Decoding Digital Marketing 4.0 at Globant’s MCUBE | Pune, India

What an event this was! The wonderful speakers and panel members, the 500+ registrations and not to forget, the monsoons in Pune playing havoc! Overcoming numerous challenges, Team Globant successfully rolled-out MCUBE – the first of its kind Digital Marketing Event at its Pune facility in Hinjawadi. Themed “Decoding Digital Marketing 4.0”, the meetup focussed on discussing the future of digital marketing technology. This meetup brought together a carefully curated group of our industry’s leading lights to accelerate the digital transformation of marketing.
The thought for the event seeded from the lack of forums/meets in Pune city (or even the country) that address the Digital Marketing industry and therefore the two-fold aim for MCUBE – first to make Pune the Digital Marketing hub in India and second break the myth of the non-technical marketer. And indeed the outcome was a wonderful response from the Digital Marketing Community – A jam-packed morning of insight and impact, in spite of heavy rains lashing Pune city! With advances made in the advertising and marketing technology, Globant as a niche player aims to move the ticker one notch towards data-driven marketing. Starting with educating the community that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Programmatic are not prohibitive technologies and there are opportunities and room for growth for SMBs as well as the large technology players like Globant in this space. 
The half-day event was primarily split into threes sessions as follows: 
Keynote on AI & IoT by Anand Kumar, Alumnus of the coveted Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee and Director at LIPSINDIA. (LIPSINDIA is one of the most popular and recognized digital marketing institutes in Pune and Mumbai and as a matter of fact, over 60 percent of digital marketers are Pune have been trained by  LIPSINDIA).
The keynote covered aspects of what the future beholds for digital marketing. While for some of the other industries, AI/ML may be at the innovation trigger in the Hype Cycle, for the Digital Marketing industry, it has already reached the peak of inflated expectations. The session also covered the next big marketing opportunity with the advent of IoT becoming a reality.
Panel Discussion on Programmatic and Privacy 
Inline with the theme of data-driven marketing, our distinguished panel comprising of Saumya Iyer, Ravi Ganatra and Vivek Shenoy shared their views on the two burning challenges the digital marketing industry faces and answered key questions that would indeed determine the future of the industry. While Saumya spoke of these topics from an agency perspective, Ravi and Vivek shared their experiences from a technology perspective. The common message was that advancements made in technology that allows advertisers to deliver the right content, to the right audience, at the right time to the other end of the spectrum where privacy is indeed becoming a hot topic and more people than ever are concerned about protecting themselves online. 
Digital Marketing Hackathon 
A 360 Degree digital marketing case study to be solved by 10 teams formed amongst the attendees was one of the main attractions at MCUBE. The aim was to create a digital marketing campaign for an Indias Sports star via a data-driven approach. It was a very engaging session, that provided an opportunity for the audience to interact and network. 
Overall MCUBE was a great success. We got numerous requests to hold more of such meetups to educate the digital marketing community of the technological advancements in the advertising and marketing industry.
Until we see you next, Stay Digital… Stay Connected!