Swagat Choudhury: Balancing people, processes and technology

PEOPLE, PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGY Balancing DURING CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

PEOPLE, PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGY Balancing DURING CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

In his 21-year career, Swagat Choudhury has been at the forefront of new-age marketing, constantly looking for ways to make it better for people, businesses and the world.

wagat has worked across the breadth of retail, brand marketing, digital, media, content and e-commerce space. His last stint was a long 17 years with Diageo working across multiple markets, brands and digital business drivers. Swagat’s most recent achievement was to lead the digital content transformation at Diageo helping the company become more effective, efficient and sustainable.

He recently joined Mars Wrigley to lead the Perfect Digital Store experience in the Digital Commerce team. As Swagat says, “Digital Commerce has arrived to be the forefront of consumer experience that also drives instant conversion. It truly sits in the heart of the omnichannel experience.”

So what are the crucial steps to take before embarking on creative transformation?

“The word creative is confused with art and aesthetics,” explains Swagat. “People often believe they need to stand out to be creative. It is actually the opposite, you need to blend in seamlessly to deliver the business outcome and consumer experience. As the word transform indicates, you are remoulding something for a better outcome.

“So, the first step is to understand the challenge you are trying to address, to deliver a significant outcome. If you do not have this clarity, do not proceed.

“Yes, the shiny new technologies and trends will distract you, but stay focused until you make your creative transformation a shining star for your organisation.

“Only when you have clarity on the challenge and outcome, then explore multiple paths to realising your objective, including the current approach. Evaluate the pros and cons of each option. Remember what you have defined as the outcome in step one. Take help from your peers and partners as you may not be able to envision all opportunities. Also at times, we resort to our favourite ideas.

“Once, as a core team, you have a feeling you know the right path (balancing guts, heart and brain) and have a clear plan for execution be very clear on the resources and time

it will take to execute. And remember to return to step one at every stage to ensure you are staying true to the outcome.”

Below, Swagat outlines some key guidelines for ensuring success:

• Embrace an agency as your success partner. Ban the work/ client servicing and use product partners/owners instead.

• Always stay compliant and responsible.

• Keep key partner teams aligned and feeling equally excited about the approach, timeline and resources.

Once the direction, desired outcomes and KPIs are set, innovators have to bring together people, processes and technology in order to execute creative transformation. Swagat believes that, for this process to be successful, it has to be straightforward.

“People, processes, technology and KPIs are integral parts of creative transformation,” says Swagat. “You cannot separate them. To bring forth lasting transformation, you should be able to explain the whole process in one sentence. For example: ‘These people will deliver this outcome, driving this KPI, using this process and technology.’ If you make it any more complicated then you will never be able to drive transformation. Of

course, this will need to be backed up in numerous details, but this single line should inspire people to want to spend hours on those myriad details.”

While Swagat stresses the importance of staying focused on the goal of any endeavour, he also emphasises the importance of keeping an eye out for additional opportunities along the way.

“We need to be aware that we will find many surprises throughout the process, but a good start and envisioning the outcome will definitely reduce them,” shares Swagat. “In a creative transformation process, it is critical to keep evaluating and being agile to adapt. On one hand, this will throw challenges we did not

anticipate, but it will also show you opportunities you never envisioned.

“In one of my recent projects, we started with a vision to create a governance platform (for execution) for media spending with CreativeX, but as we got deeper we realised this unlocks creative visibility, content performance blended with media impact and creative wastage mitigation to name but a few developments. And the learning goes beyond as the process we built was able to be used repeatedly in different parts of the business.”

Something that Swagat outlines as being key to empowering and enabling creative transformation is strategic partnerships.

“In today’s world, strategic partnerships are crucial,” says Swagat. “It’s important to clearly define your expertise and identify other necessary tools and people to achieve success. This is where we need subject and product experts who are passionate and committed to their field.”

Below, Swagat explores some decision dilemmas and how you can challenge them:

• If you or your team are excited to do it all, ask yourself ‘Is this my bread and butter? Am I good at this? Would it be more beneficial for me to learn from the experts?’

• If your generalist agencies want to do it, consider if it’s within their expertise. Sometimes a generalist agency can be a great change manager as you may be time or resource crunched. I have often used this model, and it works when they are clear on their role in getting stuff done.

• If your technology team wants to do it in-house, you need a clear commitment. Ask ‘Will you be committed to delivering in an ever-evolving tech environment?’

• Often, the right answer is making sure that you’re going to the partner who is the best for this specific need. This is their bread and butter, it’s what keeps them awake at night.

“IN MY EXPERIENCE, TOOLS LIKE DRAGONFLY GUARANTEE THAT YOU CAN PREDICT CUSTOMER ATTENTION WITH AI”

Swagat also offers some tips to nurture strategic partnerships for staying at the forefront of innovation:

• Build relationships beyond the project. Learn from them as a student. Give the partner the freedom to come back and tell you what else you should be doing and what more it will deliver.

• In a similar vein, give them feedback to participate in their evolution and development. Several times, I have helped partners understand their product games and, as a result, they built something that not only worked for me but also became a winning product that they could commercialise.

• Consider their team as an extension of your own and see how you can inspire them further.

To conclude, Swagat advises on the key areas of strategic partnerships he considers crucial for creative transformation.

“Partnerships within your teams and agencies to define change and outcomes are critical,” says Swagat. “Explore and make the most of the evolving ecosystem of insights using technology and AI. Today you have the tools to help you storyboard and test concepts in no time at all. You

should also bring in your creative agencies early to understand what technology tools you will use.

“In my previous role working with some of the world’s largest brands, we brought our creative agency into the journey well ahead for them to understand how we will be using virtual content productions. This ensured the right teams were brought in to deliver the project, driving ambition and efficient and agile content creation. It also allowed the agency to know what level of modular creativity they needed to develop.

“You should also make sure you have the right tech stack for content, virtual production and adaptation. This means you can adapt endlessly with fractional resources. Having the right tools is crucial to optimising your creative output. In my experience, tools like Dragonfly guarantee that you can predict customer attention with AI, and tools like CreativeX ensure that AI is testing millions of creative concepts and keeping them ready to perform. Last but not least, with the emergence of GenAI-led analytics, make the most of technology to help you generate insights to optimise.”

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