The Big Leap: The Role of Marketing and Understanding Gen Z

Some time ago, e27 together with CleverTap visited Jakarta through the event "The Big Leap"; part of a chain of events connecting para growth leaders in Southeast Asia, starting at founder, VP, Marketing, to Product Director.

DailySocial.id had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion hosted by e27 CEO Mohan Belani, with a number of speakers consisting of SEA Regional VP Sales CleverTap Marc-Antoine Hager, Chief Marketing Officer Bluebird Mediko Azwar, Head of Marketing Pintu Timothy Martin, and Chief Marketing Officer Halodoc Felicia Kawilarang.

This casual discussion primarily pertains to how marketing can understand the characteristics of Gen Z, challenges, to customer experience in the implications of a business during the Covid-19 pandemic. Here's the summary.

Achievements, opportunities and challenges

A little illustration, transportation was one of the sectors that was significantly affected at the start of the pandemic. In contrast, digital services in other sectors, such as health and wealth including those who tasted increased traffic in that period.

The large-scale social restriction policy (at that time it was called PSBB) drastically reduced people's mobility. People are reducing their trips outside, work and school activities being carried out from home.

For Mediko Azwar, this situation is very difficult for BlueBird's business, which operates in transportation services. In fact, at that time he had just joined the company bearing the blue bird symbol when the pandemic occurred. "This is a challenge in itself because I have to convince the team, how we must be able to understand change consumer needs and comply with their requests."

In contrast, in the health sector, this situation paid off when the government granted a license to use telemedicine for the urgency of handling Covid-19. "Suddenly there was a spike in traffic on our platform. In that situation, indirectly, the telemedicine platform seemed to havefree marketing' because the government directly promotes its use," said Felicia Kawilarang.

However, the surge in traffic that actually raises further challenges for Halodoc, namely ensuring the application can work to meet high demands. We are working hard to make the platform accessible at all times while educating doctors about Covid-19, and understanding the target user and their behavior.

here marketing play a significant role. "User knowledge comes from the marketing team, that's how we build the product. We have done a lot of research and surveys," Felicia added.

Mediko also revealed that marketing encouraged BlueBird to improve relationships with customer and looking for new service development opportunities from customer journey.

Understanding Gen Z

Timothius Martin revealed that the pandemic situation created opportunities to form an approach marketing, especially for Gen Z. He said, there were many concerns arising from the community about how to secure their money or assets during a pandemic.

"Our platform launched during the pandemic, people at that time stay home. We saw [opportunities where] the characters [we want to target] are Gen Z. They're looking for places where they can put assets easily, accessible 24/7, easy to cash out, and volatile enough to give that adrenaline pump," he explained.

Not to mention, at that time, crypto platforms in Indonesia were not widely understood by Gen Z. It was here that he married products and marketing so that the information needed can reach the user precisely, instead of just going viral.

In its development, Timothius noted the importance of doing mind shifts in determining strategy marketing. There isn't any approach which is one for all. For example, how to change mindset supervisor regarding how to use the budget marketing pada an influencer or advertising. "[In the context of utilization an influencer or advertising] rather than number of impressions, preferably to [achieve] Conversion Rate."

Mark added, approach marketing using advertising should not always be ruled out. Each strategy has a different approach. In the case of Gen Z, they include a segment of users who cannot be approached with a direct or explicit sales model (hard sell), but through the utilization of a product.

"For us, to be able to evolve in the market, companies don't just talk cost and profit, but focus on the user in order to understand the market. And marketing have a role to focus on voicing messages from customer not a company."