Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

22 years and counting in the advertising and marketing industry. Worked across almost 100 brands, including McDonald's, Wonderla, ANSR, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, P&G, Diageo, etc., in countries like Kenya, Indonesia, Ghana, Nigeria, and India.

Q2. How are factors like technological advancements, increasing regulatory pressures for sustainability, and shifting consumer preferences influencing the growth of marketing systems?

GenAI and agentic AI has created quite a buzz - much dust has been raised. Once it settles, we will be able to figure out where things stand. However, based on previous disruptions, I can make some small points.

• Agentic AI will benefit process-driven businesses and business flows.
• Gen AI will benefit brands that love moment marketing and can create interesting marketing workflows—again, this would require some clarity in terms of processes and good flexibility.

Brands that are risk averse or that take themselves too seriously will not benefit from these technologies at once.

Q3. How might emerging technologies like blockchain or enhanced privacy-preserving analytics tools shape this sector?

1P data will drive the future. As paid advertising becomes more and more like traditional advertising, CRM and 1P data (permission-based, of course) will change the game.

Q4. What future trends are anticipated in the localisation of marketing efforts?

With Gen AI building up to 1 to 1 comms, I expect localisations and personalisation to be turbo charged.

Combine this with good attribution; my feeling is - data-driven marketing will come off age.

With good CRMs, we were always able to target one cohort and technically one person—now, we can craft a message to an audience of one across language, region, product, etc.

Q5. Who are the leading players in the marketing automation market, and what unique features do their platforms offer?

I have not seen any unique offerings across the players - even if someone did - they would be copied by the next sprint. This leaves everyone very price conscious. The key differentiation as always is distribution.

The big players in this space are:

• Hubspot (recently launched in India)
• Zoho
• Salesforce etc

One last point - I feel email will make a huge comeback as the greatest ally in the marketers' toolbox.

Q6. What opportunities and challenges do interactive and real-time marketing strategies open up for personalised marketing and customer engagement?

Opportunities

Being able to react in real-time with a personalized message based on any one of the 100s of cues

Threats

Hallucinations and any number of unknown brand unsafe communication snafus (remember the Canadian airline case?)

Q7. If you were an investor looking at companies within the space, what critical question would you pose to their senior management?

• How are you protecting client data?
• How can you enable client's personalisation efforts while protecting client data?
• How are you assuring a low CAC with a high LTV?
• How can you scale-up your business?
• How are you convincing the CMO to sign up when you know this will decrease his/ her team strength?