GOA: As the upside-down slide indicated and exhorted -- “see things differently” -- Carat global chief strategy officer Sanjay Nazeralli, on Friday, went on to explain why it was important so, and to also focus on the changing perspective, setting the tone for the day.

“We can't carry on doing what we have been doing in the past decade. We have to change our perspective on four things -- globalisation, convergence, data and innovation,” said Nazeralli, adding that data had indeed helped strategists to get close to the consumers.

Pointing out that today cross-border e-commerce was worth around 'USD 25 billion' representing 10 per cent of total e-commerce, Nazeralli said that, by 2020, it is expected to represent 30 per cent of e-commerce in the world.

He also spoke about the “transformation” from physical goods to data and information (age of design), highlighting the emphasis on transformation from “capital-intensive to knowledge-intensive culture” and how the digital revolution had impacted the education market (connected education realm is expected to be worth USD 450 billion by 2020).

He was quick to point out that businesses based on transferring knowledge were “winning over” businesses transferring physical products.

“17.8, 15.1, 13.7, 10.8 and 9.3. It shows that the numbers are consistently going down and that is the rate of growth of spend in digital advertising. Convergence is changing (everything). India is now going faster than Google,” Nazeralli said, explaining how digital was no longer a screen one goes to, but is omni-present -- “it’s everywhere”. He added: “There’s a reverse takeover of life by digital. The dish of the day is data, and this marks the return of marketing.”

According to Nazeralli, data was the most powerful tool, but it is needed to be seen differently. “We grew up writing copies, not code. Why it (data) does makes us feel down and creatively handcuffed?” he asked.

Holding forth on innovation, he said that there was a difference between doing things differently and doing things different, and concluded his session with the message: There’s a huge difference between what is true and the truth. And sometimes, gut is more powerful than data.

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