are passionate about leaming the theory and practice of marketing. It is my pleasure to introduce "Markashastra 4.0" , the 4th edition of the annual marketing magazine of Markaholics. This year, the magazine focuses on "Evolution of Marketing, The Timelapse." I hope you will enjoy reading the invited articles. 4

How to Seize The Market In Metaverse? By Academicians 5

Marketing and a Metaverse Future! R. Sathyanarayanan Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Marketing, IFMR Graduate School of Business – Krea University - A prophetic statement made by Alexander Graham Bell 140 years ago! That was when the world was entering a new era with a new technology that would revolutionize the way we live, work and communicate. Since then, science and technology have grown by leaps and bounds. Today, we are on the cusp of another group of revolutionary technological development in terms of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain, NFTs, 5G, industry4.0 and the Metaverse. Neal Stephenson introduced the term 'Metaverse' in his 1992 science fiction novel "Snow Crash". It is a convergence and blending of digital and physical space and human-machine existence. Metaverse is expected to bring in a new wave of opportunity similar to the internet of the 1990s. To understand the context, we need to understand the evolution of modern industry since the industrial revolution. Industry 1.0: Steam power and tools for machinemade industrial production marked the ushering of the industrial revolution Industry 2.0: Electrical power and the assembly line redefined mass production Industry 3.0: Computers, telecom, internet and transistors enabled a global business environment The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking. Industry 4.0: Smart, connected, and automated factories with the convergence of technology are currently redefining the business paradigm Industry 5.0: A Giant leap into the futuristic systems with artificial intelligence and the algorithms. This new development will create pathbreaking changes in the business landscape as there will be a considerable change in acquisition, communication, consumption and attitude. The ongoing pandemic has also pushed several people worldwide to quickly adopt a digital lifestyle – from Zoom conferences to OTT entertainment, to name a few. Marketing as a function needs to keep abreast with the changes. There is an increasing role of technology in marketing in the current scenario, and MarTech tools enable enterprises to manage the complexity of the changing business arena. MarTech Moves While the number of apps being used in managing marketing in the current business environment are numerous, a classification chart put forth by Scott Brinker of Hubspot pegged it at around 8000 in 2020. To name a few, AI-based MarTech tools like RainBird, Prospex, ZeBrand, Brandwatch, Cresta, Acoustic, and Gong provide excellent support to marketing decision-making. Coca-Cola uses AI algorithms in its touch-screen vending machines in Japan to automatically understand the context of its location, like a gym or a mall and accordingly exhibit a serious or fun-oriented persona. 6

The Walt Disney Company effectively uses AI in its Magic Kingdom by capturing the real-time movement data of the visitors through a MagicBand wristband. This process helps the company understand the most visited and the least seen attractions. AI-based real-time analysis of this data helps manage the queues and inventories and offers instant promotions to decongest crowds to give everyone a memorable experience. As an exciting development in this MarTech space, Chat Bots are taking over the initial layer of customer interaction for basic help. As artificial intelligence and machine learning develop further, it will increase adoption by several brands. Dutch airlines, KLM was a pioneer in introducing a messenger chatbot in 2018. Kuki is an AI bot (earlier known as Mitsuku) that has won the Loebner prize five times for being more humanlike. Whereas chatbot Tay from Microsoft created a controversy with its offensive tweets in 2016, and the company eventually suspended the service. Learnings from such mishaps and further enhancement will make future bots much sharper and more sensitive. A new opportunity called "Conversational Commerce" is emerging with such developments, which will aid the marketers to have robust and effective bot-based communication with customers during the purchase process. Augmented Reality Augmented, virtual, and mixed reality in the evolving Metaverse is expected to provide a more immersive brand experience. "Vertebrae" was a startup that worked extensively on creating 3- dimensional virtual brand experiences and was acquired by Snap Inc. in 2021 to augment their digital shopping experience. Compared to the 2D photos in the eCommerce portals, a 3D view of the product is expected to provide a better pre-purchase experience with the brand. According to the Snap Consumer AR Global Report 2021, by 2025, "75% of the global population will be using augmented reality through their smartphones, and Brands are 41% more likely to be considered if they have a branded AR experience". AR also helps in generating cocreated content. With these developments, Metaverse can potentially redefine the online shopping experience. As per the research of Dr Tan Yong Chin of the City University of Hong Kong, to some extent, AR will help to bridge the spatial and temporal separation between the buyer and the seller, thereby considerably reducing the product performance uncertainty and product fit uncertainty in the online purchase. Avatars and Gaming When we talk of the Metaverse, it is already bringing sweeping changes in the gaming arena. Avatars play a crucial role as our digital personality in giving an immersive experience in the Metaverse. Some brand mascots like Flo of the Progressive Insurance have also found success as avatars in virtual spaces like Facebook messenger. Dr Fred Miao of the University of Texas at Arlington and his research colleagues have come up with an interesting 2x2 taxonomy for avatars in terms of form realism and behavioural realism, which shall aid the marketers towards effective use of avatars. Avatars apart, brands are slowly moving into the gaming space to capitalize on the engagement opportunity with the gaming customer segments. For example, Gucci created a 3D virtual space called GucciVilla in the South Korean social media app, Zepeto. Gucci's virtual-apparel metaverse engagement got extended to the gaming arena through their Gucci Arcade and Sneaker Garage and also partnered with other gaming companies. Several other luxury brands are also experimenting with tapping this opportunity. In 2020, cosmetics major Estée Lauder tried a similar gaming avenue to promote their newly launched advanced night repair serum. Product information was organically blended with games like Beauty Bounce and Repair Racer to reach a younger audience. 7

Another side of the coin There are many privacy-related issues on the negative side of these developments. There are valid concerns on data capturing and usage which needs to be addressed by the industry. Regarding bot-level interactions, many people still prefer a human interface. This phenomenon is akin to the difference in the preferences between digital natives and digital immigrants concerning digital gadget usage. In future, Ai-Natives might be more comfortable with the machines. Though technology development is leapfrogging ahead, more critical is the role of human intervention and the multi-dimensional, multistakeholder understanding of the context. That takes us to the first principles of humanity – empathy and compassion, and the first principles of holistic marketing – a thorough understanding of the stated and unstated needs. Tools may come, and tools may go, but brands sticking to the core principles shall go on forever. Such AI-powered yet humanized brands shall be the winners in the long run. Apart from helping the brand engagement exercise, Metaverse, with its blockchain technology, is providing the opportunity to sell even virtual dresses. 'The Fabricant', a Netherlands based digital fashion startup, is working on bespoke, digital-only fashion and sold a Digi-Couture dress named "Iridescence" for $9500 in 2019. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) enable virtual trade and transfer of ownership using blockchain-based digital tokens. We already have NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Larva Labs, and others active in the virtual business platform. In a move towards Metaverse, Nike recently acquired RTFKT Studio, a startup that creates virtual sneakers and collectables. Some months before this acquisition, RTFKT collaborated with an 18-year old cryptoartist named FEWOCiOUS and created virtual sneakers. RTFKT sold 600 pairs for USD3.1 million in flat seven minutes! Though some might find digital-only fashion and associated bidding bizarre, there is also a sustainability perspective. When people wear luxury fast fashion apparel just for posting it on social media, it makes sense to use digital fashion to avoid the potential environmental damages caused by the physical clothing. Also, this technology reduces wastages in the design stage of physical apparel. Fabricant is also working with top brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Puma and Under Armour. The Global Gaming Industry is expected to reach a revenue of USD300 billion by 2025, a revenue figure far higher than the global film industry. In terms of catering to the core need of entertainment, gaming as a category could impact other forms of entertainment in this demographic segment. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why streaming platforms like Netflix are also testing the waters in gaming, though this is a different cup of tea. In 2021, Netflix launched five mobile games without any additional charge for the subscribers, and the number is around a dozen now. This move could create an eco-system of multiple consumption points and provide usage patterns for their analytical engine. It is a bold new experiment, and only time can answer whether the move is correct or not in terms of financial returns. For Marketers, Gaming will be an Essential Vehicle to Reach the GenZ Segment! 8

How to Leverage AI to UP your Marketing Game? By Entrepreneurs, PhD Scholars & MBA Students 9

arketing as a concept is the communication of the right message to the relevant target audience to put across the message of the brand. This is done in multiple ways by different stakeholders across industries. Marketing has evolved over decades where in word-of-mouth and referrals were the main forms to Digital marketing and performance branding in today’s world. Over the evolution, the intent remains to focus on brand awareness, lead generation and sales conversion. The core of any business model lies in its financial planning, market research, creative and innovative marketing solutions. We need to reimagine marketing to the current trends escalated by innovative technologies and digital transformation. Digital is the new oil. With the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things several tools have been developed which aids in marketing automation. Electronic device majorly mobile phones and internet penetration to Urban and rural areas alike has significantly expanded the market share. AI in Digital Marketing The use of artificial intelligence in new-age marketing is multifold via chatbots, marketing automation, content generation, digital advertising and data analytics. AI takes sales forecasting to the next level through conversion management solutions. With AI solutions, we get data insights for a deeper understanding of consumers from search engines and social media. This helps marketers to optimise digital advertising campaigns via customised algorithms on consumer data by the tech giants. This enables marketers to create custom audiences through detailed consumer profiles and refine campaigns by targeting with highly personalised content. Real-time interaction with consumers influences buying decisions. AI is continuously learning and paves way to autonomous marketing despite its disruptive nature. Vishnu Priya S Founder, Sapphire Reimagining Marketing - AI in Digital Marketing Artificial intelligence is shaping the future of marketing with voice assistants and AI-powered marketing tools to implement for a successful online business. AI-based applications create a great impact in terms of operational efficiency leading to customer satisfaction, faster productivity, problem-solving and decision making. This enhances brand reputation and customer loyalty. Data-Driven Performance Marketing Data-driven performance marketing plays a very crucial role as it bases Ads and ad spends on customer intent and behaviour. Search engines get billions and trillions of data every second across the globe. Their algorithm works to produce to best output in terms of audience segment, optimising for best performing ads based on objective, search terms and keywords. Our customers are our brand ambassadors. Behaviour and predictive analysis of customer data provide deep insights about the customers which aid in making both marketing as well as business decisions. With a clear understanding of consumer preference, data-driven performance marketing can be applied more effectively to demand generation and branding activities. M 10

Big data drives important decisions made to improve performance in marketing. A small change can also create a huge impact. For example, by simply gaining insight of a new location where there is a demand for our product. Insights on if the resources are invested in the right place, a feature in the product which would make it better, to determine where to focus their media spends and whether we are targeting the right audience leads to huge cost savings and revenue gains. Benefits Of Digital Marketing Digital marketing is an ocean. It includes Search engine optimisation, Social media optimisation, Online reputation management, Content marketing, Email marketing, Performance marketing, marketing automation, Influencer marketing, Search engine marketing in different forms of text, images, videos, etc. Each social media platform has expertise in its own form of content. For example, LinkedIn is professional and focuses on long text, Pinterest on images, Instagram on short videos, Twitter on short text and so on. Social media focuses on experiential marketing based on the engagement of the relevant target audience. Traditional marketing is done through print media, television ads, institutional marketing and so on. Digital marketing is more scalable and cost-effective. For example, if you had to pay for a billboard, it is in a fixed place for a monthly rent of a fixed amount. Whereas in digital marketing, you can place the same ad creative in multiple places to relevant audience leading to huge savings due to better return on ad spends for small and big companies alike. Role of Governance in Reimagining Marketing The best CEOs understand marketing. Rule number one is to be customer-centric. It is important to ensure that the four A’s of Awareness, Accessibility, Acceptability and Affordability are done well. It is important to translate your value proposition to the grassroots for the salesforce to get a new customer, to keep a new customer and to grow the customer by upselling. The top management must keep up with the trends in digital and implement what’s best for the organisation in mapping the customer’s journey. Virtual reality, blockchain, voice recognition, and chatbots have been implemented across industries to provide improved customer experience. Instead of taking a test drive, to experience a new car using virtual reality is the new norm. Earlier big companies used to invest a lot of money in advertising and buying promotion time in televisions. Now, they take a percentage of their budget and have invested it in digital advertising. They have put a lot of money in digital and learnt what works for them and what does not. They have modified the budget accordingly to suit their needs. This policy decision to use digital plays a crucial role in redefining business. Marketing In The Future Buyers will buy without much help from advertising or sales people, marketing success will depend on smart pricing, strong branding and dominant channel positions. Marketing creativity and innovation are essential. There will be a shift from professional marketers to entrepreneurial marketers coming up with new ideas for going to the market. Marketers focusing on customer journey mapping, touch point marketing, creating personas, content and influencer things are likely to make it big. Marketers will use virtual reality to gauge buyer’s intent on future products and neural science to identify the best stimulus. Predictive analytics and machine learning to identify and convert the best prospects is the future. Some evergreen marketing solutions is to invite customers to offer ideas, diversify board members and to create an organisation culture celebrating creative ideas from employees. It is the perfect blend of traditional marketing concepts and evolving digital trends in the right proportion that’ll create holistic marketing. Vishnu Priya S, an IIMI graduate is a digital marketing consultant working with businesses to grow their online brand presence, lead generation campaigns and performance marketing. Passionate about performance marketing and marketing automation, she is the chief thinker at Sapphire and has worked on multiple brands in the industry. She has worked in chatbot creation, digital marketing campaigns via different marketing channels, and setting up automation processes for the efficient running of the business and a smooth customer journey. She is a budding entrepreneur in the Food Processing industry, currently working in the field of School Education. 11

Kumar Ashutosh, PhD Scholar Value Creation using AI in the Present Market? Utkarsh Choudhary, PhD Scholar Narbadeshwar Mishra, PhD Scholar n classical economics, price discovery mechanism and revealed preference theory helps the firms to strategically guess the likely choices of consumers. However, in the face of expanding competition, advertisement has long been identified for product differentiation to attract bigger pool of customers. It would be reasonable to say that till recent times, the advertisement strategy employed by firms has been largely based on economy-wide macro trends. We find one of the earliest pieces of formal marketing in 17th century when a London merchant, Daniel Defoe published his three articles on trading in Britain, Scotland, France, and India. Josiah Wedgewood, an English industrialist of 18th century, was well known for using improved marketing techniques of personal mail, mobile salespeople, and catalogues. In the 20th century, more sophisticated tools of marketing were in vogue like socio-demographic segmentation tools based on tax registers and census data. In the early 20th century, many renowned universities offered specialised courses in marketing that focused on brand management. With the augment of the worldwide web platform, digital marketing took over this space in the 1990s. The emergence of technology platforms like Yahoo, Google, and MSN transformed the marketing by firms when the internet seemingly started to be a place of “Super Information Highway”. In early years of the 2000s, cookie became a milestone in digital marketing which allowed the sellers to tailor promotions based on the tastes of the consumers. However, even such advanced strategies often placed greater emphasis on the identification of consumer preferences through revealed collective choices over granular tastes. It is in this sense that the technology of artificial intelligence, i.e., AI is proving to be disruptive. One of the most acceptable ways to define AI has been that it’s a science that makes machines smarter. It implies that AI powers our computing machines to read, process, analyse and derive actionable insights from larger sets of dynamic data at the grainy level. The level of granularity in datadriven advertisement or for that matter marketing has only become widely accessible due to relatively recent advancements in computing technology as well as the exponential dependence of people on digital devices in their regular lives. Artificial intelligence has potential to shift the dominant view of marketing to entirely different channels. The underlying reason behind this potential is rather obvious and uncomplicated. Owing to its humongous data processing capabilities, AI brings the firms much closer to the preferences of consumers at individual level that are quite veiled. This has become possible as mobile devices have largely proved to be the likely platform for doing transactions, connecting with friends and family, entertainment, accessing commute or ordering food, and many other needs. As per the State of Mobile report 2022 released by analytics firm App Annie, a typical Indian spent more than 4.5 hours on mobile devices, which is around one-third of waking hours. This figure is even higher for many other developing countries like Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, I 12

Chatbots are currently the Fastest Growing among the list of AI tools being used for marketing and Mexico. For a better sense of this statistic, we should also recognize that in 2020, around 500 million people in India were using smartphones out of which 77 per cent were consistently using the internet. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that such a large base of mobile users is generating and making available the granular data that is justifying the choice of AI as one of the most suitable marketing modes. As per the State of Conversational Marketing report, 2020 released by Drift, usage of chatbots increased by a whopping 92% since 2019 as a brand communication channel. Over 80% of respondents in the survey who used an AI-enabled technology found the chat-bot solution to be very valuable to their marketing strategy. These smart chatbots allow the firms to filter the immediate customers from the pool of potential buyers in real-time through provision of ease of transaction and timely customer support round the clock. One of the CNBC reports has predicted that Chatbots should be handling 75-90% of healthcare & banking queries which are canned in nature. Also, a report by MarketandMarket suggests that the global Chatbot market size should grow from USD 2.9 billion in 2020 to USD 10.5 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 23.5%. Clearly many companies should be looking at AI-enabled and conversational-based chatbots as absolute fundamental to their customer relationship management practices. Talking about rather local Indian experiences in the smart chatbot space for marketing, Livemint reported the story of a desi startup Yellow Messenger in 2021 that provides AI-enabled chatbot solutions to companies for their direct selling to consumers via WhatsApp. This Start-up counts an unnamed large FMCG brand and retail chain Spencer as their biggest customers in India. The firm is also looking for cross-national expansion of its business, especially in Latin America where WhatsApp has significant coverage. Their success is weaved around the ability of their AI-powered solutions to provide product recommendation, payment and tracking of shipment, as an all-integrated-into-one platform for the end buyer. Their business tool for direct-to-customer selling also creates a source of additional trust for companies among the buyers who don’t have to interact with intermediaries. Predictive analytics, powered by AI and machine learning, are already at play in e-commerce industry where it has proven to be absolutely critical for changes in consumer behaviour and improving business returns. The competition among e-commerce firms like Amazon India, Flipkart, Tata Cliq, Big Basket, Grofers, etc. is heating up and it’s the AI-powered customer relationship which should determine the profit margins for firms. JioMart is already using the WhatsApp platform as a conversational-based marketing tool to expand its business. Predictive analytics in marketing can answer a variety of questions of interest for companies. It can range from matching optimal sale offers to different customer segments, content generation guided by the distinct stages of the customer journey on the business platform, identification of effective marketing channels, finding the leads from consumer behaviour that results into near term purchases, reliable guess about the lifetime value of a customer over the platform, etc. The AIenabled marketing helps in scaling up the results and insights derived from the traditional methods of predictive analytics in real-time. Google Analytics, one of the most popular AI-based predictive analytics tools, uses machine learning to answer some of the most fundamental business queries like “Why did my users change last week?" and "Any anomalies in the number of users last week?" among others. 13

Figure above shows the academic articles, from the last 5 years (2017-2021), published in the area of AI in the Indian marketing context. As vindicated by it, AI is being heavily used in almost every field. For e.g., in agriculture, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and genetic algorithm. The figure, apart from the usage of AI, also hints that machine learning, industry 4.0, big data, retail sector, blockchain and security breach concerns constitute a major part of AI adoption. In addition to this, the figure also directs us that the future of work culture is getting digitalized. As per the recent PWC report, machine learning is being viewed as the most reliable AI-powered solution in the IT sector. The banking and financial sector contemplates machine learning and automation to have the greatest impact on their business ranging from process automation, customer support, regulatory processes, and other back-office operations. In addition to this, in the manufacturing sector, decision makers appear to favour machine learning solutions and automated research, when integrated with other supporting domains like the Internet of Things. These are believed to pave the way for smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0. machine learning solutions. Machine learning also appears to have a high impact in the field of education and teaching. This appears to be a promising avenue for developing use cases in which machine learning and other AI-powered technologies can provide proper training and education to the vast majority of the population. Blockchain technology has the potential to scale up the AI-powered solutions and Metaverse is the biggest upcoming platform which will be a melting pot of these technologies. Metaverse can be seen as the way forward. Metaverse is rather an old concept in making than the new buzzword in the virtual realm. Google trend data shows that since COVID-19 came into picture, metaverse is picking traction and within one year, in 2021, became the most searched term on Google. Brands are hurriedly transforming strategies to become the forerunner in catching the bandwagon of the Metaverse. From tech giants like Nvidia, Facebook, and Microsoft creating their own metaverse respectively, consumer brands like Coca-Cola, Taco Bell, Mcdonald's, RayBan etc. are sliding towards metaverse. The question arises, Why? To answer this, one has to understand what exactly is Metaverse. What makes it so shiny that brands are shifting towards it? What benefits will it bring to them? We will one by one look into these questions. Starting with the first one, “Metaverse is an interoperated persistent network of shared virtual environments where people can interact synchronously through their avatars with other agents and objects”. To put it in simple words, it’s a place where people can communicate and experience virtually using different interoperable worlds made up of various technology like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and 3D virtual spaces for bringing real-life experiences. Some other technologies are fused to make the metaverse ecosystem like Blockchain (Non-Fungible Tokens) and Artificial Intelligence. The definition of Metaverse is still in its building phase, but what is worth is the ethos on top of which it is built. It will provide more personalized experience as compared to the existing internet with the help of Avatars which is on-screen virtual manifestation of the user (Ball 2021a). Why metaverse is becoming central for advertising? It is the most unique way to reach oneto-one interaction with the user or prospective customer. Advertising can be defined as a “paid, owned, and earned mediated communication, activated by an identifiable brand and intent on persuading the consumer to make some cognitive, affective or behavioural change, now or in the future” (Kerr and Richards, 2020). However, there are some elements in definition like owned and earned media that are central for understanding why metaverse is becoming a platform for advertising. The most important feature of advertising is that it is mediated through some channel for directing towards a prospective user from an organization to induce intended response from the user. These elements are given by metaverse in the form of a mediated platform where there is an avatar to interact with the advertisement whatsoever given. Metaverse is a complete universe. It can be a perfect fit for some organizations while others have to innovate accordingly to exploit the metaverse platform. Recent use cases of metaverse try to use a stunt-based approach to advertising. They integrated their mascot avatar into famous games to make a stunt and do advertising, hence reaching the population. However, the intended reach is still a subject of research, it is clear that seeing the current situation of COVID-19 where digital medium is the mainstay, it seems a perfect fit. Certain examples of the same are Deliveroo, a food delivery service provider used recreated avatars of delivering riders to deliver virtual treat (promo code) to player in one of the Nintendo game which can be used to deliver food in real world, DBS bank used Singapore's famous Zouk night club and recreated it within the fortnite game and renamed it “Live Fresh Club” to advertise their credit card which also named the same. Venus, a women razor company used different skin tones of avatars in a game to showcase their “My skin, My Way” campaign. 14

arketing and Artificial Intelligence are the two emerging factors that can be witnessed in the Indian economy. We are living in the 21st century and the Indian economy has reached a great level of advancement. The use of technology can be seen everywhere now. Digitalization has reduced the efforts of humans to a great level. A shift towards technology has bought a drastic change in the way of working in different fields. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence in marketing has helped companies to offer their product to their prospective customers in an easier manner. Ananya Srivastava SMS, Lucknow Decision-Making Using AI Artificial intelligence is well applied in lifestyle as well. With the help of it, electronic device companies can provide smart assistance in the devices, such as facial recognition, voice recognition, voice assistants and other smart filters that make the experience of the users much smooth and easy. Also, AI helps provide better security benefits. Artificial intelligence is also used in navigation technology such as GPS. The Healthcare sector also uses artificial intelligence for providing a better experience to the patients. Artificial intelligence helps in detecting diseases in lesser time and in an accurate manner. The use of AI is very time-saving in human resources as well. Machine learning software allows companies to screen applications or resumes in lesser time. Product Price Place Promotion People content for learners. Apart from the uses listed above, the major role played by AI is in the field of marketing. What is Marketing? Marketing can be defined as an activity performed by companies to promote their unique and new products and services to the targeted audience. It is a sum of all the activities an organization performs to promote its product and service. Therefore, it does not end when the product is sold or the service is given but it is more than that. After-services provided to the customers are also a part of marketing. Marketing is a blend of 7Ps that helps companies to sell their products and services efficiently in the market. The 7Ps of marketing are: M It is being used in e-commerce as it facilitates personalized shopping, prevention from fraud and a virtual assistant for better customer support Artificial intelligence is being widely used in education as it helps in providing better creative What is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial intelligence or AI can be defined as the ability of a robot or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks that are meant to be executed by humans. Therefore, in simple words, artificial intelligence is the capacity or capability of a computer to perform tasks that are being done or completed by humans manually or with the help of computers. It is witnessed that artificial intelligence has spread its roots in every field in the economy. The following uses of AI are listed as under: Process Physical Evidence 15

help of AI, they studied the trends and based on order history they have sent suggestions to their customers Predicting Trends: We witness that whatever we check on any shopping site, pops as an advertisement on different social media platforms as well. The websites try to grab customers through this trick and this trick is performed with the help of artificial intelligence. Therefore, marketing experts also predict trends with the help of artificial intelligence as to what customers are preferring more and at what prices. Better Advertisements: With the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, companies can provide better advertisements to their customers now. Decision Making: The use of artificial intelligence facilitates better decision-making among experts. The large data collected by the experts help in taking better decisions. Conclusion The use of artificial intelligence has bought a huge change in the ways of marketing. It has not only helped the marketing experts and the companies but it has also made it easy for the customers to better understand the product or service and the company. Also, it has shifted the activities of marketing towards technology to a great extent. Better Demand Forecasting: Demand forecasting is a factor that helps the marketing experts in predicting the demand for the company’s product and services in the market. Prediction of demand is usually done by studying the taste and preferences of the targeted audience. Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence helps the experts to gather data of the market conveniently. With the use of artificial intelligence, companies can put online questionnaires and can analyze the demand of consumers through various social media platforms. Personalized Customer Experience: The role of marketing does not end with the sale of the product or service, but it is more than just a sale. After-sale service to consumers is also a part of marketing. Thus, artificial intelligence helps the marketing experts of companies to give better customer support to their customers. Companies can use Chatbots on their websites that can resolve the common or normal issues of the customers regarding the products or services. Also providing privacy of the data and security makes the customers more loyal to the company. Therefore, through this also marketing experts can enhance the brand loyalty of their customers. Humanization and Automation: Marketing is all about understanding the customers. Therefore, artificial intelligence provides automation to humanization. The proper blend of both factors helps the organizations in performing the activities of marketing well. Better Communication Channel: Communication is a core of marketing and artificial intelligence plays a very vital role in establishing a better communication channel between the companies and the customers. Again the use of Chatbots or much such software helps the experts to collect larger data of the market. Also, AI helps organizations to promote their product in the market. Like Starbucks has used artificial intelligence to provide a better and more innovative communication channel to its customers. With the Artificial Intelligence and Marketing. Artificial intelligence in marketing influences decisionmaking and reduces the complexities faced by companies during the process of performing marketing activities. Artificial intelligence is not only providing ease to the marketing experts but it can also be predicted that soon AI will change the whole future of management, especially in India. Therefore, the roles of artificial intelligence in marketing are as follows: 16

A Blueprint on How Brands Generate Engagement! By MBA Students of prestigious B-Schools in India! 17

lasted till 4 am in the early morning with more than 100 fans turning up active. Italian-based brand, Bottega Veneta launched the epic ‘virtual residency’ spanning across notable social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, Kakao, Weibo, and WeChat featuring live performances and cooking recipes. French luxury goods company, Dior, reopened its Designer of Dreams exhibition which was held in Paris. From the couture dresses to the immaculate archival photographs to the exquisite sketches by Christian Dior himself, the exhibition took its viewers through the 70- year-old rich history of the French luxury house via Instagram and YouTube, racking 350,000 views and over 10,000 likes. The London-based fashion brand Shrimp ran a competition on Instagram asking its followers to post a sketch of their dream outfit with the hashtag #StayAtHomeShrimps, with an alluring prize of being gifted a Shrimp bag according to the choice of the winner. Reffstrup initiative of #HomelsWhereTheHeartls asked the followers to create artwork inspired by the theme, with the winner and the runner-up receiving gift cards worth 1,500 and 500 Euros respectively, and artworks of a few selected others to feature at Copenhagen Fashion Week in August 2020. Underpinnings of Brand Personality A brand is created by merging the proclamations made on behalf of the particular company, the members of the society, as well as how the company performs in the eyes of the consumer (Berry, 2000). A brand which is able to communicate its message to the people and is able to strike a chord is sure to bypass others in the skyrocketing competition. Brand personality may be defined as a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name (Azoulay & Kapferer, 2003). M for Marketing, P for Psychology. ntroduction Experiential Marketing is a type of marketing strategy that directly engages customers and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or brand experience, stirs positive emotions and creates a lasting connection between the brands and the customers. It believes in the active involvement of the customers in the production and co-creation of marketing programmes and campaigns. Retailers have been extending online discounts to keep their brands upbeat, fitness companies have been posting free workout resources and brands have been sharing uplifting messages. Metrics like emotions, eyetwitching marketing techniques and customer engagements are helping gauge customer response, boosting app downloads and social followings. Even non-digital brands have not jettisoned themselves from exploring new ways to explore corral folks and delivering intriguing experiences. This is where the pivotal relevance of Experiential Marketing has come to the forefront. Chipotle, the American chain of fast casual restraints located in the U.S. had launched a series of daily ‘Chipotle Together’ sessions on Zoom. This brought more than 3,000 fans including celebrity guests and generated more than 500,000,000 impressions with 100 earning media stories. The live video series paid rich dividends as Chipotle’s team saw an upsurge in app downloads of platforms like Zoom. Some Brands That Mastered The Art of Experiential Marketing During The Pandemic Major brands such as Chanel, Marc Jacobs and McQueen have allured customers with their spectacular creative online presence and acted as entertainers for their followers through their aggressive musical performances, guided drawing sessions and creative Spotify playlists as well, with a manifestation of a mammoth 2,500 people have subscribed to McQueen playlist. The renowned Barcelona-based fashion brand, Paloma Wool hosted an online dance party on Zoom which Sourav More MBA | IFMR GSB I 18

neuromarketing revealed that attitude change doesn’t happen first; it happens in the end and is preceded by a change in action. It also revealed certain characteristics of the human brain such as the availability heuristic and anchoring theory. With growing competition, it is important to constantly evolve and attract consumers. The adoption of Neuromarketing can reward marketers with increased consumer loyalty through well-targeted marketing operations. For example, Snickers has successfully created an association between the words, hunger and Snickers. It has also increased mental availability through its prominent ad campaigns. Thus, hunger has become synonymous with the term, ‘Grab a Snickers’. Therefore, neuromarketing can help identify the switch in a consumer’s brain. Inbound Marketing- Market The New Attractive Way Inbound marketing refers to the creation of easy-tonavigate web pages and blogs featuring high-quality content peppered with targeted keywords and niche key phrases to maximize SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the attraction of visitors and leads via content and social media sharing. This, in turn, permits customers to provide their contact information for promotions, follow-up, and ultimately, sales. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the founders of the marketing software company HubSpot, have contributed heavily to the coining of the term ‘Inbound Marketing’. They classify traditional methods such as telemarketing, advertisement e-mails and trade shows as outbound, meaning that these means approach the potential buyers directly with the obvious intention of selling. Buyer Persona A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the ideal customer, based on market research and real data about the existing customers. Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional and generalized representations of ideal customers. Personas help us all in marketing and sale of products and services. They internalize the ideal customer brands are trying to attract, and relate to the customers as real human beings. Having a deep understanding of the buyer persona(s) is critical to drive content creation, product development, sales follow-up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention. It enables the company to discern how people feel about their product and how it sets them apart from the competition. Customers are likely to purchase the product if there exists a sync with their own personalities. The effectiveness of the brand increases in the eyes of the customers when they perceive that the brand they have considered for purchase has been congruent with their own behavioural dimensions. According to a seminal study by Aaker (1997), there exist five principal types of personalities with common traits; they are excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence and sophistication. Apple, for instance, opts for sophistication for its products. It is exclusively marketed keeping in mind the premium customers. Again, the personality of the Dove brand is often said to be that of sincerity, which is used effectively to attract female customers. Such brand personalities help in selling products effectively by creating a distinct impression in the minds of the target audience. A robust brand identity can be regarded as a crucial foundation for developing customer loyalty, customer retention as well as having a discernible competitive advantage. It must possess an emotional appeal such that it becomes easy to connect with the customer base. Neuromarketing- Decoding The Black Box of Consumer Brain Neuromarketing is concerned with appeasing the subconscious brain. Brands use techniques such as FMRI, EEG, PET scans to identify which areas of the brain are affected by marketing efforts and modify their efforts to obtain the desired results. For the subconscious, what comes most easily to the mind is true and most preferred. This is called the availability heuristic. Familiarity breeds acceptance and justifies the repetition of ad messages such that it settles in the subconscious mind of the people and can be triggered at the right time. When a person has subconsciously suggested some fact or number, he or she starts behaving in a manner or answering some unrelated question on the basis of the absurdly suggested fact. This is called the anchoring effect. The subconscious brain understands sentences by trying to make them true and then makes further adjustments. Marketers can use this finding by suggesting a highly-priced option or setting anchors as per their suitability and gain by inadequate adjustments made by the customers, thereby influencing their decisions. Neuromarketing revealed several gaps in our attempts to rationalize behaviour and brought the misconceptions to the surface. For example, we popularly follow the AIDA model of Attention-Interest- Desire-Action. But 19

Buzz Marketing The other technique that paces a product to reach its tipping point earlier is known as ‘Buzz Marketing’. Dye (1999) states that a buzz is created through insightful marketing campaigns in which they seed a frontline group which carries forward the campaign, supports them with attention-grabbing content, provides celebrity endorsement, leverages on the trickle-down effect and triggers grass-root marketing. Positive Word-of-Mouth Communication Malcolm Gladwell (2009) explains the success criteria for successful WOM with the help of the three rules of the tipping point namely ‘the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context’. The Law of Few implies that only those exceptionally few people who discover a product or trend will carry it forward to the masses. While Godin (2001) terms them as sneezers and groups them as promiscuous and powerful sneezers, Gladwell groups them as connectors, mavens and salespeople. These critical few will act as a carrier to spread the message. However, to retain the impact of the message, Gladwell advises improving the message presentation and content (Stickiness Factor) in an appropriate environment (Power of Context), to have a lasting impression on the consumers’ minds. By referring to the message presentation, the author refers to the medium through which it is encapsulated, which could be ‘a picture, a phrase, a written article, a movie or even a mathematical formula’ (Godin, 2001). The same has been reiterated in a user-generated video sharing platform- YouTube, where, for one’s video spot to be viral, it should be loaded with more information (Wolter, Barth, Barthel, Gröbel, Linden, Wolf et al., 2016). The reason for the information load is the Consumers inherent need to feel empowered enables them to match closer to reality (Smith & Mackie, 2007). Therefore, content that satisfies this want has higher chance of going viral. Also, the content shared is often a means of self-presentation or for identity communication (Wojnicki & Godes 2008). The likelihood of positive content being viral is more as it projects the consumer positively to the audience. Apart from valence, it has been found that any content that evokes high arousal emotions are also likely to turn viral. Impact of Packaging on Purchase Behaviour Archetypally, packaging may be regarded as the technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. However, in today’s cut-throat business scenario, the purpose of product packaging has undergone a radical transformation. Positive Attitude towards Packaging Perceived Quality Perceived Value Brand Preference Figure 1 Conceptual Framework of Packaging and Brand Preference While Above-The-Line [ATL] marketing (where mass media like electronic, print or internet is used) can promote brands and drive people to the store.. It helps in promoting and selling products by striking the right balance between centrality and distinctiveness in a market replete with clutter. Figure 1 shows the relationship between Packaging and Brand preference. The package today is known to communicate the brand image and identity of an organization, effectively. Thus, many marketers go to the extent of considering Packaging as the 5th P of the Marketing Mix as it helps connect with the customers just as much as other elements of the mix do. Impact of COVID-19 on Branding The Coronavirus lockdown has clearly jolted up the landscape of marketing, posing a litmus test for the marketers. It also gives the marketers ample opportunities to put their thinking cap on as marketers would try unique methods to allure customers and engage with them during these times when customers are at home following the measures of social distancing and spending a lot of time online. This is a crucial time especially for budding and resurgent brands to successfully engage customers and establish a longterm relationship with them. The way the brands have been communicating with the customers amidst these quarantines has really been exciting to watch. Experiential Marketing, by way of conversations and interactions between the brand and customers on digital platforms, can trigger a large number of customers to be permanent customers of the brand. In a nutshell, customers want to actively join or participate in the brand rather than just having an ephemeral experience of buying as passive customers. However, the brands have faced prodigious heat in the creation of quality content. In times of global economic meltdown and large-scale bedlam, it is quite astounding 20

that the private spaces of people have been exposed and almost made public as they have become places of work and socializing. With this kind of inexorable public exposure, the houses of people have become a competitive landscape and a creative breeding ground for brands. Brands are coming up with eye-twitching ways of engaging with customers online, thereby, getting crafty with the experiential campaigns. In the post-Covid-19 world, brands would continue to interact with customers in new and innovative ways aiming to engage with them emotionally, thereby, just highlighting the ineluctable relevance of Experiential Marketing in a tumultuous Covid-19 era. Conclusion ‘Show, don’t tell’, ‘Keep it Simple’, ‘Less is more’. These words will sound familiar to any marketing enthusiast. One can find them almost everywhere, in every second blog post, in a random digital course or YouTube video, or in any book by a self-proclaimed pundit, to the point that they might be characterized as clichés. But unlike many reiterative adverts, some clichés are called so because they reflect the truth. Minimalism and Marketing have always been related, even before minimalist marketing was a thing, or even before the marketing concept shifted from the informational and aggressive inside-out approach to the perceptive and reflective outside-in approach. From its origins as a word in Old Norse, termed to describe the mark made to identify cattle, branding has always been concerned with distinguishing oneself in the most effective and economical manner, cutting through the clutter and making one’s mark in the consumer’s psyche. And today, with all the noise and transience, branding might be one of the most important, if not the most important aspect of a company’s marketing vision, and minimalism might just be a key to this lock encompassing endless possibilities. However, capturing the customer’s attention is not enough. Marketers are often accused of creating artificial demand and influencing social behaviour. That might just be true, but what is more likely to be true is that successful marketing endeavours actually reflect and capitalize on the socio-cultural sentiment of their time; they mirror what society desires. And nothing exudes more about society’s fancies than the day’s prevailing popular culture. From the genius of Marlboro in launching the cowboy-inspired Marlboro man during the escalating popularity of American Westerns in the mid-fifties to Coca-Cola reinventing its brand from a family beverage to one celebrating the youth culture- time and again, brands that have shown to be receptive to the overall public sentiment and mass culture, have gone on to trump the marketing mayhem. The key, it seems, is not necessarily to innovate, but to stay relevant. And how one does that is hardly the matter of contention, it can be clever and intentional like a Starbucks cup in almost every scene of Fight Club or even purely coincidental and almost embarrassing) as a coffee cup in the middle of a banquet in medievallike Game of Thrones. Some brands have succeeded marvellously in doing so, and as a result, enjoy the benefits of a prominent positioning in the consumer’s mind. What’s astounding is the diverse range of brands that are a part of this bracket. From Bark box (a subscription service for dog treats and toys) and Nickelodeon (a TV channel for younger kids) being somewhat expected users of this culture because of their target audience, to luxury brands like Gucci and even the Mumbai Police, which has constantly strived to shed its serious image in favour of a more humorous approach. This move has essentially achieved its target of spreading awareness to citizens in a format that reflects the way they converse now and has also succeeded in lending an approachable image to the Mumbai Police. But as we said, they aren’t magical tools. The magic lies in the moment. Brands that are successful in identifying, understanding and astutely executing this magic will keep climbing the steps of an unending ladder and will most likely emerge on the top. Clinging to the traditions of the past could be unsustainable and downright destructive, while, thinking way ahead into an uncertain future would distance your ideas from reality, and thereby, the consumers from your brand. The most prudent answer seems to be the obvious answer (as we said, some clichés are clichés for a reason). Make the most of the moment today, and be ready and on your feet to do the same tomorrow when a new moment arrives. The best time to market isn’t gone or yet to come, it is now. Success is not determined by a heftier advertising budget or a more recognizable logo, it’s determined by the emotional connection a brand makes with its target audience. 21

ho would have thought in 1886 that a company giving a freebie for every 10 products sold will change the way people perceive that industry, who would have thought that the company giving free coupons and introducing the concept of free samples would end up generating 3,727 corers USD every year and become the whale of the segment, it was the free samples which made the Atlanta based company to sell their product all over the country and become the leader of the industry, they succeeded in engaging people and made customers satisfied by selling their uniquely appetizing beverage, which is called by many as Coca-Cola. The evolution of experiential marketing has given an upsurge in the number of customers attracted to the product. Experiential marketing was touted to be the buzzword of 2017 for all marketers, but this was in vogue for the past 125 years. It began as a trend and later became imperative. Why Experiential Marketing is Important? Here are some infographics illustrating the power of experiential marketing. Mosaic a marketing company and Event Marketer has partnered and provided the Event Trak analysis which mainly focuses on experiential marketing. Commodities are Fungible, Goods are Tangible, Services are Intangible & Experiences are Memorable! Subhiksha Parthiban Larsen & Toubro Infotech W 85% Of consumers likely to purchase after participating in events and experiences! 91% Of consumers have more positive feelings about brands after attending events and experiences! Source: Event Marketer Events and experiences have significantly improved the sales of the brand. Marketing through events and engagement is outsmarting technology-savvy trends like social media marketing. It was also chosen as the better medium of marketing in comparison with other traditional ones. The Story So Far Experiential marketing has had leaps of growth in the past years. The first-ever documented experiential 22

marketing campaign was started at the 1893 Chicago World fair where Wrigley jr (father of the chewing gum industry) distributed juicy fruits during the event. Then the product demonstration was a way of engaging consumers and it was the fad during 1990. The famous dishwasher brand “KitchenAid” a company generating 131 million dollars per year kicked off its campaign by making Josephine Cochran demonstrate her invention to the attendees. The pancake Queen title was awarded to Nancy Green after the huge success of her cooking demonstrations which led to 50,000 orders in a single night for the parent company. product demonstrations were later on replaced by street marketing then Guerrilla marketing was the key, later mobile marketing tours altered the game. During the 2000s Viral marketing after the introduction of social media was a game-changer. Since then, immersive brand experiences and pop-up centres became fashionable methods of selling goods and services. Strategies Adopted Going Forward Marketers are turning towards phygital marketing for the post covid era. This style of marketing is the amalgamation of both the physical and digital ways of marketing. Sonos widely known for their home audio systems hired a company called Bergmeyer to set up a pop of phygital centres around the cities. The aim was to create interactive moments with their customers in which customers can create their listening path. Waby Parker is another company that leveraged the power of phygital marketing for their fashion eye ware models. These features were exclusively enabled for people who don’t purchase offline, they could get the look and feel of the frame by completing their online journey, they could use the model numbers to purchase the product. This strategy was used by the company to increase its customer base since it was concentrating more on offline sales. Nike opened its first Nike ID location in New York, this was a massive campaign for Nike. In this campaign, Nike provided personalization of the Sneakers and this gave immense satisfaction to the customers since it could not be replicated. Huda Beauty is another brand that saw a spike in its fan base after a pop-up experience titled “Mercury Retrograde “. fans flocked inside the shop and two million additional customers were gained in an instant. this beat their project sales forecast. Forbes article has stated that those betting big on tech will win. According to the article published by Forbes on March 12, 2021, the usage of advanced technology like extended reality can be fruitful. The author further concludes that the Extended reality market will become a 160 billion dollar company by the end of 2023. Only the educated visit these events The reach of this campaign is very less The event should be scaled to international levels The other trend which might become essential is attendee interaction, using AI and Automation in marketing can become a staple. The brands like Fortnite and Call of Duty have already jumped into the new normal bandwagon and have already made fortunes. The main aspect of marketing is that they do enrich the knowledge of the customers. Educating the customer is a crucial role played by the marketers, they help change the perception of the brand. Taiwan is the first nation to set up tourism factories, a form of marketing involving tourists who are converted into customers at the end of a tour. The Experiential Marketing And Customer Satisfaction Connection – A Case Study on Taiwan’s Tourism Factories What are they? The factories which have the added component of museum exhibits, souvenirs shop, DIY shops, etc is called tourism factory. Taiwan is a highly industrialized economy they became the first nation to adopt this style of marketing. How does it generate revenue? This tourism marketing has emerged due to lifestyle changes, high standard of living, work only five days a week, and reduced work hours. The customers tend to visit the factories for this emotional and sensual experience. Their revenue model involves collecting money to attend the fairs, the charges are minimal and the customers are continuously entertained. Research Results The research was conducted by the students of the Oriental Institute of Technology, Taiwan. They conducted this research based on two hypotheses - hypothesis one was positive influence is created on customers by experiential marketing on tourism factories and the other hypothesis says customer service had a positive outcome on tourism factories. After a thorough analysis of the basic data which included gender, age group, social status, and educational background they came out with breakthrough conclusions which were: 1. 2. 3. Harvard Business Review states that companies create memorable experiences when they intentionally use service as a stage, with goods being props to engage customers. This lays the foundation of Experiential Marketing. 23

ntroduction Since Mad Men's peak, the brand association has altered dramatically. Brands grabbed customers' attention by yelling at them, a one-way discussion centred on persuasion that was more successful at the time due to local distribution channels, namely TV, radio, and print. Since then, there has been a seismic upheaval in technology, media, societal attitudes, and consumer demography. Consumers now have a more significant say over the sort of material they consume and how they consume it. This trend is being driven by millennials, who now make up the bulk of the workforce. Nowadays, merely selling an engaging product isn't enough. It is crucial to incorporate millennials by employing the appropriate methods and providing the proper channels to engage them. Brands must respect millennials' time and intellect. They are looking for connection, exchange, and affirmation. They want to be involved. In Digital Marketing, the phrase refers to how customers connect with brands directly through various activities such as clicks, likes, comments, and shares. This is vital for expanding the company's reach and significance on the Internet and facilitating the formation of profitable connections. As a result, it is critical to rely on techniques to induce this type of behaviour in the audience – and here is where Experimental Marketing comes in. The Era of Experimental Marketing Companies must adopt experimental marketing to rethink the brand-consumer connection. This marketing form includes approaches, strategies, and techniques to increase audience engagement, hence creating the ideal environment for developing positive relationships with leads, customers, and users. A multichannel approach combines email campaigns, content creation, social media, and sales force automation to produce an inbound solid promotional campaign. It's highly effective since it caters to the primary wants of current customers Experimental Sudhanshu Aggarwal Marketing SJMSOM, IIT Bombay I Consumers are Starving for Content There is more data than ever before, yet audiences are choosy about what they consume. They are drawn to stuff that meets their requirements, whether knowledge or a momentary diversion from reality. Firms are offering excellent service to their readers by sharing this content. Sixty-four per cent of Millennials react favourably to helpful material, 31 per cent are more inclined to purchase if it is offered, and 30 per cent reject reading anything that does not entertain or educate them. Consumers Make the Decision to Engage Millennials do not want to be harassed or coerced into engaging in a marketing interaction. They want to select to work with businesses voluntarily. When a company has excellent content and a strong brand voice, it attracts potential customers intrigued by what it has to say—the more captivating the information, the more probable that the audience will support the brand. Sixty-two per cent of Millennials attribute their brand loyalty to internet content. Transparency is Expected by Consumers Audiences want to know whom they communicate with since we live in a socially driven, hyperconnected society. Faceless companies with inauthentic messages are not tolerated. According to Millennials, the top two ways a company may engage and intrigue people are to reward them with discounts and be accurate. Consumers Want a Reason to Buy That isn’t only about Making Money Millennials are highly value-oriented. They would like to understand what they purchase, believe in and endorse. Most millennials believe that it is either somewhat or highly essential for a corporation to give back to society rather than merely make a profit. This is especially essential since customers believe that the brands they associate themselves with represent their personalities. 24

Approach to Implement Experimental Marketing Firms may launch experimental marketing efforts in a variety of ways. To improve the effectiveness of their practical marketing initiatives, the following actions might be leveraged as a starting point – Step 1 – Determine Target Audience The identity of the target audience will impact how a firm does interaction marketing. Knowing the eccentricities of the ideal purchasers will influence their brand positioning, product attributes, marketing materials, and so on. Understanding the difficulties of customers, the factors that make people passionate, their aspirations, the kind of firms they work for, and so on will aid in the execution of marketing tactics. The more vividly a company imagines its ideal consumer, the more influential experimental marketing material becomes. Step 2 – Create Consumer Profile & Journeys Determine what information is existing and what prospective buyers want before creating new campaigns or content. Buyer personas will assist in defining the audience—their difficulties, questions, desires, and the type of information consumers like to absorb in their buying phases. Step 3 – Create a Brand Voice & Set Marketing Objectives It is critical to provide a seamless experience throughout all media. Content published for a blog, website, or social network will become the brand's voice and can set the company's goals. A company's objectives might include greater audience engagement, brand awareness, lead generation, and straight-up revenue. Brands can use humorous language on Twitter and a professional one in white papers, but content should be consistent across platforms and cognizant of the aim. Step 4 – Create Brainstorming & Fleshing out Contextualization Develop content well with proper messages to connect with customers and satisfy the firm's goals. Content must appeal audience, achieve the aims of the experimental marketing campaign, and persuade the audience to communicate or recognize a brand. Content marketing may take numerous forms, such as employing a dependable blogging platform or a feature-rich social media management platform. The Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are examples of social media networks that should be for more than just communicating with others. They may be utilized as an engagement technique to get better results. Increasing social media followers has a direct influence on audience growth and loyalty. The global population is 7.3 billion, with around 2.3 billion individuals using social media. As a result, it is the most crucial instrument for businesses that can assist them in connecting with people. Customer involvement allows firms to keep and make satisfied clients. format chosen is determined by the audience's preferences, industry standards, bandwidth, and Money. Step 5 – Create an Editorial Schedule & Begin Publishing An editorial diary manages, coordinates, and distributes impending material. It is a strategic component that assists the company's team in carrying out integrated initiatives. Keeping an editorial schedule ensures that the company releases material at the optimal time and that the entire team is aligned on the release dates. Step 6 – Participate in the Discussion Following the implementation of the preceding procedures, the company should get a flood of questions, suggestions, or opinions from their target audience, which should not be disregarded. Conversation between a firm and customers is an essential component of experimental marketing. Create a campaign-specific landing page and integrate website marketing with a practical marketing campaign—direct online visitors to a specific landing page on the website for a unified experience. Step 7 – Optimize Landing Pages The web pages should have a clear goal in mind. Avoid including many calls-to-action (CTA) on landing pages, such as shares, subscriptions, lead generation, and so on. It will simply confuse and distract your viewers. Firms should only have one CTA and tell their audience to buy their items right now. Firms should decide how to monitor outcomes, coordinate with critical stakeholders, and quantify the effectiveness of experimental marketing. Experimental Marketing Strategies Experimental marketing is a must-have strategy for any company operating in the digital space. A few of the most acceptable methods for controlling a brand's message, regardless of its size, are: 25

Use push marketing to engage customers. Companies should use various critical channels to alert customers about new items, such as InProduct Messaging, Emails, Customer Care/Support, etc. The most incredible route is InProduct Messaging since loyal customers seek it. Firms will see increased engagement rates when they send tailored messages to a specific section of people Prospects who have signed up for a free trial should be nurtured and encouraged to upgrade. It's straightforward to lure free trial customers or prospects and then surprise them when they sign up for new services for the first time. The most challenging element is convincing them to upgrade the company's assistance. The objective should be to convert free trial users into paying clients. They must be fostered to pay for the premium features. The most incredible way to get it is through customized conversation Promos and offers should be communicated to VIP customers. Individuals who've been repeat customers are referred to as VIP customers. They are the ones that have been with the brand for a long time, making a purchase, promoting it, and introducing it to their fans and acquaintances. Keeping them satisfied through various activities such as regular offers, live events, one-on-one encounters ensures client retention. Firms are putting their business in danger if these clients are taken for granted, and they may lose the VIP customers shortly Customers' demand will be satisfied with interactive content. Customers may be educated more effectively by using interactive material. Creating relevant content is critical for generating more leads, inbound links, and sales. "Interactive content" is content that responds to the reader. The intuitive interfaces are what engage consumers and provide high value. Blog Posts– One of the simplest methods to elicit consumer involvement is to write and share material that communicates audience and provides them with something of value Experimental Marketing Tools By initially including fans and customers in defining the brand identity, there is more significant brand recognition and the building of brand connections long before any formal media campaign is launched. The following are some easy tools that businesses may utilize to better interact with their consumers or prospects – Social Media– Popular social networking sites (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter) are ideal for experimental marketing because they enable individuals to have direct conversations with companies in ways that were previously impossible Email Campaigns– Since they are shipped straight to the audience's inbox, emails are an excellent tool for experimental marketing Crowdsourcing– Crowdsourcing platforms provide experimental marketing possibilities through open media contests that encourage users to promote their entries across numerous social networking sites. According to one study, up to 74% of buyers are more likely to buy a product marketed via branded experimental marketing than other methods of marketing According to another study, experimental marketing accounted for 50-80 per cent of all wordof-mouth activity Clicks are generated as a result of experimental marketing. Non-triggered email communications had 71% greater lead generation and 102% higher engagement rates than activated emails Experimental marketing offers demonstrable results. Personalization initiatives have resulted in a demonstrable rise for 87% of marketers Return on Investment of Experimental Marketing Simply said, when businesses engage with customers, develop trust, and generate brand preference, income follows. Even though it does not produce the fastest results, experimental marketing is incredibly effective since it causes a vibrant branded experience that the consumers will remember fondly. Following are some of the benefits – Conclusion Experimental marketing is an omnichannel strategy that needs preparation, execution, optimization, and maintenance. Customers will reward firms with confidence and loyalty if they receive consistent and excellent service. Today's most successful companies strive to engage customers in ways beyond the purchase. These businesses stand to benefit from increased sales. However, they also keep their customers at the centre of the customer experience by offering incentives, personalizing the sales funnel, or providing educational content relevant to whatever customers have previously expressed interest in. Outside of an established loyalty programme, customer interaction marketing is another technique to promote loyalty. 26

Is Your Marketing Future-Proof? Towards Sustainability By MBA Students of prestigious B-Schools in India! 27

reen and holistic marketing are terms that often get thrown around in the same sentence. The definitions of these two different kinds of marketing differ greatly. Holistic marketing is considered to be a movement, where green marketing is a specific kind of advertising. Green and holistic marketing is a marketing technique based on the principles of Green Marketing and Holism. It is a way for companies to find creative new ways to responsibly manage their environmental, food, and social impacts so as not to jeopardize the planet's ecosystem. The goal of green and holistic marketing is to build responsible relationships with stakeholders including clients, employees, investors, suppliers, distributors, retailers and community groups by promoting environmentally-friendly products or services that not only reduce carbon emissions but also conserve water usage. Within green and holistic marketing, there are three general categories that are all connected together to create a holistic approach to natural resources management. These three categories include sustainable development for society as a whole, sustainability for individuals, and sustainability for profit. Sustainable development is concerned with the entire planet (including humans), social sustainability is concerned with each individual's rights, empowerment and well-being in society and economic sustainability is concerned with profits. Both holistic and green marketers have recently staked their claim on the very popular term "consumption." It's a word that comes up repeatedly when speaking about our society's reliance on products from all over the world, which only goes to emphasize how important it is for business owners to really understand what they're doing when it comes to green or holistic marketer's practices. One alternative to promoting products is the concept of holistic goods, which are goods that represent their production process and a product that has been made Developing a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy Deep Arora MBA, SIMS G well from the start. These goods tend to be recognized for their quality in time. There are many obvious examples of holistic objects, such as certified organic food, fair trade products and some environmentally friendly cars. Many well-known companies produce these goods to market them by giving them a distinct identity or brand name. On the other end of the spectrum is green marketing or sustainable marketing, which is simply a form of marketing that not only promotes products based on quality and value, but also promotes its positive impact on society by building positive relationships with customers. It also promotes awareness of the needs of the earth and uses knowledge gathered from experts in their respective fields to promote green practices. A good example is eco-friendly research and development. In a nutshell, this is what holistic marketing and green marketing mean: a practice of using knowledge for the purpose of self-improvement or advancing a cause, along with providing consumers with products that are socially responsible. It inherently strives to reduce pollution by not being wasteful or harmful to other living things, yet promotes participation in advanced manufacturing processes that create better products and services that not only provide benefits to customers but also have positive social impacts at home and abroad, while still offering fair prices. Background Green and holistic marketing have a lot of history behind them. Today, we live in a world that has become increasingly hostile towards the environment. It is important to realize how heavily this affects our world's resources, but also how much it affects people around the world. Green and holistic marketing try to find ways to reduce the environmental impact by finding ways to educate businesses on how they can be more ecofriendly and finding ways in which businesses can survive while also preserving the environment. Green marketing focuses on environmental issues whereas holistic marketing is much broader than that; it focuses 28

86% of brand marketers say that building a holistic approach to marketing is a priority, but only 29% of companies claim they have the necessary infrastructure. on all aspects of sustainability. This includes not only environmental impacts but also social impacts, economic impacts and corporate governance impacts. Holistic Marketing A holistic marketing strategy takes into account all aspects of a business and all its different marketing channels as one. As a result of this strategy, a company with various departments will work in synergy to achieve a conscious mission, a positive customer experience, and a positive brand image. Relationship Marketing: Relationship marketing is focused on creating longterm relationships. Instead of focusing on selling products, more emphasis is placed on customer satisfaction and retention, as well as building customer loyalty. A business can't function without its customers, suppliers and vendors. Everyone of them plays a crucial role in whether the company succeeds or fails. Integrated Marketing: The unified message that the business sends to its customers is included in this component. The objective of this strategy is to ensure that all marketing elements of a business work together towards a common goal. Public relations, advertising, and online communications all work together to ensure the company's message and perception are clear and positive. Internal Marketing: The main focus of internal marketing is to care for the business's employees, freelancers, contractors, and partners. In addition, it ensures that employees are satisfied with their work and the philosophy and direction of the organization in general. Increasing employee satisfaction leads to increasing customer satisfaction in the long run, making internal marketing an integral part of a holistic marketing approach. Societal Marketing: The final component of holistic marketing is socially responsible marketing. Customers who want to make a difference through their purchase will be drawn to this. Think of products that contribute to a good cause or products that are responsibly made. It is aimed at creating marketing initiatives based on ethically sound business practices, which provide businesses with another way to build long-term relationships. Green Marketing The history of marketing is a long one, with many different marketing ideas and tactics being developed over the years. One revolutionary idea was green marketing, which offers an alternative choice for companies to market their products by involving customers in their production process. It utilizes scientific research and development principles to create new and important products. This can be seen as the idea behind sustainable products in modern society, which are more effective and efficient compared to traditional products made using conventional manufacturing processes. Both strategies One reason could be that holistic marketing takes into consideration stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and the community as a whole when creating & implementing marketing strategies. The question is, how does a company develop a comprehensive marketing strategy? There are four elements to this process: 29

significant damage to the environment during manufacture, use or disposal; consume a disproportionate amount of energy; cause unnecessary waste; use material derived from threatened species or environments; involve unnecessary use of, or cruelty to animals; and adversely affect other countries. The model presented shows the buying behaviour of consumers towards green products. The basic theme of the model is to present a framework of how the consumer’s environmental awareness is developed that results in green buying behaviour. A consumer ‘level of education’ and its ‘environmental concern’ and ‘cultural values’ together will lead to ‘environmental awareness’. Of the three factors, environmental concern is more powerful to make consumers aware of environmental problems which are a result of their unsustainable consumption behaviour. A higher level of education also plays an important role in making consumer more concerned towards the environment, but at the same time it does not mean that uneducated consumers are not concerned for the environment. The cultural values that we should conserve trees, should not waste water and electricity, should not pollute the environment, etc. also play an important role in shaping environmental awareness of consumer. According to this model, an environmentally aware consumer will seek to buy green products based on the attributes it is supplying. The primary attributes that a consumer looks in a green product is its environmental friendliness. A consumer will feel satisfy that by the purchase of green product, the environment is not degrading anymore. Also at the same time, green products must fulfil the basic product attributes requirements. Studies found that four ‘enablers’ which influence the buying decision of consumer to purchase green products. These are ‘Tax Benefits’, ‘Eco-certification’, ‘Reference Group’ and ‘Green Advertisements’. Conclusion Green marketing and holistic marketing are two different ways of approaching items to purchase, and both lend themselves to be very beneficial for business owners, especially when it comes to attracting the interest of the public's search for products that are better for the environment and community. Using green marketing techniques can help boost profits by reducing waste and increasing positive customer relations, as well as helping companies improve their image through their customers. With all this in mind, businesses should consider which brand of green marketing would work best for them. It all depends on how much each company wants to support their local communities and make a positive impact on the world around them. go hand in hand thus reducing waste while also making better products that produce less pollution and cause less harm. The previous method is called greenwashing and it's designed to appeal to people's guilt while still being deceptive. An Example of Green Marketing in Action: The Better World Shopper Green marketing is a great way to attract customers that are looking for products that are better for the environment. One such product is the Better World Shopper, a device available from WWF. It's designed to alert shoppers when they're near environmentally friendly stores and shopping centers in their area. It does this by sending a person's smartphone a list of locations based on their GPS location. They can then select the closest location and receive information about each one on their phone before deciding which one to visit. It uses well-known technology, like wireless broadband and mobile phones, to provide people with information about local businesses that are more environmentally friendly than others. Green marketing offers a democratic way of marketing, where the needs of the environment are at least as important as profits. It also promotes social responsibility among companies, who are willing to make changes to their practices to benefit both their consumers and the environment that provides them with raw materials and energy. Many top corporations, like Walmart, Starbucks and Nike all use green marketing practices that encourage customers to purchase products that help the environment in some way. This is not only a more sustainable way of living but it's also better for business since it costs less than conventional forms of manufacturing. Green Consumer Buying Behaviour Green marketing is done by the marketers to communicate their green products to the consumers. The main objective of the green marketing is to turn the consumers into green consumers. For a marketer it is important to understand the behaviour of the consumers towards green products. A green consumer is the one who avoids products that are likely to endanger the health of the consumer or others; cause 30

How Marketing Is Fueled by Big-Data? By MBA Students of prestigious B-Schools in India! 31

martphones, tablets, game consoles, and pretty much any application, service, or channel available through these devices keep digital consumers engaged at all times. They create various customer touch-points across diverse media as they travel between devices and channels — online, offline, proprietary, third-party, corporate networks, social networks, location-based, and mobile. This information provides marketers with a fantastic opportunity to better target their customers. Advanced analytics, such as operations research, have been used by retailers to deliver individualised online suggestions to their customers. To reduce customer churn, telecommunications companies embrace big data strategies. For fraud protection, retail banks use big data analytics. Three types of big data for marketers Customers, financial data, and operational data are the three sorts of big data that marketers are interested in. Data is often collected from a variety of sources and kept in several locations. Customer data assists marketers in gaining a better understanding of their target market. Names, email addresses, purchasing history, and web searches are examples of obvious data of this type. Indicators of your audience's attitudes gleaned from social media activity, surveys, and online groups are just as significant, if not more so. Financial data allows you to track performance and improve efficiency. This area includes your company's sales and marketing information, expenditures, and margins. This category might also include financial data from competitors, such as price. Business processes are linked to operational data. It could have anything to do with shipping and logistics, CRM systems, or feedback from hardware sensors and other sources. This data can be analysed to improve performance and cut costs. The new context of data around customers To a considerable extent, big data refers to the everincreasing data flood generated in today's digital ecosystem in terms of volume, variety, velocity, and complexity. Customers generate enormous data sets based on their online purchases, web clicks, social media activity, smart connected devices, geo-location, and other factors, as shown in Figure 1. Customers generate fresh data at every step they take, whether it's structured data when they browse websites or unstructured data when they leave Facebook comments. Marketers can harvest, aggregate, and analyse both forms of data in near real-time using big data technologies and analytics approaches. This can assist them in identifying hidden trends, such as how different groups of customers interact and how these influence purchasing decisions. Companies can then design tailored marketing efforts that appeal to the customer's particular tastes using these insights. From Big Data to Big Marketing Outcomes Next-Best-Action (NBA) Marketing is a customer-centric marketing method that examines all potential offers for each individual consumer in real-time and then selects the best one. The customer's interests and needs, as well as the marketing organization's corporate objectives, policies and regulations decide the next best action offer. This is in stark contrast to typical marketing strategies, which include first creating a product or service offer and then attempting to identify interested and qualified prospects. The usage of real-time decisioning technology, which uses call centre data, transaction data, customer information, and a set of business rules to identify the one or many offers that the customer is eligible for at the time of interaction, enables the customer to take the next best action. These are prioritised and optimised in order to present the customer with the greatest offer possible. An algorithm combines advanced analytics (which calculates the customer's propensity to accept the offer) with complex business Big Data & Marketing In The Present. Aman Upadhyay MBA | SIMS S 32

Personalization of Online Shopping The retail sector altered dramatically two decades ago with the introduction of online retailers who exploited the Internet to increase their market reach while lowering inventory, staff, and operational costs. It now takes shopping to the next level by turning it into a personalised experience by gathering and processing massive amounts of data that are characterised by volume, variety, velocity, and complexity. User preferences, browsing and purchasing behaviour, product qualities, geographic location of purchases, inventory levels, ongoing promotions and campaigns, and everything else that can be digitally recorded are all gathered by online retailers using strong big data platforms. Intelligent machine-learning algorithms convert these data sources, which grow by several terabytes every day, into information and insights, identifying customer interests and product affinities, tracing geographic peculiarities, and identifying seasonal effects, among other things, to predict customers' current and future needs. This data is then used to provide clients with a tailored experience by presenting things of interest, recommending the most likely offers, and assisting customers in finding what they want, when they want it, at the best available price. Customers save time on personalised sites, which improves their pleasure and the financial line of online shops. In the world of internet purchasing, big data has transformed the game. Monetizing Big Data for Targeted Dynamic Advertisement Data monetization allows businesses with large amounts of data to make use of previously untapped or underutilised data to generate new revenue streams. A variety of variables are combined, as indicated in Figure 3, to create ideal conditions for data monetization. The volume and variety of data now available to mobile providers — whether in the form of transactions, enquiries, text messages, or tweets, GPS locations, or live video feeds – provides a veritable gold mine of Voice Network Data Internet + Channel Data Mobile Network Data Data Warehouse Real-Time Analytics Real-Time Insights Real-Time Action rules to decide priority (that determine the treatment logic). Furthermore, big data sources such as social media and click-stream can be employed to improve the predictability of analytical models dramatically. insights and applications. Even as mobile phones have become the primary source of information for users, those same devices have begun to facilitate new sorts of information, such as incredibly precise, real-time geo-location data. Mobile network providers, which have access to vast volumes of client data, have a unique potential to monetize the information they collect. They are likely to have the most accurate and full customer information due to their direct contact with customers. They may create a 360-degree perspective of the customer by generating analytics-driven behavioural insights based on mobile activity, location, and demographic data. Such information, for example, might be used by outdoor advertisers to assess the success of outdoor advertising units, validating the impact and reach of specific ad campaigns. Outdoor advertising organisations can gain insight into the behaviours of the audiences they wish to attract as well as the optimal locations to reach them. Data enables advertisers to turn every billboard into a focused entity that reaches the right audience at the right time in the right location, giving formerly "dead boards" a new lease on life. Machine-to-machine (M2M) analytics to improve product lifecycle management The sensor technology used in machines, autos, mobile devices, energy grids, and workplace networks has advanced dramatically. As a result, machine-to-machine (M2M) data is being generated at an unprecedented rate and in real-time. Companies may assess and enhance the efficiency of production processes, predict device failures, and find the best moment to upsell new items to customers using data provided by sensors from a number of applications. The data can also provide insights for product development, customer service, and sales teams, who can utilise it to improve product features, boost revenue, and save expenses, for example. Big data exhaust from sensors in gadgets is a rich mine for data scientists looking to uncover hidden patterns and deliver profound insights that can benefit enterprises, governments, and society as a whole. Companies are analysing sensor data and providing real-time insights on event connections, root cause analysis, forecasting potential dangers and visualising probable scenarios using advanced statistical modelling approaches. This can be used in large enterprise networks to analyse machine log data from various Real-Time Feedback 33

network devices in real-time to predict which network devices are more likely to fail and identify potential network outages ahead of time, allowing for proactive remediation to improve customer service levels and experience. Another useful application is to track customer usage of devices and products and provide proactive alerts and triggers to the sales team when it's time to contact the consumer about a product upgrade or refresh. This can be a very successful way to develop a one-on-one relationship with a consumer and assist with crossselling and up-selling. Real-life Examples of Big Data in Marketing The examples of big data applications are inspiring, but how does big data in marketing work in practice? These three case studies demonstrate how big data helped three organizations increase their marketing results. Elsevier uses big data to streamline a marketing calendar. Elsevier is the largest publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information in the world, with 430,000 peer-reviewed research publications published each year. Big data and a multi-cloud architecture make it easier to follow journals and books throughout their lifecycles and schedule resources more effectively to expedite production and support marketing. Those pieces are drawn from a wide range of sources around the company. Many regional marketing initiatives are merged into a single global marketing messaging strategy by combining big data from many clouds and sources throughout the world. DMD Marketing Corp. outperforms competition 3x with Big Data! DMD Marketing Corp. has the only authenticated database that can contact, report on, and respond to the dynamic digital behaviour of over six million completely opted-in healthcare professionals in the United States. DMD has sent out over 300 million emails and 30,000 email marketing campaigns to date. Given that sending emails to healthcare professionals is a highly competitive commodity, big data allows DMD to stand out. DMD refreshes email data every day, rather than every three days, using cloud-based big data integration capabilities, allowing the company to outperform the competition with 95% email deliverability. Big data Gives Beachbody Real-time user behaviour to reduce customer churn. Over 23 million consumers rely on Beachbody for world-class fitness, nutrition, motivation, and support. The customer experience is crucial to them; they keep customers motivated and match them with material that keeps them returning for more. Beachbody's on-demand films are well-known, but they also provide live sessions in gyms. The organisation has obtained near real-time consumer behaviour in fitness centres thanks to big data. Beachbody's big data, when combined with analysis from web data sources, allows the company to produce more targeted offers for customers and reduce customer turnover. Challenges of Big Data in Marketing Beachbody used the customer 360 view to gain a better understanding of its clients. While it is one of the many advantages of big data, it is also one of the most difficult to master. While 88% of IT executives believe their company truly understands its customers, only 61% of customers believe organisations do. There is clearly a misalignment between these perceptions that need to be rectified. 1. Disparate Data Systems The time it takes to gather data from various sources could be one reason for the disconnect. Users' impressions are instantaneous, so the longer it takes for data to be acquired, the bigger the distance. This is especially difficult for marketers because the disconnect period reduces the effectiveness of consumer personalisation. 34

Conclusion Big data, as a powerful digital marketing tool, provides us with the information we need to develop results-driven personalisation strategies for a variety of marketing channels and target segments. While consumers and existing customers choose where to click and what to buy, businesses and marketing teams can still have an impact. With the power of big data on your side, digital marketing is all about having the proper data and tools to give the correct information and solution at the right moment. When comparing the IT and business teams, this is clear. Complex tools with rich user interfaces are required by IT teams. Business teams require tools that are focused, clear, and effective. There is no solution that will satisfy both parties. To operate efficiently, each team requires its own set of tools. We need several tools to communicate with each other because we don't have a single solution to suit the needs of diverse teams. This is known as collaborative data management. The CDM system enables multiple teams to communicate, operate, and transmit data, each with its own user interface tailored to their needs. As a result, each team can use the tools they require while ensuring data quality. 35 Organizations frequently use a variety of systems to store and handle data. Data collection from these various systems, typically over several channels, is a challenge that can cause delays in data analysis, undermine security and compliance, and stymie efficiency. Customer master data management is one technique to handle this. Customer master data management (MDM) is a technique for linking all customer data to a single golden record that provides a 360-degree perspective of the customer, and then sharing that information as needed. The time it takes to acquire anything is drastically reduced as a result of this. 2. Streaming Data Sources When it comes to streaming data, the obstacles to getting data are considerably large. Even on big data systems, IoT systems can contain hundreds of sensors, thus the volume of streaming data can be fairly demanding. To make use of the data, you'll need realtime event processing in addition to acquiring it. Marketers need cloud-native big data tools to efficiently handle the influx of streaming data as they spend more and more on the possibility of reaching a target audience through IoT devices. Some streaming data, such as GPS, website clicks, and video viewer interaction, can be directly linked to customer actions and provide valuable marketing data. These issues can be addressed with technologies presently available on major cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing marketers to fully utilise streaming data from these big data cloud platforms. 3. Cross-Department Cooperation People, processes, and technology are the three pillars of any successful transformation. With big data in marketing, technology isn't the only issue. The implementation of big data necessitates the participation of several teams within a business. However, each team requires its own perspective and uses the data in its own way. Marketers can only benefit from big data if it can be analysed quickly and easily. This is made possible by big data and multi-cloud setups. It enables IT and other data management departments to utilise their own tools in their own environments while ensuring that critical data is available to other departments.

W e a r e M a r k a h o l i c ! T h e M a r k e t i n g C o m m i t t e e a t IF M R G S B , S r i C i t y i s c o m m i t t e d t o w a r d s d e v e l o p i n g a n d i m p l e m e n t i n g m a r k e t i n g i n i t i a t i v e s a n d a c t i v i t i e s t o i n c r e a s e a w a r e n e s s a b o u t m a r k e t i n g . T o p o p u l a r i z e t h e fi e l d o f m a r k e t i n g a t IF M R a n d e n s u r e t h a t f u n a n d l e a r n i n g i s a n i n t e g r a l p a r t o f t h e e n t i r e p r o c e s s . T h e s e g o a l s c o u l d b e a c h i e v e d t h r o u g h a m i x o f c o m p e t i t i v e e v e n t s a n d i n t e r a c t i v e s e s s i o n s t h r o u g h g u e s t l e c t u r e s b y d i s t i n g u i s h e d c o r p o r a t e s . G et H i gh o n I d e a s With U s ! 3 6