A Call to Arms for Marketers

For decades, marketing and advertising was the same thing. The CMO didn’t decide on the product line or pricing or what the environmental policy should be. Instead, the measure of marketing has traditionally been, “How much money are you spending on advertising?

A few years ago, suddenly, marketing started taking a quantum leap. Suddenly marketing became a confluence of advertising, technology and data. And the change is accelerating. With AI and personalisation, with communities and tribes, marketers daily face constant change and challenging decisions.

Today we’re at a tipping point. Marketing is no longer an afterthought of production. Instead, it needs to be fused into the ethos of the product and brand. CMO’s need to be spending their time at the beginning. Starting with the creation of a product, it ends only when it’s an experience that is sold. Present-day marketers are grappling with large-scale disruptions across verticals. So how do marketing professionals factor in the above and grow with these changes?

There are some leading the way. They’re adept at adopting and evolving with the waves of change. A few short months ago, I decided to embark on a journey - A quest to seek out the ones who’re creating this new order of marketing. Change doesn’t faze them; instead, it acts as a motivator. Innovation doesn’t scare them; it becomes their strength. Spread across 6 episodes, is a conversation which is more relevant than ever. It’s a tedious scrutiny of how we’ve defined marketing over the years, and how we ought to define it..

I explored how marketing will be defined in the future with 6 industry front-runners:

• How does Kamlesh Kumar Sharma (Coca-Cola) handle a brand crisis with grace?
• How does Arvind Gupta (BJP) think about the importance of social media in politics?
• What is Krishnan Chatterjee’s (SAP) vision for the marketing organisation of future?
• How does Deepak Sharma (Wipro) ensure the right MarTech stack?
• What is Kanika Mittal’s (Reebok) approach to influencer marketing?
• How do Aditi Sud & Madhu Joshi (Accor Hotels) bring about the convergence of brand and e-commerce?

Perhaps the future isn’t defined by the right answers, but by the right questions. This journey has been one of discovering the unknown and rediscovering the known. It has been challenging but absolutely fulfilling. I’m grateful to those who’ve been a part of it and more so to those who will be joining us now.

Here’s to harnessing the countless possibilities coming our way. Click on this to get a sneak peek of what the series has to offer.

In the next few weeks, we'll be releasing this six episodes. If you'd like to keep yourself updated and be the first to know when the episode comes out, sign up here.