Prasoon Joshi on AI: The Future Belongs to the Authentic

Balaji Sampath:

We have here two esteemed guests. Prasoon Joshi is a poet, lyricist, screenwriter, and one of the most celebrated advertising minds. He built his career at McCann World Group, rising to the CEO of McCann India and Chairman of Asia Pacific. And along the way he created some of the most iconic campaigns in the advertising industry. In movies, he has written lyrics and dialogs for many films, winning multiple national awards. He also is honored with the Padma Shri for his contributions to art, literature and advertising. Most recently, Prasoon was appointed as the chairman of Prasar Bharati, India's public broadcaster. He has also served as a jury chair at Cannes Lions, the very festival that we are all in. Welcome Prasoon.

Prasoon Joshi:

Thank you.

Balaji Sampath:

We also have Sumit Virmani, Global CMO of Infosys and has spent over two decades proving that B2B marketing and specifically technology brands can build the same emotional depth as the best consumer brands in the world. He has been in the company for over 20 years, and in that time has played a central role in taking Infosys to the fastest growing IT services brand globally. Today, Forbes has recognized, ranked him number 17 among the top most influential CMOs in the world. He has been in the top 50 for four times in a row. So we'll get to the discussion. Welcome, Sumit.

Sumit Virmani:

Thank you, Balaji.

Balaji Sampath:

So Prasoon, you and Sumit have varied experiences at Cannes. You are a veteran of Cannes and how have you seen Cannes Lions evolve over a period of time?

Prasoon Joshi:

See, we are in a dynamic industry. Communication and advertising, brand building. It's not something which is static. So if you say five years back it was not the same. And five years later from today it will not be the same because the way consumer and their lives changed, the way new innovations come into our lives, be it, you know, everyday life or a work life, and that reflects that... I also feel that communication is not only reflection of the change, it also contributes to the change. So the way you communicate, and that's the reason probably I'm in this profession, because I feel that you're not only riding the popular culture. You're also creating popular culture, contributing to it. Riding is easy but creating is difficult. And invariably I have seen the brands which have been able to create popular culture, been able to contribute to that, understand that they're not just to take up freeride on a phenomena which is happening. Other brands, which are the leaders and those brands will always are difficult to make. But that's what the challenge is and that challenge doesn't die. That remains the same. So creating that culture is so critical.

Balaji Sampath:

Yes, absolutely. But Sumit, when I look to you, you have been at Cannes only for 3 to 4 years compared to Prasoon.

Sumit Virmani:

I am a novice, yes.

Balaji Sampath:

You're a novice. And how have you seen this evolve in the last 3 or 4 years?

Sumit Virmani:

When I came here for the very first time, which is about 3 or 4 years ago, the Croisette looked very similar. People were fewer. There was less technology on the Croisette. It was still about creativity, it was still about branding, it was still about the ethos of what this place was supposedly all about. I think in the last 3 or 4 years, if you look down today, there's barely any space to walk. The weather is exciting, if I can use a word that is palatable, and suddenly we are seeing the focus has moved less from what creation is all about and more to what the tools and enablement is all about. And I think possibly the right balance is somewhere in between, without losing concept of why marketing or advertising actually works. It works because a human thinks of an idea that appeals to another human being. Tech will come and go, tech will evolve, but human has been and should always be at the center of communication.

Balaji Sampath:

Well, that's insightful. So Prasoon, just building on what Sumit said, he was talking about the place being taken by different kinds of tool providers. So as you see the ad industry or the agency world undergoing a transformation, what do you think is needed for them to really win in this world? What do you see as... what would be a winner look like in this new world?

Prasoon Joshi:

I think first of all, we shouldn't get overwhelmed with technology. As he said, till such times we are humans. There would be, no matter whichever form you're using, we are storytellers. A body with a name and with a story is a person.

Balaji Sampath:

Yeah.

Prasoon Joshi:

And that narrative at the storytelling is at the heart of it, at the core of it. So where does the technology fit in? Let's come to the elephant in the room. We talk about AI mostly. It's artificial intelligence. My belief is artificial intelligence, first of all, the nomenclature is not right. There is nothing artificial about it. Everything which is there in artificial intelligence the data you talk about. The data is born out of human experience. It's somebody's first hand truth which has been made and recreated into algorithms and data. So this is not artificial. I have a little condescension as a poet and writer. I always feel that I draw from something which is Avyakth. What is Avyakth? I feel that the most beautiful song is yet to be written, and the most beautiful dream is yet to be dreamt of. So where is it? It resides in us. The unexpressed, the expressed is where AI is got this playground. Unexpressed or yet to come or Avyakth is where the human potential is. As far as we remember that, and you in that light, for me, AI becomes an ally rather than something which I fear.

Well, it could be very spiritual to treat like that. But eventually, if you and me can draw from the same intelligence, it's a democratization of intelligence. See, when the internet came, it was democratizing information. Now, here you've got democratized intelligence. Everybody can access the same intelligence. What's wrong with it? I think the time of people who flaunted information and gigabytes in the head. The fact, Sumit, those people's time is over. It's only people who are originally drawing from their source and being able to say something authentic, they will be there. This, you know, pretense time is going over because if it was all about impressing someone, if there's a bottle of wine and impressing someone by saying that I know the crop and the grape. Maybe you are not even saying the truth, but you have the courage to get into the, you know, basics of it and say what I know what crop this was and everybody else is excited about that. Now everybody can access and say no, but that crop was not good. So what you are saying is probably not right. Now, time for such pretenses and such shallow conversations are going to get over because, well, everybody can dip into the same set of basics. Question is, when you dive deeper and that is where actually human civilization is true, that's where art should go. It's not about permutation combination. Some people are there, for hours they talk and you after some time try and make sense of what they were saying, actually... There were lint of words, and there was nothing in that. You peel them and peel them and there is nothing, there's no substance. They will feel nothing. There were just good words they were using. And it was a ping pong of words. And that kind of... people will seek something more. People would know that this, I can also access, this I also know. So let's stop wasting time impressing each other which with the kind of how many books you've read and how many I have read. Okay, now let's be authentic. So I think AI will provide... if you asked me as a creative person, as a thinking person, or to pressurize me and push me towards being more authentic, and I tell you, I always try for that. I just carry myself as an instrument, as a guitar, and I play it with intensity and that's music. And that doesn't die. Authentic.

Balaji Sampath:

Maybe it is very interesting Prasoon, because I was reading in a book when you said that it is... the next song is... the best song is yet to be written. There was this view, this book is called Practicing Mind, which says that in art you don't have a destination. You are just going from one to another and you didn't realize that you don't... There is nothing called an end there.

Prasoon Joshi:

Yeah.

Balaji Sampath:

And there was a very deep and very relevant thought. Sumit, actually building upon the elephant in the room, AI, you have a very interesting job of both on the marketing side and the inner service of a technology company. How do you actually see the marketing function itself, you know, being reimagined in this world of AI?

Sumit Virmani:

I wish I could also find the poet in me to answer as beautifully as Prasoon did. But I think I will stick to being authentic and not try to be him. So I can't do any of that. But jokes apart. It was music to my ears that while as technology people, we've always looked at AI as an amplifier. The fact is that even creative people are seeing it that way because like we were talking earlier in the day, it's been decades now, when internet came in, mobile came in, social came in, there was furor at that time also about what it will do to our jobs, what will it do to creativity. But I think human beings are incredible. I mean, we found civilization after civilization technology has become sentient. It has become so sentient that we don't even know about that it exists, and we assume it as an asset that we leverage to do what we do. Personally, I feel AI is yet another tool, potentially a more powerful one than we have seen as compared to what we've seen in the past. But it has a dramatic impact on our function, no doubt about it. But it will be foolhardy to say AI is all about productivity, or AI is all about experience, or AI is all about effectiveness. I think AI like I mentioned right at the beginning, AI will only make us do what we do better, faster, more effectively. If it's not, then you're not using AI the way you should be using AI.

Balaji Sampath:

So any marketeer in the closet or outside who's listening to this, I just say think of AI... I mean, to borrow his musical analogy, think of it like the 12 notes. The notes are available. You want to make music out of it, figure it out. And beautiful music can only be made by human leveraging tech. It was actually a good example that I have heard at Cannes. They said that it is like a sandwich. The bread on one side and the bread on the other side are both humans. What we have in the middle is the AI. But that's just an analogy. But anyway, I go to the last question, are there areas... This is for both of you. Are there areas that you feel marketing as a function should be addressing today that is really not being discussed much in the ecosystem? Are there things that are there issues, things that we should be focusing on that is not receiving the right attention?

Prasoon Joshi:

Yes, I think, one thing which we are not talking about, and we are talking about AI and the way AI is received in our lives. And I think the most important in the time of AI is that the value system and ethics and anchoring of AI. If we are thinking of a world where AI is all pervasive, where would you be anchored? How would you... What your decision making process would be? Okay, you know a lot about the consumer, but how much... Where would you draw a line? You're not a psychoanalyst. Your consumer has not come to you as a patient. So you should be cognizant of the fact that there could be too much of personalization. And that needs to be very judiciously used. When you are seeing your consumer at a very, very vulnerable point, how much of that vulnerability you will use for yourself. So the anchoring and ethical and where your values as AI is anchored into is something we should think about. That's one.

The second is let's also the time of data, I would like to tell you like suppose Sumit started learning music, singing last 5 or 6 years and the people he has made friends with are all similar kind of guys. They jam in the evening, they sit and sing. He's about to sing. But what is new? What today he is singing? There is one of his childhood friends is also visited him. Who knows that he was not good in music when he was in school. So he's repeatedly reminding him of the data, which is not important in this. This is an external data which has come out. This data was not required, he was very happy with these five people whom he sings with. But this one guy keeps saying, but you remember you were not a good singer. You were in the last row, you used to be not good in class. And he's getting discouraged. The fact that in last five years he started singing really well, but that day he didn't have a good performance. Now this data has become counterproductive for him. So we have to also understand how much of our consumer wants us to know. You don't take everyone to your bedroom. You have a drawing room because you say, okay fine, this is the place where I'll meet you. But if you start saying, I'll just come and very freely start using my bedroom also, and washroom and other rooms in the house, after a point I'll say, listen, that's not what you are supposed to do. So I think there is a lot of these discussions need to happen about ethics, about how to draw a line, how to use it, because let's not get carried away with the world we are entering.

Balaji Sampath:

Thanks. Your views?

Sumit Virmani:

I'll just add one point to that, I think Prasoon covered it quite clearly on the role of values and ethics. And I'll build on that. So when we're thinking about the AI disruption it's very important to figure out where the judgment lies, because we have seen a lot of fiascos already in the brand world where AI was allowed to make a decision that eventually costed the brand quite heavily. So it's super important to know for your organization where I'll allow AI to progress to and where the human will intervene not just with oversight, but with accountability. So the way at least I think about it, wherever data is involved, autonomous outcomes are welcome. But where values and ethics come into play, which are taking a key factor in making a decision, it can never be anyone but a human being, which has to be made accountable if marketing in brands have to retain their sanity, their future and what they stand for. So that is where possibly more attention has to be given, and right amount of human AI balance has to be provided.

Balaji Sampath:

Great. That's a wonderful way to look at ethics, data and human accountability. Everything ends with a human making that decision. So thank you so much Prasoon. Thank you Sumit.

Prasoon Joshi & Sumit Virmani:

Thank you, Balaji.