Jabir Merchant

IIDE Super Session Topic

The Future of Digital Marketing! Video & Voice.

IIDE – Indian Institute of Digital Education hosted a Super-Session with Jabir Merchant, Chief Digital Officer – Sales at Condé Nast India on The Future of Video Marketing & Voice Search in Digital Marketing.
He started the session by talking about his journey. Just like most of us, Jabir too was a management student who was wondering what to do next in life. “Back in those days, marketing graduates wanted to become a grand manager. That was a big dream that everyone had. You either join the brand side or join the advertising side”.
He discussed at length about his experience in the field of advertising where he learnt the nuts and bolts of it. His work experience revolves around some of the finest companies like TIME Magazine, The Times Of India, CNBC-TV18, etc. Along with this, he has also worked at Zirca Digital Solutions Pvt Ltd as the head of advertising for prestigious companies like Microsoft, Zee Media Corporation Limited, MSM, Skype, Pink and Media Map. “The advertising agencies were much, much more influential on the brand. The client servicing, the account planning team, in those days, use to take all the critical decisions as far as branding, marketing was concerned”.
In our discussion about the future of digital marketing in terms of videos and voice which is consumed in India, Jabir mentioned that Videos has a dramatic effect and it is naturally something that brand gravitate towards. There are various factor that has led to the growth of video in a big way, one of them being technology and the way consumption has become. The good part about videos is that it is able to communicate the brand messages with a great amount of emotional appeal and audio-visual experience. He also mentioned the transition of the people from Youtube to other short-form video hosts like Moj, MX TakaTak , Instagram reels, etc
The session also helped in gaining insights into how India is consuming voice search. Jabir mentioned, “Interestingly, the number of Hindi voice searches have increased. Clearly more and more people are using voice search in their native language. It is early days of voice search but it is going to expand rapidly”
This was truly an insightful session and it helped in highlighting the future possibilities of voice search and video marketing.