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1 February, 2020

18 minutes Read

We Found The Staff Who Helped Sachin Tendulkar With His Stance In A Day, Tony S, Taj Hotels, IIM K

After completing his MBA from IIM Kozhikode, Tony was introduced to the vast world of TAS (Tata Administrative Services). Heading the digital media campaigns to increase relevant traffic to digital platforms of the Taj, Tony describes what goes in from the stage of seeing an ad of a particular hotel to you booking the same.
Industry secrets, marketing mantras, a lot of the business insights and the perks of working for a luxury brand like Taj, Tony takes you on a journey to make you realize how the pieces of the maze work at Taj.
Watch him talk about how Digital media is taking the business to a new direction and how it is the thing of the future for a lot of these legacy businesses. This and a lot more is packed for you in this podcast with Tony Sebastian, shot at a suite in the luxury Taj Hotel in Mumbai.
Tell us in the comments section below with what are the other roles you would like to know about.

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Interviewer:

For the preparation of this podcast, I went through your LinkedIn profile. And I thought that this guy could have been in five different other professions than the ones he has chosen to get

into.

Interviewee:

I'm one of those typical profiles that land up in a B school, right? I did my engineering because that was the only thing to do back in the 2000s. And then I worked for two years in software. And then I went for my B school interview and the first thing they asked was, you did metallurgical engineering? Then you work for two years at Oracle. Now you want to do an MBA, what is wrong with you?

Interviewer:

What are some of the things that you continue doing even after your MBA while you're working here at TAS there are other things also that you do?

Interviewee:

Yeah, for the longest time, I used to be a professional cryptic crossword setter on the side I used to set crosswords for the Hindu meant ESPN Cric info, then one of the advantages of having a side hustle is that you can get bored about it and do something else.

Interviewer:

And not do it for some time.

Interviewee:

Yeah. Then I dabbled in open mic’s and standup comedy for a bit.

Interviewer:

With this voice?

Interviewee:

Yeah, it's clear now why it didn't take off. So...

Interviewer:

Okay, how do all these personalities? How do you come to work at TAS with all these interests?

Interviewee:

Again that's one of the great things about TAS is that it gives you a really huge Canvas right? and basically they say go do what you want to. Of course there are constraints to it. It's not.

Interviewer:

Yeah, one of the interesting constraints is that you are working for a brand that is steeped in heritage Yeah, steeped in, you know, a pride service. So many of these things don't fit in with someone who's doing rebellious things like standup comedy and podcasts and cricket and those are not those are very youthful things whereas the TAS comes across as a brand for the older generation. People who are well heeled can afford a fancy room like this can afford a

leather chair like this so. How do these two fitted?

Interviewee:

When you do something that you're not comfortable with You automatically learn a lot.

Interviewer:

Right

Interviewee:

And that's one of the things that I think I'd like to tell anyone who's starting out is that the moment you stop learning, I think you start becoming irrelevant. I had sale TISTA holding company and we have many brands and hospitality. So this Taj, Selections, Vivanta And Ginger. Specifically, for Taj because that's where a lot of our hotels are and what resonates. It's always about being iconic in the sense that it's always been and we're carrying on that legacy. And it's also about sincere care and high touch service, right, and it's straight from the heart.

Interviewer:

You were mentioning brand stories, and one of my favorite brand stories about Taj is this FMCG Executive was coming to Bombay and he had booked a room at the Taj in South Bombay and a day before him turning up they realize he seven feet tall and he will not fit into the usual bed that is there. So they found someone in UP was a really tall guy who actually used a bed like that, because a carpenter said that it will take really long to turn it around so

they flew down that bed from UP refurbished it and made the room ready for the guy. And that's the kind of attention to detail that Taj has for its case. So that's one of my favorite stories about Taj.

Interviewee:

There are so many of these stories that everyone has and at the first thing I heard when I walked into the company is that if the guests asked for the moon, we won't say no, we will say we will try.

Interviewer:

Right.

Interviewee:

And we will honestly try it. It's not to placate the guest or anything like that, if it's possible, it will get done.

Interviewer:

So in this world of Taj with its leather so far as and it's beautiful lighting and heritage properties and great service and some amazing attire for people who come and serve you as well. What does Tony Sebastian do? What is he in charge of?

Interviewee:

I'm part of the digital marketing team and I have been since the beginning. So in a sense when I joined in 2013, I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor of the digital transformation of the organization per se. And that was a very important inflection point.

Interviewer:

What was that like being at the ground floor of a Digital Transformation of ages old brand?

Interviewee:

Yeah, it was in equal parts scary, challenging and exciting, right. One of the things that digitally, per se teaches you to do is the ability to test and learn, right? So when you're in B school, one of the things that you keep hearing at least I did back in B school is that marketing is gas in its global gyaan, because you really don't know what the end result is. and digital marketing has turned that on its head right now. Everything that you do is measurable right down to the last over the last four to five years. We've done three iterations of the website, and each time we've done it a little better to get towards the end goal to make the customer find whatever he is looking for.

Interviewer:

I am in the luxury suite at Taj Santa Cruz because you have booked it for me so I would not be able to afford this room and I would never get to see the insides of this kind of room. That I'm assuming you also come from a background you've grown up in a background which is middle class and most of us do and then to suddenly understand a consumer of going to buy a 30,000-40,000 rupees a night kind of a room that in itself would require a certain kind of effort a certain study from your end so how did you go about understanding this end-user?

Interviewee:

I grew up in Kerala in Cochin. And yeah, like you said, middle-class family. My dad worked in the department of telecom which became BSNL later, etc. Honestly, I had no exposure to any kind of luxury products or hotels or anything like that, right. I don't think I would ever have stayed in a five star hotel before I joined my first interaction with the Taj brand was actually as part of the TAS Bharat Darshan so to speak, when we went around.

Interviewer:

What are some of the properties you got to stay of?

Interviewee:

the gateway in Bangalore Taj Lands End in Mumbai, also the president in Mumbai, Taj Bengal. So quite a few different types of properties Actually, I was quite nice. So at that point, I got to see the brand, Taj and other associated IHCL brands from outside in perspective. And I was like wow right because I mean, given where I come from etc, this was a brand new experience. in some senses, it was a little overwhelming as well, yeah, to take up

space. And that kind of an environment.

Interviewer:

You pointed out empathy is very important to the for a marketing person. How does that you know, for example play out in how you would build a website for the Taj?

Interviewee:

Right. So you go in with certain assumptions, right? And everyone has their implicit biases and understandings of how the world works,

Interviewer:

Right.

Interviewee:

But ultimately, you're designing a product for a person who is completely different, right? So if you look at Taj, for in sense it's a luxury customer, by which I mean there are certain parameters right and there are certain Let's say for in sense the majority of your leash a customers are in the age group of 45 to 65 plus and if I'm a 30-year-old making the decision on how to make that website, my cultural context and my experiences are very different from

what they as are right. So for me what is obvious on in terms of website design, like I know that I have to put the cursor here and search may not necessarily be obvious for someone from a different cultural context. Therefore it is very important that you try to put yourself in their shoes. And the good thing about digital is that you have great tools to back you up you have your logical engineering training your own assumptions, and a completely or not

necessarily completely different but an allied set of information straight for a customer, right which helps you define and I creatively fine tune the product.

Interviewer:

So many service brands work so hard to build loyalty For their brands and give out heavy discounts or benefits to the customers to ensure that there is some kind of loyalty that was built. Firstly, from a business perspective, I want to understand why is loyalty so important for a brand like Taj?

Interviewee:

Okay, across the board, I think loyalty is very important. And there are several studies that shows this, for instance, to acquire a customer is five times as hard as it is to retain an existing customer. And therefore, it makes business sense to sort of give a sense of belonging to your customer who is any way loyal to you because they are some great experiences, but also an additional reward of what does this mean, right? For instance, when we designed or

redesigned our loyalty program in 2015, one of the things that we realized was that a lot of our business actually comes from corporate customers, right? And corporate customers are at the end of the day staying in number of days away from the family. They need something to give back. So one of the campaigns have you done was called promises kept, which is to say that a point under promise skipped. So for all the days that you've spent away from your family, you know, now take them to this spectacular experience that let's say Taj Falaknuma Palace with all the points that you want, right? Come into the building of loyalty, but it is extremely important because repeat business forms a lion's share of your actual revenue.

Interviewer:

Right. Tony, you were a part of the team that redesigned loyalty program, what role does gamification play in keeping the consumer excited about a loyalty program?

Interviewee:

If you look at gamification, ultimately, it's about you know, wanting to get people to earn more, and ultimately redeem more.

Interviewer:

Yes.

Interviewee:

So to put it very simply, it's again going back to what I said earlier about creating those milestones for the customer to say. One is to say a wish list, right? Something that a lot of people have on their mind is a stay at Taj Umaid Bhawan Palace or a Taj Lake palace Udaipur, right? Therefore you, let's say keep earning points to get there, which is a milestone kind of thing. The other kind of thing is to say, which happens maybe once in a lifetime or whatever, right? But the other kind of thing is to say, give them opportunities to come back to your brand and experience it more meaningfully,

Interviewer:

Which is your favourite as property?

Interviewee:

Amongst the ones that I've been to, my wife and I went for sort of getaway after a baby was born about a year and a half later to Maldives and Exotica, Maldives, the experience was fabulous. I think about three years ago, we set up this command center called Taj dot life, which essentially monitors you know, conversations about the brand about competition about what is trending on social media, okay, but also located in the Nabb center of where it's

happening. And we managed to actually improve our response times on social media quite drastically response times and response rates. That's again part of the digital transformation stories to say, we are very responsive offline. Why can’t their experience translate online, right? So for in sense, we are recording on the 16th of December Monday, on the 14th. Saturday, Sachin Tendulkar tweeted an interesting story about how he was at Taj Coromandel

several years ago. And one of our associates at Taj Coromandel actually commented to him saying, you know, whenever you were your elbow guard, your bad swing changes, you know, have you noticed that and he said, You are right. And according to such and he apparently went and changed the design of his elbow guard to keep his bats in constant.

Sachin Tendulkar

In Chennai, it happened once in the hotel, when a waiter I asked for a coffee and a waiter came to my room and this waiter said that I'm a huge fan and I've seen, you know, your batting. I rewind five, seven times and I watch every ball multiple times. And that's why I thought wherever you wore an elbow guard, your backswing changed a bit. So I said, Yes. You know, you're the only person in the world who's figured out that, but you won't believe that, you know, after that I actually came back to the room from the ground, I carried my elbow guard, and I redesigned my elbow guard according to the correct size and the amount of padding and where the straps should be how and then I play. But he was the only one.

Interviewee:

So the interesting thing was, he said, Can anyone find this person for me now he hadn't tagged Taj hotels or a Taj Coromandel. So I saw this all excited on Saturday, and I picked the team saying, Hey, here's a great opportunity. This was 30 minutes after the tweet was posted because I saw it. They like hey, we are already on it. We've already found the guy will And I think they. So, one of the things is that it's not just about speed. It's also about making sure

that we are right, because in this age of clickbait and whatnot, we still have to maintain sort of our things. So I think their final response actually went out yesterday, once we established that this was the story, and this was the person that he was talking about.

Interviewer:

I'm going to let you go, Tony, that was great. I think we've learned a lot about not just the Taj brand, but exactly what kind of stuff people like you are doing in the back office so that this kind of experiences delivered to us.

Interviewee:

Thank you so much.

Interviewer:

Thanks a lot to be here.

We figured out an excuse to spend a little bit longer in this beautiful room Taj Santa Cruz, and which is to give you basic takeaways from our discussion today. The first takeaway is that a successful brand is consistent in its promise across timelines, and touchpoints. The next takeaway is that there may be products in your life that you may have never used. And yet you can become very good marketers of those products to observation and experience. The next key takeaway is that empathy is key to brand management. It is the only way to understand what a consumer wants and hence design a product that works for him. Being able to smartly pick up opportunities online to seed conversations about a brand can drip really rich dividends in the long term. It takes five times the effort to get a new customer as against retaining an old one. Okay, one last message guys. We've been getting some amazing

comments on all our podcast videos up till now. We've started this video only a few months back and we've got great comments people have loved the kind of content we've been giving them, but not enough people are watching it. So I would request you to please go out there and put it out. Put it on your social media profiles. If you think that is something that has worked for you help other people also figure out their careers. Please put it on your social

media as well.

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