“Experiences Are Changing Because The Audience Is Changing”: Sameer Tobaccowala, Shobiz

Shobiz Experiential Communicatiosn, as a legacy experiential agency was founded by Rehmatali Tobaccowala –the brains behind the country’s first ever product launch event in 1974 for Unilever brand Rexona. His journey began in 1945, and he went on to establish himself as the foremost producer of sets & staging for weddings and theatre.

In a turn of events, Shobiz was acquired by Havas Group in 2019. Since then, the experiential agency has grown by leaps and bounds in various areas, along with stepping into the exhibition business formally, very recently.

Everything Experiential gets into a tete-a-tete with Rehmatali Tobaccowala’s son and the second generation to handle the agency - Sameer Tobaccowala, CEO, Shobiz Experiential Communications, where he talks at length about the evolution of the experiential marketing industry, Shobiz’s USP and more.

Edited excerpts:

How has Shobiz evolved over the last four decades in the realm of experiential marketing?

Dad started Shobiz as a brand 42 years back. He started working in the industry in 1945. So it's been an ever kind of a thing.

The industry has evolved more than anything else. Earlier, events were always considered to be a last-minute resort. Even when I joined 33 years ago, there was no thought, there was no connection between an event and a brand. It was more of a ‘tamasha’ during the 80’s-90’s.

Marketers and brands now believe that the event experiential world is adding value to their marketing and their brand.

And from the Shobiz point of view, the question is - what is the need of the hour? Previously, there wasn't even a projector. We used to do it on carousel slides - we used to make 70-80 slides. Then came intelligent lighting and projectors, and suddenly laptops came in too.

The world has changed, the industry has changed. The fact is that we are still standing strong 42 years later; many old players have faded away, and so many new players have come in. But we've stood the test of time. Largely because we have always tried to be one step ahead of the trends of what needs to happen, what are the expectations of it.

For example, today, I've got 15 - 20 brand strategy people in my organisation. When we became part of the Havas group in 2019, people questioned about brand strategy in events. We had to build people around it.

And the other part is always bringing in newer people into the organisation, bringing in newer services into the organisation. In the mid-2000s, during the IT boom, IT clients wanted an agency to also bring people at an event. Today it is called audience acquisition – the right bums on seats, which means not just people, but the right people. So in early 2003, we started building that business - again, adapting to the requirement.

Technology is playing such an important role. The audience is changing. Today when the younger generation is coming in, at first they're touching it. They don't want to see the content that you are showing them, they want to see the content that they want to see.

I think innovation and adaptability are what have kept us going, and I think we've successfully managed to do that.

The reason why experiential has become such a big thing is because the consumer and the audience have changed, the marketer's mindset has changed and agencies have been able to be on top of that. During Covid, suddenly teams that were used to building events in stadiums were sitting on the computer and trying to learn how to do and deliver a virtual event.

The biggest strength of an agency is the people. My executive board has been with me for 27 years - many other people have been there with me for 20-plus years. It’s about having that strength of the people and the continuity of that, and then bringing in newer people to add value to your organisation. You can't be one of the two; you have to have both.

What prompted Shobiz to venture into the exhibition industry? What does Shobiz aim to achieve through its expansion into the exhibition business?

Exhibitions are not a new business. Even for Shobiz, in the mid-90s, we've done the Ford Auto Show and the MRF Auto Show, and many of those. Exhibitions are a part of experiential. From a country and an industry point of view, number one is that the infrastructure in the country has dramatically changed for the exhibition world.

Number two is that with the Indian economy doing well, global brands and global products are continuously looking at showcasing themselves in this country.

When we used to do exhibitions, we used to do it in categories that our clients wanted - the automotive sector, a little bit of IT, a little bit of FMCG. We started exploring and realised that the opportunity was huge.

In 2023, when we did the Hyundai Auto Show, the BYD Auto Show, and we did an exhibition for Schneider at Elecrama, we started realising that the importance of the booths, the structure, and the design is still there - it’s about how you showcase your brand, which is very significant. But many more things have come into play.

Number one, is engagement. You have to start using technology through that. Like, start using AR and VR - to engage them.

Number two is the technology or mediums- LEDs, everything that you put up, finally needs to have solid content. So we've brought in the whole storytelling thought process behind it. The audience is changing. So, we decided to build a separate team to grow this business.

What is Shobiz’s USP that makes it stand apart from other agencies in the experiential marketing space?

All event and experiential agencies are good and strong. I think it’s about how you treat your clients’ brands. I think a lot of our effort goes into that.

Even before Dad started Shobiz in 1982 - in 1974, he did the first launch for Unilever for Rexona. This year we're celebrating 50 years of our relationship with the Unilever group.

50 years to have a client, and an event company - wherein event companies get changed more often, and then there's 50 years we've been working with them. We still do a lot of work for them.

For us, it's always been the need of the client. I think our relationship with our clients has been one of our biggest strengths.

So many of our relationships are decades-old relationships. I think that's the strength of Shobiz. Being the oldest is not a strength, but being able to use that experience to help our clients and customers and keeping them as the central point of an event, I think that matters.

How are consumer engagement and fostering connections taking shape in the sphere of experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing is becoming a very important part of the marketing mix for brands and marketers because it’s about the consumer's connect when it comes to live experiences; however long he/she’s with you - they're connected with you. I think at the core of it, it's about what is it that the consumer expects from your brand.

It's always got to do with, can you create a memory? It's not about the time spent. It's that can that consumer go back and two days later still connect your brand to the experience they've had - then it's a great event because that memory has remained with the consumer.

I think consumer connection is the core of the ideation behind an event. Your audience can be your outside consumer or internal consumer. There are so many events that we do for the people who work for the company.

And it's not only what you want to show the consumer. It's very important to think of what the consumer wants to hear from you, and what they want to receive.

Customers don't want information anymore – that is available on Google. They want to know the nuances of it, the solutions of it, the experience of it.

How do you plan to strengthen Shobiz's commitment to providing unparalleled experiences for audiences?

It's a people thing; I'm a big believer in my people. Shobiz invests in its people, in the right people. Today, the young ones are talking about how AI tools help us – they have already started having conversations about it. To continue to be strong for the next 40 years, I think it's very important to keep on bringing in the right people, investing in them, and upgrading their skills.

One of the core things that I think my father taught all of us is to just make sure that every event is as good as possible. Because we can talk about strategy, design, great presentations, great client relationships, etc. But at 06:00 in the evening when the lights go down, either you get it right or you get it wrong. You're judged by that 2 hours.

During Covid also, we were on forums and everybody had written the event industry off, saying that people would never want to come for events, virtual will be the only future that is there. And I used to fight, literally. I disagreed on every panel that I've had conversations with and I'm a big Hindi movie/Bollywood buff and my biggest line was, “Picture abhi baaki hai (The movie hasn’t ended yet).” I've said this continuously in every single forum. And I truly believed in it - and look at it, we are back with a bang and more.

Stepping into the exhibition industry, how does Shobiz envision exhibitions transcending traditional displays and booths?

It's not simply the look and feel. That's important, but the traditional displays, the look - it's becoming more and more minimalistic than it used to be. Now, it's cleaner at exhibits. They're more modern. Sustainability has become important.

But again, it has moved back to the audience, and the people who walk through your exhibit. The number one reason they get attracted to, to come to your exhibit –is your brand name.

Number two, is that if you put up a good, clean, nice design, look and feel - that naturally, visually attracts a person. But if that's it, people are going to come in and walk out. They've got so many more places to go. So what keeps them hooked to your booth, matters – be it content, storyline, technology etc.

Today, consumers are taking in so much content. He/she has got a choice of going to an IPL game, seeing football, going to a mall with his family, or going for dinner - there are thousands of things that the person can do. Your event is just one of them. So for his or her time-space, you're fighting with all that too. And if you can manage to get them to your event and keep them glued, that's the difference.

How does storytelling and technological innovation, help enhance experiences? How does Shobiz integrate these as part of its strategy?

Number one, the strategy and the content team do when they get a brief is to understand the brand, what the marketer wants to do in the live space, in the live experience, what is the audience, and obviously, understanding of the ecosystem and the industry. This is the research that goes every time into working towards a creative solution to a brief. I think the first thing that people start building is - what's the story for the audience? Every time it's very different. There are so many different areas, therefore you start building a story around that.

The story starts from the invite till when they go back home and you send a thank you letter. The story cannot change. It has to be this continuous upward progression to give that feeling to the audience.

You start using technology. And again, all of technology is a medium. When it comes to AR, VR, AI and LEDs - that's a plain whiteboard. It's a canvas - it's a medium to tell your story. Therefore, what you have to build is the content in it. The story has been created, you have the medium, and now you start creating the content for it.

Our strategy team, content team, copy team, and design team, all work a lot on how to integrate the canvas and the story to create the content that makes it exciting for the audience.  

How does the use of AI, AR, and VR contribute to personalisation in experiential marketing efforts? And how does Shobiz work around including these as part of the plans that it executes for its brands/clients?

AI is a learning curve for all of us, from just generative AI to tools that are being used and how much AI is going to help us in personalisation at a larger scale.

AI is becoming more interesting and sensible, but it picks up data that is available - it's not necessarily right or wrong.

I think it will dramatically improve. But, right now I think it's more about using generative AI for things such as creating music. So those things have started happening, but I think it will build. The creative tools that have come in are very interesting.

We're part of the Havas group, and they've got a strong relationship with Adobe right now - they're doing a lot of work in the AI space, and we started using some of those tools.

The people in the organisation have started trying to learn about it. Clients are getting interested in it, but I still think it's an evolving thing. It's very new, but I think that it is interesting for sure.

When it comes to other technology, it's all got to do with the usage of it. It's very interesting for people to see 3D in the AR and the VR space or anything else. We keep on telling our clients, that if they're spending their time and effort into the content, only then use the technology. Otherwise, they shouldn’t.

We did the AI concert for OnePlus recently. That was something wherein some of the music was AI-generated.

AI is growing, it's getting better. I think it's in the right direction. But it's baby steps.

According to you, how does experiential marketing contribute to building lasting emotional connections between brands and consumers?

If the consumer/customer/audience, 48 hours later, has a memory of your event, you've done something right.

Everything that you do should try to create a lasting memory. In the Havas Group, we focus on creating meaningful experiences.

To be able to create, even a week or two weeks later, a conversation of people, the audience – that’s the kind of hopeful reactions you want from them, much post your event. If you've managed to do that, you have created an emotional connection between the audience and the product, the brand or the company, whichever case may be. You're never going to get it right all the time because sometimes the audience would love your event, but not have a memory of it. But for some of the events, they're going to have that memory.

Advertising is similar. There are some ads that you remember to date. Lalitaji passed away and people are talking about Surf Excel; people also talk about Humara Bajaj, and Cadbury Dairy Milk, those are emotional connections.

But sometimes, people might like the ad but would be able to recollect the product. The same thing might happen in an event. So the emotional connection happens when a consumer connects with the brand and the company.

If you manage to crack the emotional connection through your storytelling, you've achieved a lot. Every event company and experience company should work towards that.

What kind of trends are expected to disrupt the experiential marketing industry in 2024?

One is the more and more usage of AI. It is a learning curve for the industry and for the world. It’s about how AI can help you make it easier, better, and more interesting for you and the audience. That's a trend not simply for the experiential industry, that's a trend for the world.

Number two is, that I think sustainability is growing and sensible. It's a global trend of importance. And the truth is it's important to the younger generation, they are going to be your consumers.

The hybrid model is very much there. The virtual world has reduced dramatically. But what people have understood and realised very sensibly, is that because of the Covid world and the learnings of the virtual events and experiences, you now can still call 1000 people for an event, but you can reach 10,000 people more as part of the hybrid model. And why not? If you are being able to do that and reach a big audience, I think that's great.

Personalisation at events is becoming important, and it's not necessarily like every event is personalised. When I say personalisation, it is to understand your audience. And to present to them what it is.