MAM
“We’ve championed the O2O2O model”: XP&D’s Chanda Singh
Mumbai: We’ve heard a lot about experiential marketing, and with strategic and technological prowess getting stronger with each passing day, it is undoubtedly evolving into becoming the talk of the town.
Launched in 2019, XP&D is a new age experiential and digital platform.
As a people platform, XP&D seeks to harness two decades of experience in events and activation and the potential of the ‘new data powered smart and social last mile’. The product platform blends offline to online to offline (O2O2O) at its core – to deliver beyond only on the ground or digital. Their collaborative business platform is built for the sharing economy bringing specialist partners.
For clients, XP&D aims to bridge the power of experiences and the scale of smartphones, social and digital to drive business.
XP&D drives the change; where experiences live beyond events. XP&D leads transformation in outreach; building digital communities where Facebook and Twitter don’t have relevance. Most importantly, XP&D brings to all digital platforms – the power and reality of human experience.
With key offices in Gurgaon & Mumbai, and a partner network within India and across the world, XP&D works with India’s biggest brands and organisations including Hyundai, Asian Paints, Kia Motors, BMW, Dream11, BCCI and Mercedes, amongst others.
XP&D CEO Chanda Singh leads the company. In 2019, Singh moved on from Encompass to start her own venture, XP&D. Old clients and colleagues who believed in her, came on board and gave XP&D a much-needed boost. Today, Singh has made XP&D into a talk-of-the-industry, and with her relentless passion she is driving her company and teams to deliver the best.
Over the years Singh had been at the forefront of Geometry Encompass’ transformation. From being an experiential expert, she had seamlessly transitioned into leading teams in shopper marketing, rural activations and expanding the client width and depth of relationships to focus on more strategic forays. Her key accomplishments had been to execute eight IPL opening ceremonies in a span of ten days – where no one dared to even attempt it, she made it happen. Apart from this, she has also executed 36th National Games Opening ceremony, Hockey World Cup Opening Ceremony and other large scale events ushering in the new era of experiential experiences.
She is the mind behind bringing true global legends like Andre Agassi and Michael Phelps to India for a lifetime experience for the partners associated with True North.
Singh always leads from the front, keeping her people at the heart of her growth too. She is the nerve centre of XP&D, orchestrating the complex day-to-day functioning of the company.
In an interaction with Indiantelevision.com, XP&D CEO Chanda Singh talks about the experiential marketing firm, the O2O2O model and much more.
Edited excerpts:
On the journey of XP&D
The journey that XP&D has had over the past few years has been long and winding. We’ve worked with incredible clients, like Mercedes, BMW, the BCCI, Dior, Asian Paints, and many more, creating jaw-dropping experiences for all who attend their events. But we’re not done yet! We’re always looking for the next big project, and I’m excited about what we’re going to create!
On what prompted you to set up XP&D
The goal for XP&D was to set up an experiential marketing company that would be on par, and eventually even better, than some of the top players in the world! It’s the reason the team and I wake up in the morning—to get out there and create something that no one has ever seen before, and to put a smile on people’s faces while we’re at it.
On the kind of market gap that you sought to fill with XP&D
When we ventured into the experiential space, we noticed a general need for events that had elements of interactivity, engagement, and enthralling audiences. So with the events we do at XP&D, our goal is, first and foremost, to create an unforgettable experience for all those in attendance by making them a part of the show! Additionally, we’ve championed the O2O2O model (Online-to-Offline-to-Online or Offline-to-Online-to-Offline), which serves as a way to keep people engaged even after our events are over.
On being a woman entrepreneur in a patriarchal society, with not many Indian women at the C-suite level or in decision-making positions
At the end of the day, it’s about loving what you do, and I really enjoy what I do with every fiber of my being. So no matter what ladder I have to climb or what stones I have to leap over, I’m going to keep doing what puts a smile on my face!
On the evolution of experiential marketing over the decades
Experiential has always been about exactly that: the experience. So over the past decades, every new invention, innovation, and development that has contributed to enhancing an experience has enhanced experiential marketing. Some of the most notable changes we’ve seen over the ages have been Web 2.0 taking offline to online, and today with Web 3.0, we’re going from online to the Metaverse, our two primary models in recent years, O2O2O and O2O2M.
On your thoughts about events in the time of Metaverse
The Metaverse of today presents a huge opportunity to enhance experiences with the power of technology. Using AR, VR, and XR systems, the various Metaverse platforms have created new ways to conceptualise experiences that delight audiences. As for offline events, there exists a vast potential for integrations, primarily through our O2O2M model, where we create experiences that span Offline, Web 2, and Web 3!
Events today need to be new, data-powered, smart, and social to effectively reach the last mile – please elaborate on this.
In any form of communication, it’s essential that our message reaches as many people as possible, which includes those with little access and those living in the last mile. As such, we’ve been required to innovate, getting more innovative with our communications and using every tool at our disposal to reach out to every one of them.
On the similarity between Indian and international experiential marketing events
As far as similarities go, experiences are always tailored to the audiences they seek to entertain, entrance, and enthral. In that regard, every event shares the same objective: to leave a lasting impression in people’s minds while creating an impact. The significant differences lie in the audiences and how we can best tailor stories to different groups.
On how digital and experiential marketing are going to prove to be a great and effective concoction in the realm of events
We live in a digital world where people spend more time staring at the small screen than the big screen. So to create all encapsulating events, harmony must be created between the digital and real worlds. Through our O2O2O model, we have been developing experiences that extend from offline to online and vice versa to create a balance between the two and hold our audience’s attention for as long as we can.
Your vision for XP&D
XP&D’s future is centred around creating an impact for people to look at the things we do and say, “Wow, I wonder who did that!” In doing so, we want to create engaging experiences across platforms and mediums, reach out to as many people as possible, and create memories that last a lifetime.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
