D2C: A New-Age Marketing Giant

The Marketing Conclave Edition 2 at Jio Institute brought together brilliant minds from the world of direct-to-consumer (D2C) startups, online retail brands and digital media agencies to talk about the trends that are shaping the consumer industry, and how traditional marketing giants’ prevailing market shares are being chipped away by these “shadow” brands.  The panel comprised Mr Rajat Jadhav, Co-Founder, Bold Care; Ms Aakansha Cheema, Senior Account Director, Reliance Retail; Mr Rehan Dadachanji, Co-Founder, The Starter Labs and Mr Praveen Kamath, Head of Growth Marketing, Bummer.

Brands of the Future Past

The discussion began with questions about how “True Commerce” paved the way for D2C and new-age e-commerce brands to penetrate the market and pry away market share from marquee brands. The panelists elucidated the importance of discovering and exploiting novel distribution channels as early adopters, and pave the way for the innovators to experiment. If the product quality is up to the mark, gaining customer stickiness, specifically in food & beverages, luxury retail, high-end white goods and novel segments like sexual health & wellness and feminine hygiene becomes cheaper and less complicated.

However, they opined that this loyalty does not necessarily translate into a lower customer per acquisition (CPA), but does help in improving the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), which is the most important factor for new-age brands to gauge their performance in the market. 

Point of No Return

The panelists were asked about the issue of rising returns and cancellations in the D2C and e-commerce space. The experts cited examples from their own experiences; whilst returns in the fashion space remain consistently high, despite brands like Myntra bringing in novel technologies to improve the user buying experience, the same does not hold true for new consumer spaces like gaming, sexual wellness, electronics and white goods. Interventions such as call-outs and checkpoints across the consumer checkout journey to prompt conversion of COD to ‘prepaid orders’, by offering additional discounts/cashbacks on such orders certainly helps bring down returns significantly.

Additionally, they elucidated technological interventions such as automated reminder messages and IVR calls to confirm consumer availability at delivery premises to reduce cancellations. These methodologies together become quite significant for D2C brands, where reverse logistics take a significant chunk of their topline.

Online vs Offline: The Phygital Conundrum

The panelists agreed that having a physical presence through retail stores is critical to not only boost sales, but to serve as an enticing piece of branding real-estate to boost recall. These omnichannel touchpoints enhance the consumer journey, enabling options such as ‘Try & Buy’, easier serviceability and puts a face to the brand. 

The panelists cited examples of brands like Lenskart and Nykaa, whence in the former’s case 80-90% of revenue is generated through their burgeoning offline presence. Hence, the panelists surmised that the need and extent of physical presence for any brand depends on the specific category that it plays in.

AI in Marketing: The Skynet of it All

Asked about the increasing prevalence of AI & data science in branding and marketing activities, the panelists commented that Machine Learning, in one form or the other, has been in use for close to a decade to improve targeting. However, with the models in the market today being trained on decades of data, it has become relatively simpler to offer hyper-personalized product catalogues to consumers basis their online presence and purchase behavior that creates intent signals for such ‘bots’ to target them at the right place and right time. 

However, one of the panelists reproved the moral and ethical side of AI: brands should respect the consumers and while they may be considered 'data points', brands and agencies that utilize ML & data science should appreciate the ‘humanity’ of their consumers, and not resort to shadow marketing techniques such as incessant calling, push notifications and disruption of normal life. 

Sorry, but Not Sorry

The panelists further discussed on the aspect of managing crisis and mistakes as brand. They noted that it is imperative to own up to their faults, citing examples of controversial marketing campaigns that backfired on the marketers. Through such examples, they highlighted the difference in the fallout for brands who engage crisis management rather than live in denial. 

India: The Testbed of New-Age Marketing

The closing address by Dr Dipak Jain, Vice-Chancellor, Jio Institute provided an encouraging glimpse into our nation’s future. He noted how some consumers are persona non-grata, citing example of United Airlines, how brands should evaluate consumer profiles and grievances to decide whether to solve their reasonable issues or simply stop serving the. He lauded how new-age marketing brands are leveraging pervasive use of technology and reasonable data, and cutting-edge payment systems like UPI to experiment new-age marketing strategies, which will shape the future of bespoke marketing and aspirational home-grown brands globally.