Episode 192 / Mohit Arora / Mars / Global Digital Marketing Lead
Podcast: How to Tackle the Ambiguity of Modern Marketing
Mohit Arora is the Global Digital Marketing Lead for Mars’ Petcare Nutrition arm. A mechanical engineer with a penchant for the arts and philosophy, he made a few career changes before landing in CPG marketing. He shared with us how running a strong, smart process requires an engineering brain, but also how his other passions influence his approach to digital marketing.
Mohit’s Shiny New Object is winning in ambiguity in the context of modern marketing. Good marketing leaders need to combine discipline with long and short-term outcome analysis to face the ongoing changes in marketing and the fact that technology now offers us almost too many options.
Technology is making choice difficult
In data driven modern marketing, senior leaders often don’t know what to choose among a huge variety of options, according to Mohit. Whether using Meta for Facebook ads or focusing on influencer marketing, the key is to always refer back to the original objectives and use mental discipline to single out the best solutions for your brand.
Use a question compass to identify the best strategies for your plan
Instead of constantly trying new things without a good strategy, Mohit proposes that marketers ask questions that lead them to single out the best one. He calls this a question compass – a few questions already planned in, before a pitching meeting, which will allow him to see whether his objectives can be met by what is being proposed. He also asks himself whether the initiative will add incremental value and he uses the “Versus rule” – “will this add value versus what I’m currently doing anyway?”
Innovation needs to be split between protecting the core and disrupting the future
Each of these two areas of focus needs to have its own timeframe of planning, its own experts and its own budgets in every organisation. The team looking at core growth has a short time span of 1-2 years, whereas the disruptors look to what will be relevant in 3 years and beyond. This helps leaders make choices among too many available options, too – some marketing solutions will solve problems appearing in the immediate future, while others solve for the long term.
Listen to Mohit’s advice on dealing with overwhelm, some more of his top marketing tips, and his favourite books, on the latest podcast episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:03
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly podcast about the future of the marketing and advertising industry. Basically, every week I get to speak to someone exciting, pretty senior from the industry about what they think their vision for the future of the industry is. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Mohit Arora, who is global digital marketing lead for Mars pet nutrition and a client of ours. So I have to be a bit nicer than usual, maybe behave myself, but could you please introduce yourself and what you do to the audience?
Mohit Arora 0:43
Hey, thanks. Thank you, Tom. Thank you for having me on the call. And yeah, so I'm a mechanical engineer, who has a leaning for the arts and philosophy. And then that's, that's what kind of got me a little rattled, or three years into engineering on whether I'm on the right path, made a jump to get an MBA. I've been in CPG marketing ever since. That's been 15 years now and been enjoying every bit of it. Currently, as you said, I'm the global digital marketing lead for Mars, pet nutrition business. And my career has been largely on brands, then portfolio of brands, head of marketing, and now I'm on a global role. It's a big title. Broadly, what I do within this is with other members in the team, try to stitch up, try to work towards a smart data strategy for how we want to build our business. And then the other piece is on a very interesting modern marketing innovation pipeline, the data driven marketing pipeline, broadly getting ideas from outside in getting a bunch of people together, figuring out globally big transformation ideas, and letting them run through. So that's still on me in my background.
Tom Ollerton 2:04
Right, I need to understand the meeting point between mechanical engineering and philosophy. So now surely, surely that isn't pet nutrition marketing.
Mohit Arora 2:16
No, that's me being an Indian and my parents being smart enough when I was younger, in graduation or before. So I've always had a keen heart for literature. And my father is an engineer. And then somehow, I also enjoyed a bit of science. So the options I gave him was, after I finished my schooling, I pick up the sciences or I take up literature, he published literature for me, he said yeah, but you won't make any money. And then when I become a little bigger, I realize I can't do this, I can't get into a factory and work. It's not me. And that's the change then.
Tom Ollerton 2:54
Right. So and I'm curious to know, which bits of philosophy literature and mechanical engineering evidence themselves in your work on a daily basis?
Mohit Arora 3:07
So a lot of engineering actually, the whole process piece, you know, I mean, running a strong smart process is a fair bit of an engineering brain. I mean, so I can lean back on that quite a bit. Philosophy? Consumers. So I mean, I really liked the fact that we, it's a cliche, but true for most marketers, when they love what they do, they like to understand and see how you change behavior. I think philosophy kind of touches some of that and sort of the art. So yeah.
Tom Ollerton 3:46
So across that career, and with this role, you're talking about some stuff like big transformation, data strategy, data driven marketing pipeline, which I'm privy to from Mars Petcare, for obvious reasons. But that's a lot. That's a lot of brands, a lot of markets, there's a lot of channels, that's a lot of different audiences. How do you deal with the guaranteed overwhelm, that it's going to strike you from time to time?
Mohit Arora 4:15
Yeah, no, that does happen. And I become better on this. So over the years, really, so I took a lot more on than before. I use three things, which work well, for me, it was like magic actually. And they work probably in steps. So music is the simplest and the easiest one. I use a lot of that, it helps me concentrate, focus, remove the chatter. I work well, whether it's instrumental music at the background, and I need to do some long thinking. I meditate. So that's the one which I've picked up around 10 years back and it's really helped a lot to settle me down. It calms you and helps to see the big picture, whichever formulation you pick up, I strongly recommend spending some time to give to yourself and getting some silence inside is a big one. So, meditation works for me. The third, which I've used recently, around the last two, three years, and I wonder why I hadn't used this before, is having a life coach. Now, now, that's a big one, right. But I'm broadly using the word life coach for having either a spiritual guru having belief in certain philosophies or actual practitioner, an expert who helps you. Now unpack that for you. So a life coach helps you take or it takes you a long view, you start looking at life, not just for what's going to be tomorrow, what's the next big presentation will look like? It helps you to step back, think about your values and principles and see, how am I gonna what I want to do with my life, five to 10 years ahead, so. So it's a big one, it's helped me and I would strongly recommend to others, think of it in one form or the other. And try to get that long view, you don't get solvent after that job.
Tom Ollerton 6:14
So can you give me an example of one of your values and your principles?
Mohit Arora 6:19
So I have two or three, which, which really helped me make choices. One is, I'm a sucker for creativity. So anything which makes a dent in the universe, something which is off pattern, but makes sense if you make that lateral jump? So that was right from childhood. So from the books I read to, to work I do now is one of them. It's not a typical value, people talk about others, but this is a big one for me. And it's helped me work through and the other is genuinely being mutual and making a difference. I mean, the more I grow, I realize, yeah, I've been blessed. And you know, it's a humbling experience of growing from where I was to where I am now. So. So I do genuinely look at opportunities to make a difference in any form, to friends, family work.
Tom Ollerton 7:18
So coming back from your long term ambitions, and in the very much in the short term, what is the top marketing tip that you find yourself applying or sharing most often.
Mohit Arora 7:33
So this one's possibly thinking people would know quite a bit on this that I shared anyhow, it was a penny dropped for me. It was Byron Sharp's "Laws of growth", the book, right, and there was this one piece, which I kind of hold, as a marketing tip, for any kind of campaign media content I work on, which is on put your maximum effort on driving your penetration and reaching out to category audiences, make that your primary growth driver. And I love the way he has again and again, both in the book. And then he's worked with us as an organization, showing how your light users and your ultra light users, in fact, make the Pareto of the consumers annually, that that buy your brand. I remember one shot which I always use as an example for anyone to put us I mean, I didn't believe in this, I was always a big believer in you know, there's loyalty, there's all the other stuff that you need to do. But this chart sticks to me is around Coke. And he talks about how, at least as the data he shares in the US, more than 90% of the users who bought Coke in that particular year when he's done the checking happened to be people who have consumed Coke once or twice in the whole year. So well. So yeah, so I'm not saying just just go off the reach. But posts that I've always, always kept in mind. Reaching out of your category is a primary growth driver and you can build on the artificial.
Tom Ollerton 9:14
So Byron Sharp is definitely the most quoted person in about 200 episodes of this podcast. Which is interesting in its own right, and congrats to Byron. But if everyone and I mean, almost everyone quotes him. Everyone's doing it. Doesn't that level the playing fields?
Mohit Arora 9:42
No, I mean, it doesn't work like that. But the way it works is there's a category and there are consumers who are within it. So growth will come from people. People who haven't tried. So incremental growth to be more specific, not just growth. So growth will also come from people who are buying your product and you upgrade them, or drive frequency of purchase, the incrementality will come from people who haven't bought. So that's I think it's also logical somewhere in my head. But the piece I'll also share, people quote this, but I don't know how many of us including me, at times, follow it through very strongly so. So that, that probably might be one reason why we have a lot about this, and it doesn't get applied as much.
Tom Ollerton 10:33
Maybe. So I would love to stay on this. But we now need to move on to your shiny new object, which is very long, but I'm going to read it out as you sent it to me, and I appreciate you, I appreciate you doing that. But your shiny object is winning in ambiguity in the context of modern marketing. So I know what all of those words mean individually, but together, why is that your shiny new object? And can you cast some light on that, please?
Mohit Arora 11:01
Yeah, so I thought on this, what am i obsessed with of late and should talk about so. So I am currently with the role I play the last three years. So recency makes an impact. So I've been on a digital transformation for Mars, and in the role that I play, I've seen it quite keenly from close quarters. And when I talk to my colleagues or read stuff up, I mean, there's this whole piece, which keeps coming back: the problem statement and ambiguity, right. So I think it's a problem of two things. It's a problem of many choices. And generally, there are lots of noise, lots of choices in media content in tech, and to make things worse for us, as marketers is changing every six months. So that's one which makes it difficult to manage. The other is the subject matter expertise. This whole piece in which I think it's becoming a lot more expert, the marketing field. So the new is very new. At times, it's too technical. It is expert, it's deep. So things like clean rooms, identity solutions. So I think it's leading to some digital divide in the industry, so you're getting subject matter experts who work inside, I mean, and the silos which are coming in. So I think these are two places, or two pieces, which underline the whole winning in ambiguity. So this, this causes the ambiguity. And then I have, over the period of the last three years, personally felt two things which have really helped me hack through it. So I wanted to talk about those two.
Tom Ollerton 12:39
So just one point that always charges me, I haven't actually been in industry that long, I started very late in life. And I've been around for 14 years, something like that. And I have constantly heard one of your phrases all the way through which everything's constantly changing. And it kind of jars with me because, yeah, yes, it is. There's always new thing, because it's essentially people trying to sell you new things, right? As well as new behaviors. But doesn't "new" become a constant, as opposed to this thing, like, oh, everything's changing so quickly, and everyone seems so flustered about it?
Mohit Arora 13:19
I tell you what happens. I'll give you the honest answer on big organizations. So when things change too quickly, so currently, I mean, COVID didn't help. There was a consumer shift, which happened. I mean, I won't show, I won't paint the picture of how the changes happened. But this consumer and media and the privacy of changing stuff again, so there's a fair bit of change. Now, I agree to change is constant, but in a larger organization, how do you then scale? How do you scale a good solution rapidly across the business? And how do you make some choices if there's so many different guys coming in selling their way to new, Tom? So I think it's a genuine problem. And that's the reason you hear us cry so much about it. It somewhere becomes difficult on just too many people coming in and sharing this makes sense for the future. This makes sense. Yeah, consumer doesn't change. So I mean, broadly, consumer behavior does not change, it makes some changes, jumps and changes occasionally, and as I said, COVID was one of them, which shifted people a lot more online, both consumption and commerce. But yeah, I think the problem is that technology is giving it one too many options and then as an organization as a senior leadership, you at times don't know what to go after. So that's that's my take.
Tom Ollerton 14:38
Yeah, I can see that as a challenge and to be on my honest answer as well. I am one of those suppliers. I am part of the problem right? I want to get into big brands and share our solution with the complete belief that it's right for most people, but then there's you know, there's another 100 Toms or teenagers or whatever, trying to do exactly the same thing. So it's interesting to hear from your point of view, but anyway, I cut you off. So you talked about the two silos?
Mohit Arora 15:04
Yeah. So no, I'm saying, I think there are two hacks in my head and one I use very often it's a, it's one you can use on an individual level. So to reduce the number of choices, I try to use a mental model or discipline. And I'm labeling. What I'm going to talk about is question compass. I can filter an element, it's an elimination technique. So if there are, if there are 15 different people coming in and sharing, you know, here is a really cool, different way of looking at Dynamic Content optimization, it only looks at social, if someone else comes with a new idea. So if a bunch of people coming with new data driven technology, emerging platform options, I use what I'm calling a question compass. It just put a few questions in my head before I start any of these conversations, either either with the new person who's pitching in or even on a campaign, which is kicked off or reviews, my three questions and yours could be different. So but the three questions I asked myself, always with the discipline is, is what the person sharing going to solve against my stated goal in key outcomes for this project? Can the impact from it be measured, because that's another place where it might sound like it's gonna solve, but it's not being measured, and will it really add incremental value, versus what I'm currently doing? So so I use that as a filter as my question compass. The trick I am trying to share out with you and your audience is keep going back to initial plan, and the outcomes you're wanting to reach to. Because more than once, in my own personal experience, if you do end up, you do end up looking at options, which might not answer that question. A good analogy is your shopping list. When you go to a mall, a shopping mall? And if you're a shopaholic, right, so you have limited money and time, you want to make sure you get to the right stuff, do you keep a list of things you had to buy in front of you while walking across the store? So it helps me personally. And it's the discipline more than the mental model. It's something people have used often. But that's helped me on the problem of many choices.
Tom Ollerton 17:23
That is so interesting to me. I'm proud to be a sales guy, that's largely my function in the business. And those questions are so exciting. Is this going to solve the key outcomes? Every salesperson is gonna say yes or no. Can it be measured? Certainly in digital, you'd hope so.
Mohit Arora 17:41
It's not true. So, let's take example. So take big influencers. Yeah. And give me an example which you want to take on this. So I can help you with this a little better with an example. In a second, why would you need to ask him for me it helps but we could do that thought experiment right. So you need to first be very clear on what you want to do with your campaign. So is it a campaign which is driving relevance and or purpose shift or a action which is direct sales? Now you need to see whether say influencers help in solving that particular problem? You might say yes, they do. I mean, you have this whole social media influencers who and there's a fair amount of them who end up pushing sales. Can their impact be measured? For CPG it becomes a little more difficult to measure influencers because if you look at it, say I use an influencer... it is getting better now, but I think it is still difficult to measure exactly what sales value you got based on the person's influence. The way we generally do it is probably more input led, we look at what's the incremental reach, if it's a celebrity or someone we're getting how many people he's in his face. So it does not always clearly have a measurement, and help me if you have one on influencers, which which we currently don't, especially if it's to do with moving a top funnel action that you want to do with your brand. And the kicker is the versus question. So versus what you're already doing. How and where does it add value? So I get my clarity comes in there. I get an answer and then I push whether that answer really adds back or not.
Tom Ollerton 20:04
I'm so tempted to still weigh in on that with my point. But I have to remember that we're doing a podcast and not a conversation between our two businesses, but loosely on that one, from the influencer's perspective, it's obviously all down to objective, right? If you're trying to, if it's bottom of funnel, and it's sales, then I know it's a couponing. Obviously, we've seen Tiktok shopping emerge at some point, you know, so, like, Meta, whatever it is, that's relatively easy. And obviously, you can measure like site views or quality site visits. But I think the interesting thing on top of the funnel is the completion rate of that content. So to your point, if you weren't doing it, then you would, you'd have your content, you'd have your ads, whatever they would be without influencers so. But whatever it is, we won't get into the detail of what's in your ads, you know that. The audience can imagine that. Whereas does an influencer, increase the view through rate, does it increase the view completion rate, because that is attention. And attention on the brand, I believe increases the likelihood of trial, the likelihood of trial, increases the penetration going all the way back to Byron Sharp. So within an influencer's perspective, I think you can measure it all the way through the funnel.
Mohit Arora 21:18
The problem we have with and we begin the discussion, but if I was to just close on that quickly, I think the before piece on view through rate leading. Yeah. So whether you truly should be equal to engagement? I guess not, I think you make a good point. So I hear you on that one.
Tom Ollerton 21:38
But I enjoyed that. I was like, that was a good little exercise. So I think we two hacks. So we've done the question commerce, which is excellent. What is the other one?
Mohit Arora 21:47
So this is an organization level, not for the individual, I think, in some organizations are doing this and others aren't. But I think the innovation on your data driven marketing or modern day marketing, I think needs to be split into two groups. And it goes back to the problem statement, I spoke about problem, many choices. And I spoke about this whole fact that there are subject matter experts and their silos coming up, right. So keeping that in mind, the two groups would be I mean, broadly, they should be one team, a separate team, which is protecting the core, which is looking at one or two years ahead. And that's pretty much it, they don't look further ahead. And then the other who disrupts the future, who looks three years and further up the horizon. From a timeframe perspective, that double click on the face. Now, each of these groups should have different experts. And that's what I think we tend to miss out, so different experts, a different budget holders and KPIs to what success looks like. And this will help if you can kind of split it between the time horizon it kind of solves in a big, big way. Amongst all the choices you have some of them answer very well, on the one to two year horizon, others answer better three years plus. So a good example is probably looking at, I don't know, you're delivering addressable content with DCO could be protect the core and something to do, or anything to do with a good fun word meta. So creating an experience of managing a virtual pair on Metaverse could be something which has to do with disrupting the future so, so time horizon, I have a big belief that the budget plays a big role. So how do we on protecting the core? How does the budget because it probably is a part of your yearly p&l, but when you look at this the sub the future, you need to look at that budget as a CapEx and it will give it as an organization depending on how hungry you are for this recipe in the future, two to three year horizon. And then and then not say, and within that, I mean, the way I would, I would kind of do the KPI sales. To take the core I would look at sales and ROI, evidence based on who we are as an organization. And when it comes to disrupting the future, I would say why not look at a different KPI which is looking at the overall cost of all the tests that you have done in those two, three years. And and the incremental sales those, those particular projects have got you and see whether it nets out or not. So rather than picking each project and wanting to give it a attribution to sales immediately, so so there's a budget play, there is a time horizon play, which will help with splitting it and on the second question which I problem I put in on my you know, the statement I'm being at which was subject matter expert in silos, I think different teams, you need different resource. So in the first case of protecting the core, yes, the organization team, the marketing teams, your agency, your JV partners. When it comes to the disrupting the future. You need to then look at probably one or two people from within the organization who are experts on broad pay funds and look actively for partnerships outside and external consultants to help you sort that out. And that to my head helps a lot in making sure the right people answering the right questions.
Tom Ollerton 25:17
So that's something that came to mind when you were sharing that point was Jeff Bezos said probably quite a long time ago now. But it always comes back to me, he said that you stopped thinking about what will change Amazon and start focusing on what won't and for them, it's people want cheaper stuff, and they want it quicker, and they want a great experience, but it doesn't make any version of the future, Metaverse, or remotely, in person, whatever it is, those things aren't going to change. No one's gonna really want to be harder or more expensive, or, or slower. And so all their innovations centered around that. So I wondered, does that kind of thinking get applied to the way that you remove ambiguity from the market?
Mohit Arora 26:05
So the trouble with that is, what if we say, let's, let's take that forwards. Also, in the Jeff Bezos example, if someone says, let's, let's see how Metaverse can solve for the problem of conversion, and getting engaging people and leading them onto the portal and sales, you might not you A, the problem of you have the right set of people working on it, then. And as I said, resources need to be different on disrupting the future versus getting your core right. B, on budgets, a lot of times within organizations, we tend to want, rightly so, to see evidence based coming in as quickly as possible. In some of these projects, you need to fail, and you should be allowed to fail a fair bit, because you're learning and it's a new space, and it's developing. So would it be fair then, to put projects three or four of them which are by nature on a technology, which is currently or by nature on a platform, which is currently small in scale? To be done short term. So that's how I would think on that.
Tom Ollerton 27:16
I'm really disappointed that we're at the end of the episode now. And I would love to keep this conversation going. However, I've gone massively over time. I've enjoyed it so much. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how would you want them to do that? And what makes the perfect outreach message? Do you?
Mohit Arora 27:34
So LinkedIn is good?
Tom Ollerton 27:38
I can't find your LinkedIn though. You have some weird spelling or not?
Mohit Arora 27:44
I'm gonna get you there. So LinkedIn works perfectly. So it doesn't, it seems, but probably because I'm currently based out of India. And that's what I put on the... So I'm sure it has some kind of algorithm, which pushes it down for you because it based on London. But yeah, so that should be the easiest way to get a hold of me and if you're curious about something or you have a question or you don't agree. I'm always happy to hear and learn.
Tom Ollerton 28:12
So fantastic. Well, look, thank you so much for your time.
Mohit Arora 28:16
All right. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
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