At MMA’s session on Marketing Mixology, five experts explored brand strategy, negotiation, culinary storytelling, and consumer insight—stirring up fresh perspectives on marketing in an age of disruption and personalisation.
Dr Ambi Parameswaran
Author & Brand Coach, Brand Strategist and Founder, Brand- Building.com
Dr Ambi Parameswaran: The ideal marketing mix, in my view, includes understanding the consumers, brand building, selling & negotiation and communication. Let me begin with an interesting story about negotiation.
You may have heard of Theodore Roosevelt, a former President of the United States. During his campaign for the presidency, his campaign manager found a good photograph of him and had a million leaflets printed using that image.
Then someone asked the campaign manager, “Did you take permission from the photographer to use this photograph?”
He said ‘no’. Reprinting the leaflets would cost around two million dollars, and if they asked the photographer now, he might demand a licensing fee of one million dollars. But this campaign manager was not an ordinary person—he was a smart political strategist. He knew he had to find a way out because he didn’t have that kind of money. He sent a telegram to the photographer. It said: “Here is a great opportunity to publicise your work. We would like to use the photograph you took of Theodore Roosevelt in our campaign leaflet. How much will you pay us for this opportunity?”
The photographer replied: “Thank you very much. I can only afford to pay $250.” The campaign manager agreed. He took $250 from the photographer, instead of paying him a million dollars! This is a classic example of information asymmetry in negotiation. The campaign manager knew the leaflets were already printed. The photographer didn’t know. The manager used that gap in information to his advantage—and ended up making money instead of losing it.
We often write complicated sentences when simple ones would do. Once, I was conducting a workshop for PepsiCo, and Shiv Shivakumar, who was the CEO at the time, introduced us to a very useful tool: the Gunning-Fog Index. It’s available online and free to use. Just copy-paste any paragraph, article, or chapter into it, and it will tell you the number of years of schooling someone needs to clearly understand that piece of writing.
The ideal score is around 7, 8, or 9—which means your writing is easy to understand. If the score goes up to 12 or 13, it’s in the danger zone. That means it may be too complex for many readers. So the lesson is this: Keep your communication simple.
The Spirit of Mixology
Mr Manoj Padmanaban
Restaurateur • Chef • Mixologist • Culinary Storyteller
Manoj Padmanaban: My day job—or rather, the most interesting thing I do—is marketing. I’ve been selling products for years, but today, the medium has shifted for me. Now, it’s Instagram. I’m an engineer by qualification, but I started cooking at a very early age—mostly out of necessity. I love to eat! My mother insisted I learn to cook before I went off to college, and that’s how it all began.
I come from a place called Mayavaram, down south. I was once selling software services in the US, but eventually, I returned to India and took over my family business. That business was a traditional chit fund company called Mayavaram Finance Corporation Limited—an organisation with a legacy of 75 years. I tried to fit in and contribute over the course of a decade, but I never really had the chance to sell a service there. I always felt a little out of place.
Eventually, I sold the company. After exiting, I turned my focus to something that had always intrigued me: food and beverages. I started my first restaurant in Chennai, called Pandan Club. That marked the beginning of my full-time journey in the F&B industry. Today, I run several restaurants. My day job now is selling food—through various channels and platforms—and that’s what I love doing. Mixology is one part of what I do. I really enjoy mixing drinks. That interest developed over time—especially during my travels as a sales professional. I’ve visited more than 50 countries. When I had free evenings abroad, I often found myself at bars, simply watching bartenders mix creative and exciting drinks. That’s how I picked up the craft.
When I returned to India, I noticed a lot was happening in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and even Goa—things that weren’t yet available in Chennai. To me, mixology is all about craft and balance. It’s not just about pouring fruit juices into alcohol and stirring. We even launched a movement called Zero ABV (Alcohol by Volume). I’ve always disliked the term mocktail—there’s nothing to mock! Just call it a drink or juice. So, we began creating base drinks with real craft behind them.
I’m also joined in this journey by people from the industry. Together, we crafted Zero ABV drinks—non-alcoholic scotch, Negronis, and other sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails. This became a movement of its own. Interestingly, the world is moving in this direction. Many Gen Z consumers are choosing not to drink alcohol. That’s what Zero ABV is—drinks without alcohol, yet full of experience. And I’m proud to say we even won India’s top award in the Zero ABV category. When we brought this movement to Chennai, it drew a lot of attention to the city. As someone who tells stories, I used that movement to spotlight Chennai’s evolving food and beverage culture.
Ambi Parameswaran: Just to add some context- the fastest-growing segment in the U.S. beer market today is non-alcoholic beer. Ambi: Guys who mix drinks were always called bartenders. When did they start being called mixologists?
Manoj Padmanaban: Mixology is like being a liquid chef. Bartending typically involves pouring straight drinks, adding soda or tonic—following standard procedures. But mixology is different. It’s about craft, technique, and finding the perfect balance to create a truly delicious drink. Think of it like Indian cooking. Unlike Western cooking, where you might assemble a few ingredients, Indian cooking is more homogeneous—you blend everything together.
Take a curry, sambar, or chicken gravy—you can’t really tell all the individual ingredients just by tasting it. It’s a rich amalgamation of flavours. That’s exactly what mixology feels like to me. There’s a lot of preparation involved. It’s not just mixing; it’s a thoughtful process. The ingredients may come to your table separately, but they’re brought together with precision and creativity—resulting in a well-balanced, crafted drink.
Today, for customers, a drink has to be more than just a beverage. It has to be visually appealing. It needs to come with a story. There has to be some drama—though even the old-school smoking effect is now fading away. There’s a new movement in the bar scene focused on ice. If you look at new-age cocktails, you’ll notice you often can’t even see the ice—it’s practically invisible. That’s because of something called clear ice. And there’s real craftsmanship behind it. In Chennai, we’re among the very few bars that use it—it’s sourced from Delhi. It takes specialised machinery and a lot of effort to produce. But the result is stunning.
Another trend we’re seeing is the rise of spirit-forward drinks. Gone are the days when a cocktail tasted like watermelon juice or just fruit. Now, people want to taste the spirit—be it gin, rum, or whisky. That’s where the appreciation lies.
Ambi Parameswaran: So, when people come to your bar, what’s the most popular drink?
Manoj Padmanabhan: Let me explain it from a marketing perspective. Just like in any good campaign, you need to understand your consumer first. Take my restaurant, Pandan Club, for example. I get a wide variety of guests—different age groups, tastes, and preferences. So I segment them like I would in a marketing campaign. I created a drink without ice. It’s served in a champagne flute, looks elegant, feels celebratory—you can say cheers and still look cool. That’s how I design drinks: based on the audience.
Ambi Parameswaran: Tell us about Movie Night.
Manoj Padmanabhan: Movie Night is one of our most sold drinks. Chennai loves its movies. When you go to Satyam Theatre or PVR, whether the movie is good or bad, you order popcorn and eat it. What’s the first drink most people try in college? For many, it’s Old Monk. So I fused two ideas: Old Monk and popcorn. It’s called an Old Monk Negroni with a popcorn infusion. We call it Movie Night. The concept came from my restaurant in T. Nagar. Kodambakkam, the heart of Chennai’s film industry, is nearby. I stole the story from there.
The drink is a hit with Gen Z. It connects the past (Old Monk, a drink their dads probably enjoyed) with something playful and current. It’s a perfect blend of flavour and storytelling. And that’s what today’s cocktail culture is really about.
The Future of Ad Agencies
Mr L Ramkumar
Independent Director, Angel Investor & Mentor and
Former Managing Director, Tube Investments of India Ltd
Ramkumar: You must have heard of Mark Read stepping down from WPP. They say he resigned because he couldn’t manage the digital transformation of the agency. WPP, as we know, is one of the largest advertising conglomerates in the world. So where is this all heading? What’s the future of ad agencies? Are we going to see a big transformation or churn? What’s happening overseas and how does it compare to what’s happening in India?
Ambi Parameswaran: Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Right now, the big agencies are going through a phase of intense disruption. Some might call it chaos. Take my old agency, FCB. It was part of Interpublic Group (IPG), but now it’s been acquired by Omnicom. That means FCB, McCann, Lowe, and other IPG brands are likely to be bundled together with Omnicom agencies like DDB, BBDO, and TBWA. What’s going to emerge from this “masala mix” is anyone’s guess.
The big agencies are under pressure from two completely different directions.
On one end, their business is being threatened by consulting giants like Accenture and McKinsey. Both have built sizable advertising and brand consulting arms. And when a CEO talks to another CEO, and hears, “Your advertising isn’t delivering—we’ll fix it for you,” that message carries weight. These consultancies are entering the marketing space from the top of the value chain.
On the other end, you have nimble independent agencies that are eating into the big players’ business from the bottom. Let me give you an example. Harshal Karkera runs an agency called Schbang. It’s just five years old, but already employs around 2,000 people. They’ve built offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, London, and even Amsterdam. That kind of scale in just five years! It probably took legacy agencies like FCB 25 years to reach that level of global presence.
So, what’s happening now is this: clients are exploring both ends. They’re choosing either the strategy-driven, tech-powered consulting firms at the top; or the young, agile, content-savvy independents at the bottom. And the traditional agencies are caught in between and struggling to find their footing. But the cycle might turn. Interestingly, big clients today are saying, “We don’t want multiple agencies. Can one agency handle everything—advertising, PR, digital, website, analytics?”
We’re seeing a move toward integrated communications. But where this is heading, no one really knows. And then there’s the big wildcard—AI.
When I started my career, I diligently took meeting minutes for two years. Today, that job is obsolete. Just leave your phone on during the meeting, and an AI tool will transcribe it for you. Recently, we had a client meeting, and five minutes later, I got well-written minutes, thanks to AI. But here’s the issue:
If young account executives never learn how to write minutes, how will they critique or improve what AI generates tomorrow? It’s a slippery slope.
Ramkumar: How did Accenture and McKinsey break into this space? What did they bring that ad agencies didn’t?
Ambi Parameswaran: Back at FCB, we used to say, “We’re not an ad agency; we’re marketing consultants.” In the old days, agencies had direct access to CEOs—people like Premji or Ravikant. Today, that relationship has slipped down to CMOs and brand managers. Meanwhile, consultancies like McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Bain have built deep relationships at the CEO level. So now, if your ads aren’t working, they step in and say, “We’ll analyse your campaigns and fix it.” And clients listen.
Ramkumar: With digital now dominating, how are media plans evolving? How do clients decide budget allocation?
Ambi Parameswaran: There’s no single formula. In my early days, media meant print, cinema, a bit of radio—and then came Doordarshan, followed by satellite TV. Now, every media plan starts with YouTube and Meta. There are metrics galore—impressions, views, cost-per-click, customer acquisition cost (CAC). Clients are often confused. One thinks YouTube counts a view at 30 seconds, another says 5 seconds. So what does ‘one view’ really mean? Impressions mean nothing on their own. A lot of clients just spend big and hope something clicks.
The Rise of Skintellectuals
Ramkumar: With all this churn, what’s the future of brand longevity?
Ambi Parameswaran: Brands have been declared dead many times. In the UK during the ’60s and ’70s, supermarkets launched private labels to kill brands. But brands were not dead. Then came Naomi Klein’s No Logo, predicting the death of branding. That didn’t happen either. In fact, The Economist later ran a cover: “Pro Logo”. In times of chaos, people gravitate toward familiar, trusted brands. But yes, competition is increasing. Market share will get chipped away.
India’s consumer pyramid is shifting. It was once bottom-heavy, serving mass markets. Now, we see multiple premium segments emerging. Consumers are more aware. My students coined the term “skintellectuals”—they know their ingredients. They’ll seek creams with 5% ceramide or 7% retinol, and pay ₹1,000 for it. Look at the skincare brand Minimalist—just four years old, ₹250 crore top line, ₹20 crore profit. Unilever paid ₹3,000 crore for it! Why? Because it caught the wave of intelligent consumers willing to pay for value. Even in the car market, the trend is upward. Alto is no longer a bestseller. Consumers want SUVs like the Hyundai Creta or Tata Punch. Aspirations are changing.
Understanding the consumer is the most important part of marketing. Peter Drucker said, “The only purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” Yet, many marketers don’t spend enough time meeting customers.
Good companies insist that marketers spend five days a month visiting homes, shops, and markets because that’s where insights are born. Once you understand the gaps, then you shape your brand, your communication and your sales pitch.
The Power of Personalisation
Now here is a question to Dr Satya: In your work with Apollo ProHealth, how did consumer understanding drive preventive care, innovation, and personalisation?
Dr Sathya Sriram
Independent Advisor
Dr Sathya Sriram: I completely agree that understanding the consumer is fundamental. In fact, it demands disproportionate attention. Even at The Hindu Group, one of the exciting initiatives we undertook was setting up a Reader Intelligence Unit. The idea was: we have access to so many people. How do we help brands across the country understand the South Indian consumer better?
Coming back to preventive care—one thing I insisted our teams do (and I did myself) was observational studies. For the first four months on the job, I sat inside one of the doctor’s offices, right in the middle of the patient flow. That gave me a real understanding of how patients move through the system—where they go, what they do, how long they stay, and so on.
Everyone who later joined my team had to do something similar. They were assigned to a centre where they knew no one and had to “mystery shop”—observe, interact, and return with actionable insights. This approach drove a lot of our innovation and personalisation. For instance, we realised that while we kept talking about “preventive health,” most people didn’t actually understand what that meant. It felt like a big, abstract term. But if we say “health checkup”, then everyone gets it. So we kept “preventive health” as our internal term but switched to “health checkup” in consumer communication.
The next issue? People would get these long reports—full of red, green, yellow markers and think, “Now what?” For the scientifically inclined—what I like to call the scintellectuals or skintellectuals—we used tech to synthesise and simplify the report. The first page would clearly list which parameters are fine and which need attention. We also recognised that doctors typically have only about 1.5 minutes with each patient. That’s barely enough time to talk—let alone explain things. And ironically, the moment you step out of the consultation room, that’s when all your questions begin.
So, we built a follow-up program. Within a week, a health coach would call you, with your report in hand, to answer your questions and offer real, personalised guidance. Whether it’s about losing weight or managing cholesterol, they’d walk you through it. All of this became part of a more holistic product. We also noticed that while some customers were price-sensitive, others were flying to the UK or US for checkups! So why not give them a premium experience right here in Chennai, on Apollo Greams Road?
We curated different offerings for different segments. For budget-conscious users, we modularised the product. You could start small. For example, instead of eight liver function tests, we’d recommend starting with just three. On the premium end, we built all-inclusive, luxury packages tailored to every possible need. Much of this innovation stemmed from direct consumer interactions—through conversations, observations, and even watching how they read their reports. We’d hand them a tablet or a printed file and just observe—where they paused, looked confused, skipped, or re-read. All of that input shaped our product innovations in meaningful ways.
