Marketing Conclave

Name of the Organizing Department: Vivekananda School of Business Studies
Type of Activity/Event: Conclave
Title of Activity/Event: Human to Human (H2H) Marketing: Evolving Customer Experience in the New Normal
Date: 23rd Oct. 2021
Venue: Conducted on Zoom
Notice of the announcement of Activity / Event: Registration Form was floated in class groups along with the following message:

”Instead of using technology to automate the process, think about using technology to enhance human interaction.” -Tony Zambito. The marketing society of VSBS brings you an annual event of MarkExpress *Marketing conclave* with 5 experienced speakers. The conclave shall highlight Human to Human (H2H) Marketing: Evolving Customer Experience in the New normal

*Date: 23rd October 2021, Time: 10 a.m.*
Registration link: https://forms.gle/N2aCi4GJ3ExS3ZV19
Zoom link to join: https://zoom.us/j/4166792983?pwd=QlkyTGk1bnE3WERSNlUzQUNLa3RkUT09
Meeting ID: 416 679 2983
Passcode: VIPS

Name of the Guest(s)/ Speaker(s): Mr. Anuj Kumar, Senior Vice President – Commercial Lines, Tata AIG GIC Ltd.

Mr. Parijat Pande, Assistant Vice President – Brand Management SBI Card
Mr. Prashant Agrawal, Brand Communication and Retail Marketing – BMW
Ms. Somali Bajpai, Marketing and PR Manager at Crowne Plaza Hotels New Delhi and Brand PR Champion – IHG Hotels India
MODERATOR: Prof. (Dr.) Garima Gupta, Marketing, FMS, University of Delhi

Faculty Co-ordinator(s): Dr. Ruchi Shukla, Ms. Deepika Chhikara, Dr. Kritika Nagev & Dr. Jatin Vaid
Student Co-ordinator(s): Garima Jain & Anay Jindal
Report of the Event:

INNAUGURATION and LAMP LIGTHING: The October event commenced at 10:00 am with the kind briefing of VIPS and by extending thanks to all present. The conclave theme was then elaborated to the audience. After the lamp lighting ceremony, the event moved forward with the welcoming address by our Dean Dr. Indira Bhardwaj.
Address by Dr. Ruchi Shukla , Convener , Associate Professor.
Address: Welcoming all present she shed light on the theme of the conclave – H2H Marketing : Evolving customer experience in the new normal. AI doesn’t subtitute humans since they can’t build relationships, H2H enhances B2B and B2C Marketing.
Address by Mr Anuj Kumar, Senior Vice- President- Commercial Lines, Tata AIG GIC Ltd.
Address: Mr Anuj addressed that brands should adapt to the needs of regional areas depending on the consumer demographics and other semantics. His address was extremely insightful with a lot of real life experiences that he shared for efficient understanding. He shed light on how survival was the key in the pandemic because Covid-19 didn’t see any new industries, what it saw were the existing industries flourishing! He lighted upon various elements that are important like customer satisfaction, innovation in service sectors in this modern world to have a greater impact and reach effectively and efficiently which was delivered as an insightful data.

Address by Mr Parijat Pande, Assistant Vice-president-Brand management, SBI Card

Address: Mr Parijat Pande explained the basic concepts to build on the understanding of the audience about Human to Human Marketing. He elaborated the concept in a very interactive manner by shedding light on various factors like customer behaviour and building human contact and how this can impact the marketer to improve the efficiency of the marketing communication. He further explained about regional shortcomings and that large players should construct regionally. He then showed them a Tata sky Ad and explained very well how customer services are available 24/7 showing human to human connect. He emphasised on the importance of Human touch, humanizing the AI bots and avoiding one way communication. He made sure to simplify the technical terms for students to make them understand better

Address by Mr. Prashant Agrawal , Brand Communication and Retail Marketing – BMW
Address: Mr. Agrawal started with explaining his role at BMW and his career before . He then discussed his 5 years working with Media houses and how they have a different approach towards the H2H marketing platform as compared to the sales based marketing platform of car manufacturers. He discussed the need of person to person interaction and it’s importance and how humans crave for communication. He then asked the guests and the other panelists 3 questions : which brand embraces the qualities – simplicity , empathy and imperfections. As everyone have their different responses , he replied with just one – Tesla . He then went on to describe how Tesla works and how if a brand only has 2 of these 3 traits they have a good H2H marketing structure. Companies use their data and learn and implement from them. These aspects are what do we as an individual require to thrive in a company. When a client approaches your brand, they always have a context. We need to imbibe emotional education in ourselves as it is not a part of our curriculum. Hence the traits he discussed for an emotionally educated person are : awareness, good at self management, socially aware, empathetic and simple.

Address by Ms. Somali Bajpai , Marketing and PR manager at Crowne Plaza Hotels New Delhi and Brand PR Champion – IHG Hotels India
Address: Ms. Bajpai began by explaining how during the COVID time and Instagram boom came up. And how the social media platform slowly took up a lot of marketing platform and created new ways to advertise and connect. She explained how it is redundant for rich celebrities to advertise for cheap phones and how it makes much sense for an Instagram influencer to advertise the same product with more efficiency , creating a form of relativity and connection. In her experience, hotels asked their customers to help them curate a better experience for their customers by using their events as examples and telling their stories to attract others. In COVID times , giving an example of BurgerKing v. McDonald’s, BurgerKing tweeting their customers to buy from McDonald’s as they were giving away some of their revenue to a charitable cause , earning goodwill for both the companies. At the end she advised the listeners to be empathetic while advertising to better understand the situation of their customers and come off as more engaging so as the customer takes more interest in listening to you and about your product.
Address by Dr. Garima Gupta , Marketing , FMS , University of Delhi
Address: Dr. Gupta thanked all speakers and then went on to explain the topic at hand herself by showing a presentation. In the presentation she discussed various topics like key market trends, focusing on sustainability, human centeredness, service orientation and digitalisation. She discussed various thinking patterns which included Empathy, Integrative thinking, Optimism, Experimentalism and Collaboration. As per her presentation in real life market situations we must also focus at Digitalisation and new customer behaviour so as to give way to customer involvement and co-creation to overall become firms of endearment.
Questionnaire Round :
Address : Dr. Garima Gupta, after our guests gave their valid input, asked one question each to all of them. Then she opened the floor for the students to do the same. The students came forward as well and asked questions from each panelist.

Vote of Thanks by Dr. Jatin Vaid , Co-Convener , Faculty , VSBS
Vote of thanks : Dr. Vaid extended a vote of thanks to the guests and
Audiences for being able to be present at the event. He then felicitated our esteemed guests.

Mark-E-xpress, the marketing society of Vivekananda School of Business Studies, VIPS organized a one day Marketing Conclave on ‘Demystifying Social Media Marketing’ on 26th October, 2018. The conclave, witnessing a perfect blend of eminent dignitaries from academia and corporate world, had a panel discussion scheduled in the first half of the day followed by MUBG (Marketer’s Unknown Battle Ground), a set of two student events, Ad–De-Bait and MADvertisers, scheduled post lunch.

Panel Discussion:

The event was conducted in the Institute’s auditorium from 10 AM till 1 PM. Eminent panelists included Mr. Majid Assadullah, Senior Vice President, SBI Cards; Mr. Tejas Arur, Senior Director (Marketing & Business Development), Axtria Inc; Mr. S.N. Bhaduri, Director, Integral Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd.; Mr. Ishan Kailani, CEO, Digital Patang; and Mr. Saikat Sinha, Head of Marketing Strategy, Times Internet, who was also the moderator of the discussion.
The event started with lamp lighting ceremony, followed by Welcome Address by Prof. Rattan Sharma, Principal Director – VIPS. Prof. Sharma welcomed all the eminent panelists to enrich the audience with their knowledge to respond to challenges posed by social media marketing. He deliberated on the theme of the conclave by acknowledging the role of social media as it influences everyone’s life and is a powerful communication tool for marketers. He discussed cases of PepsiCo, Kurkure, Nestle Maggi and Dominos pizza, while calling social media as a double-edged weapon that needs to be handled by organizations in a matured and positive manner.

Dr. S.C. Vats, Chairman – VIPS graced the event with his benign presence, and was welcomed to shower his blessings on all.

Mr. Jatin Vaid, Convener – Marketing Society, delivered the Theme-Address. He emphasized on the need for business leaders to invest more resources on social media as challenges center on profound organizational issues like developing the right processes and governance structures to demystify its seemingly hazy nature.

Mr. Saikat Sinha, the moderator, conducted the discussion in two rounds. In the first round, he initiated the discussion with highlighting the importance of mobile phones for marketers to connect with their customers. He further discussed that social media marketing is much more than Facebook and Whatsapp and includes deeper issues like B2B marketing, role of governments, CSR and content design, while highlighting the case of IKEA and Godrej interio in the furniture market.
Mr. Majid discussed his experience with social media marketing in the BFSI sector in client profiling and customer decision-making process. Mr. S.N Bhaduri accentuated that content will always remain critical in all communications, providing competitive advantage to the brand. Mr. Ishan, in his discussion focused on the role of influencer marketers and artificial intelligence, in giving an impetus to the social media marketing campaigns of start-ups. Finally, Mr. Tejas took the focus of the discussion to the B2B side of the business, while citing examples of Wipro, HCL and Accenture.

In the second round of the panel discussion, Moderator, Mr. Saikat focused on the sub-theme of ‘partnerships in social media campaigns’. While setting the tone for deliberations, he cited the case of partnership between Delta Airlines and Tinder’s ‘World travellers are more likely to be swiped right’ campaign. Mr. Bhaduri focused on the partnership of Election Commission with Facebook in reaching out to new voters for the General Elections 2019. Mr. Tejas discussed about a very pertinent issue of data privacy and the importance of maintaining honesty and integrity in handling consumer data by organizations in the life-sciences sector. Mr. Majid, with his rich experience in the BFSI sector, talked about how banks are partnering with Government of India to promote ‘Digital India Campaign’ and reach out to their prospective customers to resolve their grievances, profile them to target suitable products and ensuring customer delight. Last, but not the least, Mr. Ishan discussed about the evolution of mobile phone technologies, especially voice search and augmented reality in understanding consumer psychology, giving examples of LensKart and IKEA.

After two exhaustive rounds of panel discussion, the conclave was open to audience for question and answer session.

Dr. Indira Bhardwaj, Dean – Vivekananda School of Business Studies proposed the vote of thanks. She expressed her gratitude to the panelists for enlightening the discussion with their rich insights and experience.

Later, Dr. Indira presented mementos to the esteemed panelists as a token of appreciation.

Ad – De – Bait:

AD-DE-BAIT, a debate competition was a part of the Marketing Conclave 2018. The venue for the same was conference room, B – Block and was held from 2 PM till 5 PM. It was an intra-college event, which saw participation of students from different departments and had a turnout of 14 teams, while their classmates made for a keen audience. Participating team comprised of two members and was given four minutes to perform.

Prof. (Dr.) Indira Bharadwaj, Dean, VSBS, graciously accepted to chair the event while Dr. Bimaldeep Kaur, Assistant Professor, Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce (University of Delhi), Dr. Isha Rawal, and Ms. Sarah Ahtesham formed the jury.

The motion for the debate, “Are the social messages given out by advertisements, socially acceptable?” captivated the minds and brought forth some very interesting perspectives from the debaters and the audience. Sensitive yet important topics like feminism, racial differentiation, fat shaming, homosexuality and the #MeToo movement’s importance were amongst a few themes of this event. Being the extraordinary event that it was, participants were shown certain advertisements depicting social messages and were asked to debate their opinions on it. The challenge was a pleasant surprise for the debaters, as they accepted it with a great enthusiasm.

Two best teams were rewarded. Aaditya Kapoor and Akanksha Sharma from VSLLS secured the first position and won a cash prize of Rs. 2,000/-. Also, Chhavi Sharma and Kartik Rateria from VSBS secured the second position, winning a cash prize of Rs. 1,000/-. Also, Kritika Sharma, of VSBS, was adjudged the Best Speaker.

MADvertisers:

MADvertisers, the Ad-Mad Competition was organized in the auditorium from 2 PM to 5 PM. The esteemed judges for the event were Dr. Anuradha Nanda, Assistant Professor at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce (University of Delhi), Dr. Poonam Khurana, and Ms. Misha Mehta.

A total of nine teams registered for the event. The first round of this power-packed event was the qualifying round and revolved around the theme of ‘Not so product like name’, with an idea of anti-product names. The products were allotted to various teams with a draw of lots, in a way that they opposed the general utility of that particular product. The participating teams were judged on the creativity and originality with which they presented the advertisement concept.

At the end of the first round, top five teams were shortlisted for the second round with the theme ‘Well, I’ve gotta sell me’. Here, the qualifying teams were randomly given a product, they had to enact being that product and prepare a creative advertisement for the same. Each team was given one minute to perform.
Finally, the team ‘Indian Musketeers’ with their ad on lipstic was adjudged the best and won the first prize of Rs. 3,000/-. Also, team ‘Mashaal’ with their ad on diaper, won the second prize of Rs. 2,000/-. Moreover, a special prize, rewarding an exceptional performance was awarded to Hrithik Yadav, a member of team ‘Indian Musketeers’.