Brand Strategy BEATS Performance Marketing: Head Of Marketing Reveals | ExperiMENTAL Ep. 3

In this episode of ExperiMENTAL, Sundar Swaminathan sits down with Nikhil Kant (Uber, FlixBus, Even Health) to break down why modern marketing has lost its magic and how over-relying on performance marketing is silently killing long-term brand value.

You’ll learn:
✔ Why performance marketing is losing its creative edge
✔ How brand creates the only sustainable moat in saturated markets
✔ Tactical frameworks: Get-To-By, Think-Feel-Do, and Hero-Hub-Hygiene
✔ Why startups confuse product-market fit with growth loops
✔ Lessons from political marketing and hyper-local segmentation
✔ How brands like Liquid Death, MoCabara, and Adidas play the long game

Nikhil shares real-world stories from startups, unicorns, and political campaigns to show how the best marketers blend emotional connection with business outcomes. If you’re building a consumer startup or running growth at a scaling company, this episode will change how you think about brand.

🎧 ExperiMENTAL is hosted by Sundar Swaminathan, Head of Data Science at Bounce and former Uber leader. This show is your behind-the-scenes look at how top marketers and data scientists make smarter decisions.

🧠 Expect unfiltered conversations, mental models, and case studies that help you cut waste, build conviction, and grow your B2C business.

📬 Subscribe to the ExperiMENTAL newsletter for deep dives and frameworks: https://experimental.beehiiv.com/

This podcast has been brought to you by APodcastGeek. https://www.apodcastgeek.com

Transcript

Nikhil: 0:00

There's a reason why if you see the color red and a cursive font anywhere in the world, you know it's Coca-Cola, and the moment you see another brand, you're like, Hey, this is not right. Like this is a fraud brand

Sundar: 0:12

is not just for purchases that are once a year. It's also for purchases on a daily basis. Right. What does that lack of brand, how has that shown up and have you seen that impact in the long term?

Nikhil: 0:22

I've

Sundar: 0:23

realized that the impact is quite welcome to experimental. The podcast that cuts through the noise to bring you actionable insights in B2C, growth, marketing, and data science. I'm your host, ser, former head of brand Data Science at Uber and the Mind Behind the Experimental Newsletter. Join me as I talk with industry leaders who have driven growth at companies like Uber, Spotify, and Netflix. We'll uncover the experiments, failures and breakthroughs that lead to real results. Now, let's get experimental. Hi everybody. I'm excited to have Nico kt with me on my podcast. Today we're gonna go pretty deep into talking about brand marketing versus performance marketing and sort of how the old, you know, ecosystem has probably gone a little bit too deep into performance marketing. Before we go down that, uh, Nik, I would love if you could just introduce yourself and maybe share some of the experiences that you've had that have led you to that belief.

Nikhil: 1:12

Absolutely. Uh, first of all, hi sand. Great to see you. Uh. Thank you for having me over. Very honored, very humbled, uh, don't think I deserve this, but, uh, I won't miss the charts. Anyway, just a quick introduction from my end. I've been in the marketing slash advertising domain for the last 15 years. I compute 15 years in February, so it's been a while. Interestingly, I started my career as an auditor for some. For some unknown reason, but very, very soon realized that's not for me. And moved over to the big bad world of advertising. Spent about a decade almost in, in, in an agency and in the public group agency called Interactive Avenues. Very big in India. Now, uh, I joined them when they were like 25 people, and now they were of the biggest in the country. It was a hell of a ride. I joined them when I was all of 19 years of age. And, uh, had, you know, the, the good chance to work with some of the most iconic brands that I, as a kid grew up watching on my television and, and, and newspapers. I had the chance to work on brands like Coca-Cola, handle their entire brand portfolio for a while, uh, in India from a digital, social and creative standpoint, which included brands like Coke, of course, but then there are even more iconic brands in India, like thumbs up, um, which are, which are. Essentially like, uh, huge. And uh, then also got the chance to work on, uh, record be Kaiser's brand portfolio. Again, big, big brands liked Al and Wheat, uh, at Durex. Um, then got the chance to work for, very interestingly, for politics and that's something we could. Deep dive, deep dive into very in, in the later part of the, the talk after that worked at Uber, uh, where of course you and I met, I was a part of the central marketing team here in India. First was looking at, uh, social and content, uh, for India. Uh, then picked that mantle up at an APAC level, then picked that mantle up at a global level. Was also doing media planning for, uh, for the India business, specifically around brand media, because of course, Uber had you, you know it better than anybody. Uber had a performance team and had a brand team. Uh, so it was kind of stationed there. Um, then after that, I worked for a health tech startup called, even while it started as a. Kinda like a health insurance startup, but they've moved on to, um, a, a big full stack medical ecosystem kind of a player now, uh, doing fairly well raised about $50 million, uh, are giving tough competition to one, to some of the bigger, uh, players in the country. Yeah. And, and I just moved on from there and now. Getting to get to my next, uh, next role. Um, I've always handled pretty much like brand roles. Uh, even at like, at, even as well, I was the head of brand at Uber. I was doing all sorts of brand work at, uh, my time in the agency also was doing a bunch of creative social and quasi brand work. Um, so been kind of involved in this ecosystem for a while and that's why I have such strong opinions.

Sundar: 3:56

Yeah. Well, very excited to hear them. So let's just sort of jump into it, right? Like at a high level, what is your thesis on. Where performance marketing is going and, and and your thoughts around maybe we're doing it too much.

Nikhil: 4:09

I'm sure some people are gonna come at me when I say this. Uh, and I've had my fair share of people coming at me when I've said this in the past. Uh, I think there's been this like overcorrection in terms of ROI understanding and just, and, and, and this whole direct response kind of marketing that has come up in the past few years. I was, I think, one of the lucky ones to be able to be right in the middle of the revolution when, when performance marketing started, I, I joined a digital agency in 2010, and this was when hell, Facebook wasn't even a thing in India at that time. Instagram hadn't even launched, uh, YouTube hadn't monetized, uh, we were still buffering our video. Right? It's that type, and I think it was really exciting to, for me as well, to be there. You know when when you create something, put something out there, you immediately get a response from people, whether it was, you know, at, at our time it was essentially kind of getting a click for somebody to look up to our website and fill a lead form. And that was, that was performance for us. It was exciting, no doubt about it, for a marketer, for an advertiser, but I think what has happened, I feel in the past few years is there's just been this overreliance and I'm sure for good reason, but overreliance and performance and, and especially when this whole startup boom has happened, there are limited budgets I understand, and you need to kind of get the best bang for your puck. But unfortunately I feel the long-term association and the long-term building of, of your brand, the emotional connect that you have with your consumers, I feel we are kinda losing that bit. And, and you know, as a young kid growing up, that was a charm for me to be in marketing, to be in advertising, right? Like, I, I never saw a performance element like, Hey, I wanna be a performance marketer. I saw a great Coca-Cola ad, or a Great Cadbury ad and said, Hey, I wanna write stories like these and, and this is the connect I want, you know, the fact that. A photocopy machine is called Xerox. The fact that water in India is referred to as ary, any black cold drink is called Coca-Cola. That's the impact I wanted to build, and I feel like that's kinda lost. And you know, I do a lot of talks and I, and I teach a lot, um, and I recently did. This exercise with a bunch of people. I've done this, by the way, with 1500 people where I've shown an insurance companies like three different insurance companies, ads to people just hidden the logo and ask people, do you know which brand it is? And none of them have been able to do 1500 people till date, haven't been able to answer all three of them correctly. In fact said that I will give you a hundred thousand rupees from my end if anybody's able to guess this. Nobody's been able to do that. Right? And that kind of speaks to the fact that are we heading towards the right thing? Like. There needs to be a balance somewhere, I feel, and, and that's the balance. I feel that that has been lost. And I think even, even big behemoths like a Facebook or, or meta largely, and, and Google largely have understood this. If you, if you look at what performance marketing was literally five years ago. It's completely different what it is now at, when I was doing my first ever performance marketing campaign, I had to put a lot of brains in terms of what kind of targeting sets do I need to do, what kind of different ad sets do I need to create, what kind of communication needs to go for what context, uh, behavioral targeting, uh, all sorts of stuff was, was there. And I felt that that was very creative work.'cause you had to be creative in understanding what audience you need to reach out to. Now Meta says just, Hey, give us a bunch of different creators and we'll freaking figure it out for you. Right? Like that's, that's all there is. It's all automated. And I feel like even the charm of performance marketing is also gone. If you look at it like from that point of view,

Sundar: 7:28

that's really interesting. And I don't think I ever consider that, right? Like, uh, so many, you know, what you read on LinkedIn is, hey, just, you know, give them the budgets of the algorithm, do the magic. But like you said, that's also taken the magic out of being a marketer. And one thing that I thought was interesting is you use an example of, you know, insurance, but you've also worked with things like Coca-Cola. But the idea is brand is not just for purchases. That are once a year, it's also for purchases on a daily basis. Right. I would love to hear maybe, you know, just in your experience with even startups, like what does that lack of brand, how, how has that shown up? Like how, how has it, have you seen that impact, um, in the long term?

Nikhil: 8:05

A lot. I think like, and, and as I've kind of now been come to a position where I kind of have access to the biggest founders, the biggest investors, et cetera. I've realized that the impact is quite, quite crazy. There are, there are, there are two schools of thought, right? One is, Hey, I'm a founder and I know my, my stuff and I know my audience. I will just do great performance marketing and show that I get the best CAC and give me a large enough runway later to figure out about brand, which is great. So also, that's one school of thought. But then there's another school of thought who, and especially like consumer brands, where people understand that, hey, after a while everything is commoditized. Everything is a commodity. Hell, a laptop is a commodity of the, the pair of headphones you are wearing is a commodity. The only thing that I have a, as a moat is, is my brand, is how people really, really interact with me and, and crave that emotional connection. And I've seen those two schools, schools of thought working, fitting themselves against each other. Both of them are right, I'm sure that they own, um, uh, end. But I feel like as we grow in the next five years, 10 years, where you'll have millions of startups coming, every single thing will be commoditized. The only way you'll be able to command a premium, the only way you'll be able to drive consideration will be through your pride and the essentially emotional connection you have with your audience. And I think like you, and I know this like the back of our hand, like if you look at Uber and, and ride sharing in this country, uh, in India, it was essentially a two player market. It was Uber and Nola. Both of them have the exact same product. We know they have the exact same supply. We know they have the exact same audience that they're reaching out to. But why does an Uber command a certain special place in somebody's heart versus an Ola? And Ola should back by all logic, Ola should win this because they're an Indian product. Nationalism is at its peak in every country. The founders here in India, he's accessible to so many more people than say Dara would ever be policy. He could influence policy at literally breakneck speeds. But why has that not worked out? That's because the relationship with Uber is very, very different for a person. And I think that like those are the, the example I see and look back and is important. In fact, in the seen. Press releases coming out from brands like Adidas, brands like Airbnb, brands, like a source. All of them have come out and said that, hey, we've over relied on performance marketing and we've completely screwed it up. Uh, Adidas, in fact, has gone out on a limb and said that we're gonna stop all performance marketing. And only focus on brand and only focus on the stuff that's made Adidas what it is today. And I think that's, that's saying a lot, especially because footwear is a category that works like a, like how on, on, on, on e-commerce, right? But they've said that, Hey, that's not what we are here for. You are building for generations right? Tomorrow. And there are so many like interesting examples around this in the world. Like look at liquid debts, which is a $1.2 billion brand. It's freaking water, right? They've built a $1.2 billion brand in the last four years by just putting water in the can. But it's their marketing. It's Mike's incessant, uh, love for everything, which is weird, uh, which has gotten them where they are. And, and I think those are some brilliant examples. Hey, in fact, I don't know if you know about this, our colleague, by the way, from Uber, Navin Peral, who was essentially the creative director for Uber when I joined, um, he was in, in the, I don't know if you've met him, but he was in the India team. He was leading the creative team. He won fine day when he moved on from Uber. I was talking to him, I was like, Hey, what's up? What are you, where, where are you going? Because for me, I was, you know this young kid, Uber man, who the hell will even ever leave Uber? It's like, you should be retiring from here. And I'm, and I was asking him then, are you crazy? Why are you leaving Uber? I love him to death. And that's why I was asking like I didn't want to like want him to go. And he is like, Hey man, I'm starting a suitcase friend. I was like, what the hell are you doing a suitcase brand? Are you freaking kidding me? Who the hell cares about suitcases? It's such a commodity. And he went and started this little brand called MoCo Barra. Which is now an icon like it's, it's it's literally pop culture in India that, that suitcase and, and that also he, and he was a designer. He's not a, he's not a performance marketer. He was a design, he is a pass out from a, a design college. Uh, but what he did was he created this beautiful looking product and sure that he was very on top of it from a brand point of view, did not leave his brand values and ethos. It took a while for it to jump, but now it's jumped like anybody's business. Ji sang, who's one of the biggest musicians on the planet, is using that on his. Shows, like literally on the bloody stage. Yeah. It's insane where that brand is reached now.

Sundar: 12:34

Yeah. And, and like you said, right, a long time to build, but then it becomes, it becomes the moat. It becomes nearly impossible to replace. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, you know, when I went to school, um, I had to take one marketing class and they talked about the four Ps of marketing then. Right. And, and academically, it still seems like we're talking about the classic. Theories cases, but then something is happening in a disconnect. Where do you think that disconnect is happening from, you know, the theoretical and academic to, you know, people going, so performance marketing,

Nikhil: 13:07

I think after the four Ps came a fifth p of performance. Um, but I do think there needs to be another P that's added, which is patience. I think we've lost patience as just like a collective humanity. We've lost patience. Uh, you want. Needed social gratification, like social media's to blame for it. I feel like you put a photo out, you want to get a like immediately, and that's like true over to brands, right? You put a, you put a piece of communication out. You want the purchase to happen in the next five minutes, which is great. But that is very shortsighted. I feel like it takes, there's a reason why if you see the color red and a cursive font anywhere in the world, you know it's Coca-Cola, and the moment you see another brand, you are, you're taken aback. You're like, Hey, this is not right. Like, this is a fraud that's happening with me. And there they're 130 8-year-old brand almost. Right? So there's, they're clearly doing something right. Yes, it takes time, but it's not like. It takes, at least in today's day, and it's not like it's gonna take you 10 years. No, it's, it's not that If you give your brand gestation even for a year, it'll start showing you the results very, very clearly. And you just need to be consistent about it. And, and I think this is something I tried with even, uh, even was a, was an early stage startup, they didn't have the patience to wait for like five years for them to get like their first sale. Right. But the one thing that the founders really let me do, and I give them so much credit for that is. They'll, they let me hold the brand very, very close the way I wanted to build it. They were like, Hey, we will do performance marketing. Of course we're not gonna like, it's, there's never a place where we're not gonna do performance marketing, but how do we embed the brand even in performances your job? And that's the challenge they gave me. And when I went back and realized that, hey, for a consumer. A consumer doesn't see a performance ad versus a brand ad. A Sundar doesn't know when he sees an even ad that, Hey, this is a performance marketing ad, or, Hey, this is a brand ad. He sees it and for him it's an ad at the end, and if I can marry that world together, then the impact will be far higher. And that's essentially what I ended up doing there. I, I still remember I did this bunch of performance marketing ads. We didn't have a lot of money by the way, and I hired this scrappy production. I was a bunch of young boys in Bangalore, literally got my founder's cabin empty for a day and I told the founder to screw off, let me use this. I need to shoot some commercials. Got a big ass green screen and uh, shot some 20 pieces of content for. Two and a half black rupees in in dollars. It's what? It's about $3,000 short, like 20 pieces of content with just one yellow block frame. And we got the model to wear a blue suit because blue was our color and we J, what we did was we just got him to hold a balloon. That was it. That was my only brand element. The balloon was the logo of the brand, and this guy's just holding a balloon and mouthing lines essentially that, Hey, it's 2023, you're still paying for healthcare. Join, even join even. Right? It was a very direct ad. But the overall composition felt like, Hey, this is refreshing. It's not like the same old performance ad that I'm used to seeing and you would not believe. I got like some 20 messages from different founders from B2B company founders. I got messages asking me, Hey, how the hell did you do this? This is so insane. Like, how did you even think of this? I'm like, this is the lowest hanging fruit. I didn't think at all. That's the thing. I just ensured that this is crappy enough and I wanted to have some brand codes built in, and everybody remembers the balloon now because it was such a weirder thing to see in an night. But that's one example of how you can marry brand with performance, right? Like the, the, the placement of it is in performance marketing channels, but the creative itself is a very, very brand first creative. And I feel like that's a language that people need to start understanding, especially founders. Especially marketers who are in like growth state startups.'cause honestly. Every model is applicable, right? Like so many copies will come. You can't, the only thing that will make you win is the brand.

Sundar: 17:00

Yeah. I actually think that you, you highlighted something that I see as an issue is just even calling it brand marketing versus performance marketing. I mean, it's all technically brand marketing to me, and even going deeper, just the product itself, right? You have these silos within product and marketing, but. Your marketing is part of your product and your product is a part of your marketing. And, and, and this disconnect, I think is what trips up a lot of founders because they're often, so I would say technical and product focus, but part of product market fit is the market part. Exactly. And you need to find market in marketing, right? So there's, there's a lot of these, these, you know, weird barriers that have come up.

Nikhil: 17:39

Yeah. And I think, again, like, so to cut you, there were no, like two of the best examples in what you just said. I think a Uber is one of the best examples of product marketing in the world. Like stuff like rainbow roots, right? The stuff that we used to do for the LGBTQIA plus community in the world, or stuff like Uber, puppies, Uber ice cream, like, pardon my French, it didn't get a shit in terms of trips, right? Like that's, that's not a revenue driver. But tomorrow, when somebody wants to, like somebody who's, say a transgender who wants to take a trip in India, they will feel so much safer in an Uber because they know that. They care. Or if somebody tomorrow wants to take their pet, uh, from one place to another, they will prefer Uber because they know they care. It's something as basic and banal as that. And on the other end, the greatest product marketing example, again, I feel probably hands down inarguably, is Spotify is wrapped, which is right now the flavor of the season. It's a product marketing thing. It's, it's got nothing to do with brand performance. All of those jargons, it's just like a beautiful piece of the product. And an in turn figured it out at some time, at some point in time. Right. And, and look at what it's become now. It's, it's a global sensation, but like all of that adds back to the brand. Right? All of that adds back to the value you hold when it comes to Spotify. You will probably end up buying the subscription to Spotify before you buy a subscription to any other, uh, like an Apple Music or an Amazon music or a YouTube music because you want to get like a wrapped thing at the end of the year. I think like all of those, like. These are all interconnected pieces. I don't know why people think of them in like silos. In fact, even by the way, I was the head of brand and I was literally writing sales scripts. I used to sit with the sales team and tell them how to talk. Like one of the principles I had was, Hey, we are not gonna sell on fear. Insurance is always sold on fear. We will differentiate ourselves on the back of, Hey, no fear mongering, no fear selling, no urgency tactics. Give the right information, give it, give the person time to decide, or something like very, very simple. What I did was there. When I came in, I said that, Hey, we're trying to build something in the service of healthcare. We're not in the business of healthcare. We're in the service of it. And what that means is we are from today onwards, gonna stop calling ev anybody, our customer. We are gonna call them members. And just that little flip of the switch completely changed the way sales was selling. And even though the, the, the members, the way they received it was really positive because for the first time ever. Somebody's not trying to extract money from them. Somebody's trying to build a relationship. In fact, we actually have Google reviews, literally where people have written that I love the fact that salespeople don't call me customer. And then it became a thing of pride for even the, the lowest salesperson became a thing of pride that he'd go. And so they'd go and talk to their friends and say that, Hey, this is how we treat our, you know, members. And it suddenly becomes a calling card for them, suddenly becomes a point of differentiation even at a personal level. And then everybody's a brand ambassador in your company, right? Everybody's going out and telling people about this. That's the way to build a brand, I would say.

Sundar: 20:41

Yeah. I love that. And actually a, a similar example is Kareem, which is Uber in the Middle East calls its drivers Captains. Captains, yeah. Right. They don't call them drivers, they don't call them supply, they call'em captains and Right. You can imagine the empowering it does for the internal team, but obviously as a driver to hear that you're a captain, you have this own autonomy and independence like that is very powerful stuff. So one thing I want to start, you know, hear from you is. Is you talk about two frameworks, uh, get to buy and hero hub hygiene. Let's start with get to buy. Uh, tell me a little bit more about the frameworks and and how you use them.

Nikhil: 21:16

Yeah, and, and as I told you, I'm usually not a very big framework guy. I am what you say, the, I'm the most stereotypical creative thinker who's unplanned as hell. And just will while walking, figure out an idea and then try and retrofit the strategy on top of it. But, um, like a few things that have really helped me, and, and again, I wanna call out a few people who've helped me, you know, understand things from that perspective. Uh, one is this person called Raul Marva, who was my first. I think my first boss, basically, uh, he was my boss in my agency and he told me the importance of this little thing called brief writing. And unfortunately, that that art has died now. Like nobody writes a good brief anymore, but way back in 2010 when I was a client servicing person, he had instructed every single creative person in the, in the agency. He was the, he was the head of the agency. Uh, and uh, he had instructed every single creative person in the agency to not start work until they get a written brief, which they like, uh, which gives them all the information. So Rahul kind of got me into the world of brief writing, and this get to by framework is actually a brief writing frame. And the other person I wanna call out is Sakhi. Sakhi Menen. She was our colleague in Uber. She was the head of branded Uber. She was, by the way, my client in my agency, she was a client at Coke. She actually got me into Uber. So I have a whole lot of thanks to give her in life. She's also my toughest client, like her briefs, like the briefs she used to write. They were, I would want to like freaking frame them on my wall. She was so bloody good with her brief writing, very to the point. Not boring, not over-explaining, not under explaining. And she had shown me these two frameworks. One was the get to Buy framework, the other is a think, feel, do framework. Very simple. Literally in six lines, your brief can be done. Um, and the get to buy framework is pretty simple. Get. Means your audience, who do you need to get? Two is essentially the action you need them to take. And by is, what strategy would you deploy for them to take that action? So for example, in the case of say Uber, it'll be, or Uber Autos, it'll be get young professionals who are value seekers to take a trip on Uber Auto by showing them how you don't have to haggle for prices anymore. That becomes a creative brief and just these three lines, if I give to a creative person, they'll figure out an idea. They'll figure out, okay, this is my audience. This is what I need them to do, and this is my USP. Or this is the core strategic driver of the communication that will help that person take that action. And this is a brand manager's job, right? It's not a creative person's job to figure out the strategy. The creative person's gonna build the creative so. And it is so difficult to write this. It's not even funny, like, because you, like, as human beings, you wanna write everything. But when you force yourself to write these, just like these three lines, be very, very specific, and it's make or break essentially. That's where the difficulty comes in. Uh, so this is the get to Buy framework. The other framework that I, so this is more from a, how do I say, an ROI performing kind of a framework. The other is an emotive framework, which is the think, feel, do framework. So. Again to a creative person. When you're giving a brief, just say you have to write that. When my piece of communication goes out, what do I want the audience to think? What do I audience, what do I want the audience to feel and what do I want the audience to do? So the do and the two are basically similar, but the thing in the field, like, uh, I want people to think that getting an auto on the streets of India is a huge issue. I want them to feel empowered with this new piece of. Product that is coming in their hands where they don't need to haggle on prices, and I just want them to take their first trip on Uber Auto and then we'll figure out where to go from there. So these two frameworks actually help you design a very easy to understand brief, uh, which will also ensure that your. Communication is absolutely on the money and absolutely on the strategic pillars that you've built on. So this is that, this is the creation framework. The hero of hygiene framework is actually a YouTube framework, which was, uh, released in 2012, uh, 12 years later. I still feel it's super relevant and it's a distribution framework. Uh, essentially what YouTube at that time said that whenever you create pieces of content, whenever you create communication, the way you distribute it should be in this hero hub hygiene model. And it's usually read top to bottom. So hygiene is essentially everyday communication that you will do. Uh, it's the more regular stuff, like a push notification, an emailer, an SMS, a WhatsApp blast stuff, or a social media post, et cetera. These are essentially everyday things that will give you a baseline. This will give you. Reasons to come back to a particular brand on a daily basis. Uh, this helps you also push that baseline up because the more consistent you do that, the more like and share and engagement will happen and hence your baseline will start going up. Hub are essentially episodic pieces of content, which are, imagine if you're buying a t-shirt, this is the medium size, this is the middle thing where. It can't be as regular as a hygiene piece of content, but it's also not that one big thing that you're doing somewhere in the middle, like an influencer campaign, for example. This is something that you schedule, say on a once a month or once a quarter kind of a basis. But what this does is this pushes up the baseline even further because you gotta do a little bit of a spark moment and that will push up the baseline. And then finally it's hero. That's, this is that one big thing that you'll do in the year. Uh, this is your main marquee campaign. This is, this is the Spotify wrapped moment, for example, right? This is where you put on, put in all your efforts, all your resources, all your money, which will basically really, really get everybody in the country talking about you. So if you kind of look at your distribution in this angle. A is very easy for somebody to understand. B also helps you calendarize everything and plan everything a little better because you know that, hey, here are my hub moments for the rest of the year. Here are my hygiene moments, or here are, here's my hero moment. So I can like plan them very, very strategically, ensure that the budget, the time, the resources are all aligned properly. And again, like give it the, give it the love that it deserves. Right? And, and we again, as marketers in today's day and age, know that. Content is king, but distribution's God, right? Mm-hmm. Like you know that you create the best piece of communication, but if you don't have a great distribution plan, it's as good as not creating anything. So I, I feel like a picture of these two help.

Sundar: 27:46

Yeah. And, and do the hero hub hygiene, do they have to be tied to each other? Can they be different strategies, different themes?

Nikhil: 27:52

I think they can be different themes, but they all need to be, of course, tied to the central brand narrative. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but they can be absolutely different from each other. That's okay. It's just to kind of ensure that. You are thinking about distribution when you're thinking about creation.

Sundar: 28:06

Right? Right. Okay. So that's, that's a, that's a good way to frame it. Right? So making sure like, Hey, you haven't just found, solved the one part. You also then have to get it and make sure your audience sees it. So, you know, we're, we're heading towards time. So there's one thing that I do wanna talk to you about, which is your, your interaction with the, with the elections and, and, and the BJB party. Yeah. At the agency. Um, obviously in the us, 2024 was an interesting year in the uc. Just the focus and in and, and how much both candidates went on podcasts and they realized, you know, at the end of the day, in a weird way, politics is marketing. And I think this is the first time people have realized that and accepted and probably will moving forward to really think about marketing plans. And they probably no doubt will we be using this hero hub hygiene model for how do they. You know, do elections for the next, uh, four years. But yeah. Talk to me about your experience, uh, with the India elections. Just like, you know, that, that's a very crazy story

Nikhil: 29:05

for sure. Yeah. Like, and the 2024 elections and what you just said actually made me feel a little bit like Nostradamus.'cause actually, if you go on my Instagram, I put this video. I think almost a year ago when I said that there is so much marketers can learn from politicians. It's, or, or the world of politics. It's unbelievable. And there are so many overlaps. So it's shameless plug, but I know my shit. Uh, so this was, um, actually had the good pleasure of working, uh, for two election campaigns. Uh, one was a state election, so how India works is India's not like a one nation, one election theory like the US does. India has assembly elections at a state level at different times, and then you have one big general election where the prime minister of the country is chosen and the state elections, the chief minister's kind of chosen. And I worked with the Bharti Genta party, the BJP, which is, uh, the current ruling, uh, government party in India. Uh, and first of all, disclaimer, I don't mean to start a political slug fest in your comments. I am not saying. I have allegiance to any party because I don't, so I worked with them in 2013. First of all, in the, in the Delhi elections, the Delhi, uh, assembly elections. A big, big moment because we, they also had this new entrant called the Armar Party that had come in. Um, and the win was completely, there was a very difficult election to win, and they, they lost. But I learned so much and, and there are so many things and I'll, I'll take you through some of those. And then I worked on the 2014 general elections, the, um, and that's the thing that they won. They, that's the first term that Mr. Arranged Moti, who's our, uh, our prime Minister and probably one of the tallest, biggest leaders on the planet right now. And I think there was so many interesting things that I learned while working with politicians. It's, it's unbelievable. It's a, I think my worldview completely changed 'cause I was. You know, when you are growing up, you, you're usually used to a sample size of, of, of homogeneity of, of you and your friends. And, and when I went to the election campaign, I realized India is so different and I understood the power of segmentation there. And the way politicians segment is nobody's no performance marketing can do the work they do. They would go to the level that, Hey, here's one state within that state. Here's one city within that city. Here's a district within that district. Here's one neighborhood within that neighborhood. Here are three blocks and these, these are the issues that those three blocks have. These are the issues that that district has. This is the issue that the neighborhood has, et cetera, and it's very different. There are neighborhoods, say for example, there'll be a certain racial majority in a certain neighborhood where the issues are very different. Literally two blocks away will be this ultrarich uh, compound where the issues are very different here. The people want free water and electricity. Their people want safety and security, or they're talking about economy and inflation. That's something they, they don't give a shit about. They need bloody running water in their house. Right. And, and that's the. One thing that I learned immediately when I entered politics, uh, political marketing, that segmentation and the power of understanding consumer at that deepest, darkest level is something only politics can teach you. I feel. Uh, the other thing that I learned was the power of being on top of trends and being actually experimental in nature, uh, in terms of what are the new things that you want to utilize, and again, understanding your consumer very well. So to give you an example, 2014. Uh, was the first time ever where digital advertising was utilized in politics in India and BJP went a step ahead and then they said, Hey, they strategize that if we are gonna come to power, we're only gonna come to power on the back of new voters. Because the old voters, they're all Congress lovers. They know they've made up their mind. Some of them will be on the fence. Some of them are Congress lovers. Some of them will be. So we can't bloody influence them by whatever we wanna do. It's the first time voter that's going to come in right now. And this 2014, you know, India's going through this vibrant change. Young people are raring to go there, bloody changing the country. If we can influence them, that'll be it. And their entire strategy of that was to do, to do this through mobile advertising and through mobile marketing.'cause they knew that every youngster has their, has their own mobile phone. And every youngster is looking at things very differently. Sundar is probably looking at, uh, say, beaches and the holidays he wants to take versus Nikhil is probably only looking at music. And how do I reach both of them very differently is something that only a mobile phone can do because mass marketing won't work there. Um, and that's something that they deployed and did it like nobody's business. They would change things like on the fly. Uh, so that's something that I learned really, really interestingly with them. Uh, third, I learned the power of resilience and the power of persistence and the power of being nimble. I think. The amount of nimbleness that a politician shows. I haven't seen it everywhere. I, I still remember once what happened was I got a call at 1145 in the night by a politic, I won't name the politician, but this is one of the biggest politicians in the country. Till date. He's actually a, a minister in Mo, Mr. Moise cabinet, and I'm 23 years of age, right? I'm not gonna not take someone like that person's call. No matter what time he calls me. He calls me at 1145. I see the number flashing, and, and for the, for a second, I'm like, what the hell? Why is. This huge person calling me 1145 and I'm like, hi, sir. Yes. Uh, what, uh, what's up? I didn't say WhatsApp, but I was like, what's happening? Uh, and and he was like, so we've got news that tomorrow the prices of onions are gonna go through the roof because some shit has happened in terms of supply not reaching the, uh, the mdi where essentially MDI is this term where it's like the market where. First vegetables come in, then they cannot distribute, uh, to retail. Um, so there's some issue in supply happening there, and the prices of onions are gonna go through the roof tomorrow. It's only gonna be there for like two, three days. So we need to create a campaign about how the current regime can't even figure out, you know, basic amenities like onions. Great idea. The screw up was, is coming at 12:00 AM now, and he's like, dude, we have to take the campaign live by 10:00 AM in the morning anyhow. I'm like, okay, sir. Of course. Can't say no to you. Uh, and I called up my, uh, copywriter, who luckily used to say, stay 10 minutes away from my house, who's also one of my best friends since childhood. Uh, we kind of started working the agency together so him I could like, take my own, uh, Levis with, and I called him. I'm like, Hey dude, I'm coming down in like 10 minutes. Get your ass down. I don't care what you're doing. Get your ass down in 10 minutes. I'm like, oh. And he's like, okay. We're young, we're not married. We roam the roam, the streets of Delhi in the night. We're all cool. So he comes down and I call up my designer who used to stay like almost 30, 40 minutes away from where I was staying, who's not my friend. So I begged and pleaded, uh, with him like, Hey, this has to be done. Let's, I'm sorry I'm doing this to you, but let's, I'm come, I'm gonna, I'm coming to pick you up. You're not gonna do any, don't worry. You don't have to spend any money to like figure out travel, et cetera. I went and picked him up. All of this has taken an hour and a half or so and I reached the PJP office by 2:00 AM and I'm ex, and I'm expecting when I go in there, I literally will have to open

the doors because it's 2: 36:08

00 AM Nobody's gonna be there. Every single person of that party was still there and they were fresher than I was. And these are 60, 70-year-old people. And I'm 23. I still, I still am yawning. And these guys are like rearing to go because they found out one issue that they can completely blow of proportion in the next three days.

We sit down at 3: 36:26

00 AM till 8:00 AM 9:00 AM we work out the creatives and these guys are like brainstorming with us. It's insane. They're brainstorming lines, they're workshopping communication with us sometimes literally giving us the idea. And, uh, we figure out everything by 8:39 AM And now here's the kicker with politics in India, you can't just, like, if you create, so you can't just like upload it on Facebook and start running the ad. No, no, no, no. That's not how it happens. You have to go to the election commission. And get every single ad approved. And the election commission in India is living in the 1950s because they can't look at soft copies. You have to take hard freaking copies. So I've created 20 banners and I have to take a printout of those 20 banners, a black and white printout for a color banner. I don't know why, but, and you have to show them every website that this is gonna be on. So imagine I'm like basically chopping up screenshots and now I have this 500 page booklet. And I have to go to the election commission at 9:00 AM so that I reach there before anybody else does. I go give, you know, 500 bucks to the, to the guard and be like, sir, like, let me go first. And I go and get every single paper signed, come back by 9

45, 10: 37:39

00 AM camping goes live. That's how they work. And it's. I don't think any marketer or any person, like any founder works like this, right? Politicians work like idiots. Um, because this is make or break, right? Like you're, you're getting the chance to run a country. It's huge. There, there, there can be nothing bigger than that. So yeah, those kind of things I learned a lot and, and there's so much that marketers can learn. Marketers can understand the power of segmentation. Marketers can understand how to understand your consumers to that level, marketers can understand how to experiment with new formats, how to experiment with new technologies, how to experiment with new placements and, and new media opportunities. And lastly, marketers can also understand how fast you need to have that response, uh, you know, mechanism built in.'cause the moment they understand something's not working, they'll change it to another, Hey, onion's not working. Let's change it to women's safety. Women's safety is not working. Let's change it to the gas prices or inflation. Stuff like that, right? So they're very, very quick on their feet in terms of how to build a narrative.

Sundar: 38:38

I love that example. And, and the cool thing is it's, you know, applicable worldwide, right? Politics run the same way in every country. Um, and mar marketing too, right? I think the, again, like marketing, the frameworks and theories and concepts are the same, and people just want to be told how you can solve their problem. Uh, and so I, I love that you can apply this to everything. Well, yeah, I know

Nikhil: 39:01

we're at time, but the only thing is it. I kind of knew a little bit about this, that I think we've made marketing more complex than it needs to be.

Sundar: 39:09

Mm-hmm.

Nikhil: 39:09

Mm-hmm. Um, if you go back to the golden days of advertising, the eighties, the nineties, at least for me, they were the golden days because, you know, we had some of the most iconic campaigns. Campaigns that we still remember, reference, use them in culture. Hum. The, you know, hum the jingles off. They were based on only two principles at the end of the day. They were just two things. One. Is that they spent a lot of time in understanding the audience. You go to any creative director from an Ogilvy, from a, from a Macan, all those big BBDO, those big agencies you go to, any national creative director who say spent 30 years in advertising, they will tell you that the only thing they did was just go out on the streets and talk to people. That's all they did, and we now just basically have perplexity. We've got Google to figure out our research on. But nothing can beat it. Sitting in front of a person and understanding, Hey, what do you really do and why do you do it? So that's one thing that they did really, really well. They understood the consumer. The other is they understood emotions and the, and the culture and the overall context in which they are in. And all marketers need to do was just, you know, bridge that gap. And that's, that was why some of the most iconic campaigns are some of the simplest ones, because they hit you at a very, very primal level. I think we've lost that, right? Like I don't think in the last five years, I can tell you one iconic campaign, which is probably as iconic as. As the Cadbury k ka campaign. Mm-hmm. Or the Happiness Campaign by, by Coke or Share a Coke or, or even the cola wars that happened in the late, uh, nineties, early two thousands. Right. I don't think I can remember a single campaign that's gone as iconic as, as household as that. Even basic things like jingles, you know, like, I miss, I'm outta the bag. Right. I, I miss jingles. I, I miss. Tracks that I could hum, which were like literally advertising. Uh, and uh, I think those little like human elements, I really wish come back 'cause yeah, that's, that's why the next generation will come in, I feel.

Sundar: 41:12

Yeah. And I have a feeling they will, you know, we'll, we'll see if we can revisit this podcast and see what happens. But actually really quick, you know, before we go on the get to buy or even any of the frameworks, you know, there's always this idea that, you know, data science is disconnected from. But actually like the get to buy is perfect for data scientists, right? Like we also wanna understand who should we be looking at to ensure it works? So what audience, what action, right? Even in an experiment. Having the right primary metric is important. So, you know, we need to stop thinking about these as, as, as two different things. In fact, everybody wins when you have alignment on I get to a buy and things like that. So, well, HIL, I think we could keep going for, for hours. I, I love the passion that you bring to this. I, I love your, uh, experiences and, you know, and it's cool that you know, all of these things that you've shared are, you know. Things that you can learn across the world. So thank you for coming on it. It's been a pleasure talking to you. And then, yeah, hope we get to do this again soon.

Nikhil: 42:09

Of course. Yeah. Pleasure's all mine. Can't, uh, can't wait to see your comments section and how it, uh, how, how the wars happened there. Yeah. But, uh, I've had the best time and always a pleasure to over to you some. Yeah. Thank you Nico. Thanks

Sundar: 42:21

for tuning into experimental. If today's insights sparked new ideas or made you feel like a smarter marketer, consider leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform. It really helped support the show. For more in-depth discussions and resources, visit experimental.beehive.com. Until next time, be curious and stay experimental.