Mumbai: Social Beat organised the second edition of its Digital Leadership Summit and saw a convergence of several business leaders across industries. The first edition took place at Chennai with a focus on driving ROI from digital marketing. One of the biggest talking points of the Summit this year was innovation through Voice, Video and Vernacular with CMOs from various sectors sharing their insights and experiences.
The keynote speaker, Omkar Rajadyaksha, Managed Partners Lead – New Business at from Google, kick-started the event on what businesses can scale up with Google in 2019. The Summit also focused on driving business results through digital marketing with marketers and brands voicing out common challenges they face and upcoming trends. While there are around 450 million internet users in India currently, this number is set to hit 650 million by 2021. These numbers prove even more significant as the vast majority of new internet users will come from Tier II and Tier III cities. The summit highlighted the importance of tapping into India’s next billion internet users by harnessing the power of Voice, Vernacular and Video for an effective digital marketing strategy.
The keynote session was followed by a panel discussion on building a brand through digital marketing. This session included Ajit Narasimhan, CMO of Sundaram Mutual Fund and Vipin Guliani, Group Head – Digital Marketing at Piramal Group. Moderating the panel, Suneil Chawla, Cofounder of Social Beat, said, “Digital spending is expected to grow 2.5x from $40 billion to $100 billion. This goes to show how businesses are leveraging the power of digital and how it will only continue to grow.”
David Appasamy, Head – Brand and Strategy moderated another panel discussion on AI, Augmented Reality and Vernacular in the future of Digital Marketing. He opined, “Digital platforms have, over the last decade, redefined the way we communicate, build our businesses or entertain ourselves at anytime, anywhere. Now artificial intelligence and augmented reality are taking it to a whole new level in terms of efficiency and experience while vernacular is opening up the platforms to native language speakers and new markets.” Appasamy was joined by Channan Sawhney, Head of Digital Marketing at Johnson & Johnson and Pratyush Kukreja, Head – Product Monetisation at Haptic.
The next session focused on measuring return on investment through digital marketing. The speakers of the session were Prashin Jhobalia, Vice President – Marketing Strategy from House of Hiranandani, Monish Ghatalia, Founder of Focus Communications and Pradeep Nidamarthi, Head of Digital at Reliance Capital. Moderating the panel, Vikas Chawla, Co-Founder, Social Beat, said, “Today we can track not just online customer acquisitions, but also store visits, leads, calls and brand awareness lifts. This allows marketers to truly attribute how much of an impact digital has on businesses across industries.” The Summit also had a session on how brands can grow and innovate through digital by Abraham Alapatt, Group President and Head – Marketing, Service Quality and Innovation at Thomas Cook.
The Summit concluded with an interactive workshop where attendees were asked to draft their digital strategy guided by the digital experts at Social Beat.
