Nand Kishore Badami is Director and Head of Marketing at Cisco for the India and SAARC regions, where his mandate is to ensure tighter alignment of strategic marketing objectives and outcomes with the company’s business plans. An IT industry veteran with over 27 years of experience, Badami has held senior positions with leading IT organizations, including HCL Infosystems, Tally Solutions and Citrix Systems. Prior to joining Cisco, he was VP of global marketing at Netmagic Solutions.

Badami holds a bachelor's degree in commerce from Bangalore University and a post graduate in marketing management from Indira Gandhi National Open University. In this exclusive interaction with Sanjay Gupta for India Digital Review, he talks about the importance of digital and social media for Cisco, how the Internet of Everything is set to reshape work, and the challenges CMOs face in optimally using digital, among other things. Excerpts:

Q. What role does digital play in the marketing efforts of Cisco in India? 

Digital marketing forms an important and integral part of the marketing-mix for any marketing campaign that we undertake at Cisco India. We were the early adopters of digital marketing tactics and a definitive proportion of our marketing budget is earmarked for digital and social initiatives. It’s also important to point out that while we undertake standalone digital and social marketing campaigns, we try and include digital marketing tactics in every campaign including the offline tactics.

Q. At what stage of evolution do you think is the digital space in India? How do you think it is growing—or not growing?

Digital marketing is in a fairly mature stage. While the B2C space has definitely leveraged digital and social, B2B is witnessing its application as well. The times ahead would focus on e-commerce and applications interface centred around mobile as a platform. Business intelligence practices and tools would be taking centre stage.

Q. Could you please share in brief a couple of digital marketing campaigns Cisco has done recently or plans to do next and what makes them different or noteworthy? 

We recently did a social media campaign on Twitter. The objective was to capitalize Twitter traffic for response generation and contact acquisition through online targeting and promote video capsules across social media platforms for social engagement and nurturing.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to optimally tap into the digital medium? 

Digital marketing tactics are best leveraged for thought leadership, customer relationships and brand awareness. While digital is perhaps the most comprehensive and measurable medium as compared to others, it’s difficult to leverage the digital medium for revenue-generation plays.

Q. Is social media having any significant impact on how you market your products or services? What is your viewpoint on the growing consumption of social media and its place in the digital mix?

We have had many add-ons such as establishing a virtual market place and selling products online. It has definitely helped us set up a better sell-out structure. Social media is an important ingredient of our marketing mix but social listening again contributes to the core in engaging with the influencers.

Q. You have a very positive outlook on the Internet of Everything and even launched a show around it on TV. How is the IoE ecosystem coming together in India? What significance would it have for marketing or, for that matter, for CMOs?

The Digital India programme of the government is focused on the digital empowerment of citizens, wherein infrastructure would be offered as a utility to every citizen, and governance and services would be on demand. According to Cisco, for the Internet of Everything, the total value at stake in India is $511 billion over the next 10 years, out of which the public sector value at stake is $116 billion, which includes creating smart + connected communities and verticals such as health and education. Our vision of the Internet of Everything is that we will live in a world where everything—and everyone—can be connected to everything else. The Internet of Everything will change how we work by delivering more information, better decisions and increased economic value. 38% of total IT spend is already outside IT with a disproportionate spend in digital – it will be 50% by 2017. This signifies the dramatic shift of demand and control away from IT and towards digital business units closer to the customer. What that means is that marketing departments can act as digital start-ups and CMOs can lead in a world where hundreds of thousands of sales people, resellers and channel partners look for nimbler and newer ways of doing business in a fluid digital world. I believe marketing has never been more important for the competitiveness of a company.

Our IoE brand campaign earlier this year set out to communicate this message. From a strategic marketing perspective, it is crucial to build awareness and enable conversation and engagement opportunities around it. It also requires continuous and concerted efforts, particularly around a vision and a longer term strategy to execute and attain the desired impact.

Q. What advice would you like to share with your peers in the industry? 

Digital media is perhaps one of the most powerful mediums to reach your customers and today's marketers and strategists should adapt it as a bible of marketing.

Sanjay Gupta is an editorial consultant and freelance writer based in Delhi. He can be reached at thinksanjay@gmail.com.