Brands today are no longer based on advertising budgets and distribution muscle only. They are shaped in boardrooms where strategy meets instinct, on shop floors where careers begin unexpectedly, and in everyday consumer interactions that quietly define loyalty. In the era of excessive personalization, automation, and unremitting competition, there is one fact that cannot be ignored: the brand that knows people, will win. It can be in the form of a more insightful consumer, emotional narrative or empowerment of teams to make risky decisions; the art of creating long lasting businesses is based on human clarity.

Welcome to Crafting Bharat : Brand Ki Baat - Mumbai Edition, a podcast where we talk about brands, businesses and the people who build them internally. In this engaging episode, host Kartik Chawla sits down with Vivek Srivatsa, Chief Commercial Officer of Tata Motors, and Sivaraman Swaminathan, Founder and Partner at ContraMinds Labs to discuss careers, consumer psychology, personalization, leadership, and the changing definition of brand experience.

This series is proudly brought to you by NewsReach, India’s leading PR-tech platform, Production Partner HT Smartcast, Gifting Partner Nanaji Natural and Beauty Partner Lakme Academy. Listen to stories, inspiration, and wisdom!

Episode link: https://youtu.be/-ZUcQBlHqqM

Edited Excerpts

Is personalization still relevant in an age of automation and AI?

Sivaraman Swaminathan: More than ever. It was the shift to what I term as one-to-one and digital that made the world change to a mass media. AI and e-commerce today are based on personalization.

Visiting a shopping platform, it knows your preferences. That is not only being convenient: it is being contextually relevant. The concept of AI: It is all about personalization, the concept of e-commerce: hyperpersonalization. Personalization is not decreased by automation, but scaled. With automation, personalization has in fact become much easier since you are essentially creating scale. It is the brands that remain relevant that use data to learn the context and provide meaningful experiences.

In a competitive market, what drives growth decisions?

Vivek Srivatsa: The fundamentals never change. “Know your consumer well.”

With the markets becoming fragmented and the competition growing stiffer, the organization that actually comprehends the reason why consumers buy, the new needs they have, and how their mind is changing will prevail. The more you know them, the more you wish to know. There is always a search to know more and know better.

At Tata Motors, numerous breakthrough products were achieved by defining very specific needs of consumers. It is not only ambition that leads to growth, but insight.

Beyond pricing and promotions, what truly makes a customer feel valued?

Sivaraman Swaminathan: “I believe that the brand today is the customer experience.”

You can have the best product, but every touchpoint defines value. Every interaction, even inside a bank branch becomes part of the brand experience. Real differentiation comes when brands move beyond checklists. Birthday messages from thousands of brands mean little, but remembering something truly personal like the anniversary of a car purchase makes a difference. When brands make customers feel seen rather than processed, that is when value is created.

Are brands relying too much on metrics and not enough on human insight?

Vivek Srivatsa: “It depends on the category.”

Measurements are essential but they should not be used instead of intuition and customer knowledge. The decision is emotional and even conflicting especially in high involvement products such as automobiles. He remarked how in car industry, even intervals of waiting can be perceived as something positive that is not common in other sectors. Finally, there must be a collaboration between insight and data. The one cannot exist without the other.

Sivaraman Swaminathan: “The communication is comparable to developing chemistry with the customer. The metric is actually understanding the physics of how the chemistry worked.”

It is chemistry that generates the emotional link, which is explained by physics. Information is raw material. Data is boring but the thing is, the creative thought of interpreting and presenting data is the real opportunity. The problem with organizations is that it is difficult to derive meaningful value using a sea of data.

What is one of your leadership lessons?

Sivaraman Swaminathan: “Act not like a marketer. Be like a consumer.” Marketers tend to use their prejudices to make decisions. Upon deliberately putting off the marketing hat and putting the consumer hat on, you will see new opportunities and blind spots.

Vivek Srivatsa: “Give your employees the freedom to make mistakes, eliminate the fear of failure.

Markets are changing at too high a rate that ideas are not going to stay at the top. New ideas need to be in-house. That is when young professionals are safe to experiment and resolve their problems, organizations can then really move forward.

In a city defined by speed and ambition, this conversation offers a thoughtful pause. It serves as a reminder that as technology changes, and markets change, the principles stand: get to know people, create compelling stories, empower your team, and create experiences that are personally felt. Fundamentally, branding, at its core, remains a deeply human exercise. For those shaping businesses today, the information presented herein is both confirmation and challenge to consideration deeper. In the following episode, you will get to hear more, and listen to actual dialogues and expert opinions!

Brought to you by NewsReach - the leading PR-tech platform in India with production partner HT Smartcast.