The First Langoor Podcast - Rob Speaks to Ruchir and Venu

Hi Everyone,The first Langoor Podcast is below - click play to listen to my chat with Ruchir and Venu. The transcript is also below. If you have any suggestions for the next Podcast email me at robk@langoor.comCheersRob KaldorHead of Digital - Australia[soundcloud params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" ]https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/224423721[/soundcloud]Rob Kaldor: Hi, everyone. My name's Rob Kaldor, and I'm new to Langoor. And I thought the best way of finding out how Langoor works is actually spending time with our founder and Chairman of the Board, Ruchir, and our CEO, Venu. Welcome, boys.VENU: Hey.RUCHIR: Thanks for having us.ROB: What a rare opportunity to have you both in the same room at the same time. So part of this is, tell me what's new in Langoor in the last month or so. What's new, Venu? Anything? Any big news?VENU: What's new? More work, more craziness, more logos, I think better customer engagement the way I've seen it and lastly, we are trying to chase something, which is an audacious goal for Langoor, which is all about trying to spin off from Langoor what we call as a 'blue ocean strategy' for brands, trying to have an audacious goal around trying to teach India design thinking, trying to teach brands design thinking. From there, leads product experience; from there, leads web and mobile experience; from there, leads digital marketing activities. So that's what is exciting in Langoor right now.ROB: It's a big strategy. Now, I know that both of you have spent some time presenting Langoor at the iMedia. How was the iMedia, Ruchir, in the Gold Coast in Australia?RUCHIR: Really cool, actually. It was a great opportunity to get a sense of the landscape around digital marketing in Australia. What I found though was a large part of the conversation was around the hygiene and the technology attached to marketing, reaching your customers more efficiently. I felt like the conversations around creatives, the conversation around strategy was still missing, you know, really big opportunity where there were so many heads who thought about marketing all the time.ROB: Okay. And how was it in India? Venu?VENU: In India, I think it was our... Mine, personally first representation of my personal brand in these events so it was a very unique experience. Meeting at least 40, 50 senior CMOs of all the known brands in India was very exciting. Putting Langoor's name in front of them was exciting. Apparently, almost 70% of them know about Langoor, which is a proud thing which we have created. The other 30% are, though they don't know, they're interested to know what Langoor is. Thanks to our crazy name. From a learnings perspective, it gave a good view into what brands are doing especially around using programmatic automation media buying and planning which is influencing their entire branch strategy at this point of time. So apparently it doesn't look like big ideas are influencing the strategy. It looks like programmatic buying and the ability to get into the customer's face at the right time is more important than 'What do I say at that time?'ROB: Interesting. Ruchir, I've spent a bit of time with you recently. What the hell is agile marketing to you?RUCHIR: We've been talking about that a few times now. I think conventionally most people have thought about marketing because they haven't had the opportunity to run big campaigns or drive their strategy based on the technology that's available in the organization. The idea of agile marketing really comes from agile programming where fundamentals strategy is around how do we test ideas, campaigns, deploy them, learn from them, and keep doing them better. And effectively, instead of having one big campaign, one big strategy you have an overarching goal and an overarching strategy but you try multiple tactics to get to your end goal.ROB: Okay. One of my learnings in Langoor is that we need to communicate effectively amongst us to say "What's going on, sir?" I know a couple of the changes that have happened in Langoor, Australia. You've got a... Unfortunately, Prashant has left the business to go on his ways, but it was all very nice by Prashant, and you've got a very attractive head of digital hired, in myself. [laughter] But what else has been happening? We've got Nagi who's on seconded here for a couple of months, any other sort of staffing changes that you can think of? We will miss one...VENU: No, in the long run I think until now we were operating in an extremely aggressive start-up mode. I think now we are turning the corner. We have reached an inflection point where we want to make sure that we are putting right people in front of our customers especially across the globe. So we wanna get to a model where a lot of people will be given opportunities to do customer facing roles in Sydney, in Melbourne so that they learn... Be closer with the customer, learn from it, take that experiences back home, whether it is three months, six months or 12 months and in turn teach the organization how to really do customer delightful programs. So that is one big shift which we are making. There is obvious that from an attrition perspective there is not much that is happening other than changes that are very industrial and all.ROB: Look, this has been the very first Langoor podcast and I'm very excited to be part of it. It's a good learning experience for me. I think as the only Australian born person in the company at the moment, it's time for you to start teaching me some Hindi in preparation for my trip that will happen to Bangalore at one stage. I want one word that I need to learn and remember.VENU: I think Ruchir is the best person.RUCHIR: You should know accha.ROB: Accha?RUCHIR: Yeah. It just means okay.VENU: It's okay.RUCHIR: And you can say, accha to everything.ROB: Okay, so to end this podcast, accha.RUCHIR: Thanks Rob.