The National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai has one of the finest and largest auditoriums in India. This is where maestros of music such as Zubin Mehta perform, when they visit India, and the acoustics are marvellous. Last week though, NCPA saw a packed audience listening to a very different sort of performance. This was a rare dialogue between two icons of India – veteran advertising man Piyush Pandey and Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan. They spoke about a range of topics in marketing and advertising. The occasion was the launch of Pandeymonium , Piyush Pandey’s book on his experiences.

Veterans are nervous Seated quietly in a nice corner of NCPA, I enjoyed listening to this spontaneous dialogue, and one particular segment of their conversation stayed with me. Both Amitabh Bachchan and Piyush Pandey confessed that, while they are veterans, they are still nervous before they begin their work. Amitabh told us that he is always nervous before he begins the shoot of a movie or an advertisement film. Because every role is different, he wants to get under the skin of the role and deliver his dialogues perfectly. And he can never be absolutely certain that this will happen without that extra bit of effort and magic. However, his nervousness vanishes completely once the camera switches on. Thereafter, he is the supremely confident, experienced actor. Think of Sholay , or Amar Akbar Antony , or the more recent and delightful Piku .

Similarly, Piyush Pandey also shared his moments of nervousness, behind the camera, or while crafting the story of an advertisement. Speaking with his customary smile and flourish, he conveyed the nervousness that accompanies the quest for creating a super story, and a super advertisement. But once he has finalised the storyline and the shoot begins, Piyush is as confident as Amitabh Bachchan. That is why he has delivered advertisements as memorable as Fevicol, Cadbury and the Gujarat Tourism campaign.

Marketers too should be nervous Listening to Amitabh Bachchan and Piyush Pandey, it struck me that all of us who aspire to be excellent marketers should also stay perennially nervous, before we make our leaps of confidence. Behind our marketing swagger and vision should always be a touch of nerves, the constant anxiety to deliver a masterpiece. The need for such preparatory nervousness is present in many professions, but I think it takes centre-stage in marketing for many important reasons that constantly surround our profession. Here are just three factors I have looked at, that demand nervousness from every marketer.

The ever-changing customer If there is one thing that should give every marketer a touch of extreme nerves, it is that our customer is ever changing. It is therefore never possible to say that we have fully understood our customer, her current and future needs. Changes in customer behaviour often outpace marketers by a mile. This explains why so many famous brands, which have perhaps not been nervous enough, such as Kodak, Nokia and Orkut, have fallen out of favour very quickly and have virtually disappeared.

A doctor may not face this challenge of constant change as he addresses the human body, which you will agree has changed relatively little over the past century – for instance, all humans still have two eyes, 10 fingers, and one brain, which was the exact case several thousand years ago. But a marketer must address a far more mercurial consumer, whose needs constantly change, who responds both rationally and emotionally, and often behaves entirely irrationally and on impulse. So you can never be entirely sure how this consumer will respond to your new product launch, or to the new television film that you have pinned all your hopes on. If this is not cause for nervousness, then what is?

The digital transformation Just when modern marketers thought they had mastered the art of how exactly to reach the consumer – through media such as television and radio and newspapers – the world of digital has come along and spoiled this cosy little party. The digital world, with its search engines, social media and e-commerce, has swamped marketers with its reach, appeal and hyperactive presence. Think of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal – it is an endless digital maze out there. Marketers are struggling to understand this world fully, in the meanwhile digital has already begun morphing yet again.

This is good reason for every marketer to be nervous , because digital is not just another small change – it has transformed our world hugely, and forever. It has created the “connected consumer”, a person who never existed until a few years ago. We need to be nervous about digital, because we have to understand how exactly this new elephant that has appeared on our block is going to impact our profession. At this point, my sense is that most marketers, like the proverbial blind men, are feeling various parts of this digital elephant and imagining it accordingly. This will lead to a wrong picture of the animal, which is cause for intense nervousness once again.

Marketers are generally not nervous about competitors whom they know well, and have competed with in the past.

New and unknown competitors However, in today’s world, there are new and unknown competitors emerging, which are disrupting markets, and demand a new nervousness. Take FMCG products in India. The time-tested marketers of Hindustan Unilever, P&G, Nestle, Britannia and Tata Tea know each other’s products and marketplace strategies fairly well.

In this predictable world, the emergence of two very different and relatively unknown players, ITC and Patanjali, has changed the landscape completely.

Even as our marketers were busy figuring out ITC and its methods, Baba Ramdev and his Patanjali exploded on the scene with an entirely different set of value propositions.

There are similar competitive developments in so many other product and service categories. Marketers of beverages have seen new offerings such as Paper Boat, Amul Chaas (spiced buttermilk) and Amma mineral water enter their turf. Marketers of furniture in India have to contend with exotic names such as Urban Ladder and Pepperfry, as well as the potential advent of Ikea. The taxi industry has to learn to compete with Uber and Ola, which have disrupted all existing paradigms of a taxi ride.

Marketers should be anxious about these relatively unknown and aggressive competitors, who are bent on bringing about disruptive transformation in their respective industries. When you do not know your enemies well, you have to remain very nervous until you have crafted the right marketing strategies to compete with them, and outwit them.

In conclusion, I would like to submit that just these three powerful forces — the ever changing consumer, the digital transformation, and disruptive new competitors — are adequate to demand extreme nervousness from every modern marketer. Therefore, when Amitabh Bachchan and Piyush Pandey urge us to “stay nervous” if we wish to deliver excellence every single day, we should take their advice to heart. Marketers should stay nervous, very nervous.

HARISH BHAT IS MEMBER, GROUP EXECUTIVE COUNCIL, TATA SONS

Harish Bhat is author of Tata Log: Eight modern stories from a timeless institution. These are his personal views. bhatharish@hotmail.com

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