I'm a physician by training with a double MBA one in Marketing and International Business Management from Yale. So my journey has been primarily on the techno-commercial side between medical technology, medical devices, pharma, biotech, and now with hospitals. So marketing and commercialization or commercial strategy have been key across my journey spanning almost 23 years now. So I see that there are a lot of new opportunities being created in marketing as a domain driven by technology. And as we popularly today know, artificial intelligence leads to new opportunities or the creation of new opportunities in marketing.
2. What has changed about marketing in the last decade and what will be the future according to you?
So I think conventional marketing used to be around emails, WhatsApp communications, Telegram communications, voice calls, telemarketing, branding, communications, doing conferences, clinical meetings, roundtable meetings, etc. I think that has reached a significant level of saturation now. Customers are looking for differential marketing strategies that add value to them. I think marketing should no longer be treated as promotion. Marketing should now be treated as how can you create more value for your customer and how can you make your customer more successful. That is the new marketing and I think conventional marketing is no longer pertinent or relevant.
So I will now touch upon what I just mentioned as customer success is our success that is customer marketing, how can we make through our marketing our customer, How can we make our customers more successful through our marketing. So if we are successful in doing that, there is no need to market ourselves. The customer is yours and they will hold on to you and they'll be loyal to you as well. So, therefore, this is truly driven by data today.
There is a significant amount of personalization that the customer expects which is possible through AI and that is possible through sequential data upkeep and proper data upkeep. So therefore good data about the customer will reveal a lot of insights and understanding about the customer. This is a much deeper level of KYC (Know your customer) as we say to know their preferences, they know their likes and dislikes and tailor make the communication to meeting or solving a customers problem and that is the best marketing that one can do.
3. How do you gauge recall of your creative ads or in-stadium displays and activities? More importantly, how do you assess whether your brand was correctly linked to your ads and activities?
The impact of ATL and BTL campaigns including billboards in stadium marketing, maybe you're doing a mall-based activity of field marketing, etc. I think the most critical aspect is any communication that you do to the customer should have, should, and must have a call to action. You should have the customer take some action if your communication or marketing is effective. Now how do you do that? You will ask the customer to maybe call a number or send an SMS or scratch up your code, take some action that makes the customer connect with you and engage with you.
That is critical. Now no customer will do it for free. So therefore you will have to have a certain incentive or a very key compelling factor for you to make the customer respond to you, which is basically to take a call to action, so defining that call to action and the value that the customer would derive by taking that call to action is very critical.
Again I repeat, marketing is no longer about marketing yourself, your product, or your services. Marketing is about how you can make your customer look good, how you can make your customer more successful, and how you can solve customers' problems so that the customer sticks to you. So it is more about consultative approach, problem-solving approach, and customer success-based approach which is going to really stay on going forward as well.
4. How do you measure if your brand perceptions and imagery were enhanced during the IPL and how much of it was due to the various IPL activities that you conducted?
This truly calls for a brand perception study, which can be done qualitatively quite easily. So gone are the days of doing perception mapping through qualitative hardcopy questionnaires. You can always now send a link or seek feedback, or seek brand perception feedback from customers through SMS links, WhatsApp links, mail links, and video links as well. Again no one, no customer will give you free feedback, incentivize them for giving your feedback and let that incentive add value to what they do.
So therefore brand perception is all about how much value you have added to the customer. It's not about how strong a brand is in the mind of the customer, it's about a customer, a brand becoming strong in the mind of the customer because it added value to the customer's life. So that is very important.
5. Do you feel it is important to gauge whether recall of your brand is impacted by the performances of your team?
I think it's very important when you are collecting customer feedback about the brand, it is also important to ask the customer the source of that feedback. So if your sales team, if your marketing team has been meeting the customer well and has been communicating it well, then you know there is no reason why the customer cannot provide you that feedback. So it is very critical to ask for the source of the feedback which will make the discussion very interesting and fruitful.
6. How do you achieve this currently?
So today the way we measure it is through primarily online surveys and links that are sent through Telegram, WhatsApp, emails, etc with a very clear incentivization of the customer. And we always make sure that we ask the customer for the source of information or the source basis, which they have a certain brand perception. So that is very critical to document.
7. Which is your favorite book and why?
Generally, I find books that have a certain meaning or value. You know a message around life's value that is something I find quite interesting. So I found some of Robin Sharma's books, early books quite interesting. "Who will cry when you die?", "The Monk who sold his Ferrari", You know these kinds of books I really like. Also "Rich dad, poor dad". I think very though you know a very insightful book. So outliers, these are some of the really you know different books that I have liked and I continue to look for books that have a meaning, that have a purpose, and communicate value in life.
8. A piece of advice that you would like to share with future marketers?
My only humble message to all marketeers and this is going to remain forever irrespective of how much ever we advance in technology is, to be honest, be truthful, okay. And most importantly, earn the trust of the customer. Trust can only be earned, not purchased or bought. How much of the amount of money you have in marketing, the same way, honestly can't be purchased, be truthful about what your product or service is, it is what it can deliver, and be honest about what it cannot deliver. The second part is underlying it. Please, please be honest about what you can't do or what you can't deliver. Customers like it and that will instantly earn trust.
Second, be consistent. So these episodic flashes bursts are not of any value. So you have to be persistent and consistent to really build the trust of the customer over a period of time.
Third, whatever product or service it should be. Should deliver the value that it promises, right? And be consistent in the delivery of that promise right and leverage technology to the most right. And the world is moving towards significant digital transformation and so is every customer. Age is no bar anymore, you will see senior citizens and children alike, including middle-aged people, all of them embracing technology to the fullest. So just leverage technology to the fullest. So these are my messages to all marketers.
Brief Bio:
Dr. Karthik Anantharaman is the Vice President of International Business at Apollo Hospitals, one of Asia’s largest hospitals group with operations in over 20 countries. Previously he was the Chief Operating Officer of Roche Pharmaceuticals and Head of the Business Unit (Metabolics/Branded Formulations/Biosimilars) at Biocon Ltd, an innovation-driven global biotechnology company.
Karthik is a trained medical doctor with a degree in Internal Medicine & Surgery (MBBS) from Bangalore University, A post graduate MBA in Marketing from Manipal University & a super specialization MBA- GELP from Yale School of Management, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Karthik is the recipient of the “Most Influential Marketing Leaders” listing by the World Marketing Congress twice in a row, in Nov 2015 & in Nov 2016, leading industry awards from Frost & Sullivan, Economic Times (ET) Best Healthcare Brands & Brand Trust Awards 2016.
Karthik is responsible for driving the largest branded formulations business for Biocon Ltd, viz, Metabolics BU. He is responsible for the complete P&L management of the business and leads a team of over 650 people in the Metabolic BU.
Karthik was earlier the Chief Marketing Officer (Vice President – Marketing) with BPL Medical Technologies, a Goldman Sachs Portfolio Company from September 2013 until Jan 2018. Dr. Karthik Anantharaman also played the role of marketing consultant for Penlon Ltd, a UK-based world leader in Anesthesia & Operating Room solutions, a company acquired by BPL Medical Technologies in 2015. Prior to BPL & Penlon Ltd, he was the Head of Marketing with GE Healthcare for Molecular Imaging & Computed Tomography business and has held senior managerial positions with leading pharmaceutical organizations like AstraZeneca & MSD (Merck & Co, NJ, USA).
Karthik was one of the core team members responsible for the launch of South Asia’s first patented primary care pharmaceutical brand, Januvia, which later went on to become the largest pharmaceutical launch in South Asia in 2008-09. Karthik has also had a stint as an entrepreneur launching one of India’s first Chronic Disease Management companies in 2010-11.
Interviewed By - Harshita
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