Mark and Comm leads conversation with Hootsuite and Talkwalker to empower local brands

From left: Talkwalker Emerging Markets Client Growth and Innovation Director Angel Calinisan, Hootsuite Strategic Enterprise Account Executive Anubhav Khanduja, DAT – AI Company Co-Founder Muhammed Gazzaly, Digital Marketing Asia Pacific Institute Co-Founder and CEO Amitha Amarasinghe and Moderator Mark and Comm Managing Director Thanzyl Thajudeen – Pic by Ruwan Walpola

By Safna Malik 

To celebrate 15 years in service, Mark and Comm Ltd. recently hosted a panel discussion at NH Collection Colombo titled “Brands: Listen, Learn, and Lead.” The event honoured the company’s exclusive partnership with Hootsuite and Talkwalker in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. By bringing these two powerhouses together, the gathering bridged the gap between international marketing technology and the local business landscape. This dialogue provided a platform to show how local Brands can use social listening and data-driven insights to move beyond simple monitoring and lead their industries.

The event saw a major gathering of marketing leaders, including CMOs and directors from banking, telecommunications, FMCG, retail, and hospitality.

Addressing the gathering, Mark and Comm Ltd., Managing Director, Thanzyl Thajudeen highlighted the session as the first in Sri Lanka focused on social intelligence and managing digital presence at scale. He reflected on the company’s 15-year evolution from traditional PR towards digital intelligence, noting that rapid digital adoption across the healthcare, tech, and hospitality sectors now drives the demand for global tools like Hootsuite and Talkwalker. As Brands today often manage multiple internal and external teams, the industry is moving towards a complex model that requires true scalability to remain effective. While the local market was not ready for social data in 2011, the landscape has since shifted, sparking immense interest across various sectors.

“In this digital age, delayed decisions are missed opportunities,” Thajudeen remarked, calling for a change in mindset among organisations currently hesitant to move beyond traditional methods. This delay can lead to lost prospects at a time when brands must analyse interactions from media, investors, and the community across various digital formats. He emphasised that “it is better to make a timely decision and adjust than to miss the window entirely,” as global platforms provide the necessary insights to track consumer behaviour and audience sentiment effectively.

Joining the session virtually from Singapore, Hootsuite, Emerging Markets, VP of Sales, Benjamin Soubies said the platform was built to help brands create integrated experiences by centralising social media management within a single, secure environment. He noted that in a market where attention had become the primary currency, businesses needed to look beyond simple metrics like likes and shares to convert digital engagement into actual revenue. “Our mission is to help Sri Lankan and Maldivian brands navigate the specific nuances of their local markets while leveraging the full power of global innovation,” he stated.

Hootsuite Strategic Enterprise Account Executive, Anubhav Khanduja discussed managing social media at scale, noting that with 12 million internet users in Sri Lanka, digital insights have become vital for business strategy. He highlighted a recent Gartner study showing that even major search engines are losing market share as users shift towards Generative AI. He argued for a model where humans and AI coexist, explaining that while AI is on an uptrend, it will eventually reach a stability curve as the market matures. 

Khanduja points out that enterprises generally fall into two groups: those seeking full automation and those using technology to improve work speed while maintaining human control. He noted that the goal is to use these tools to drive digital transformation and move beyond vanity metrics, adding that every digital effort must now show a clear return on investment.

Talkwalker Client Growth and Innovation Director for Emerging Markets, Angel Calinisan shared how Brands could unlock the business value of social intelligence by moving beyond basic monitoring. She introduced a three-pillar framework: gaining real-time insights, taking AI-driven action, and measuring performance against specific KPIs. 

She highlighted the capabilities of the Talkwalker platform, which is powered by the Blue Silk AI model to specialise in cleaning unstructured social data that changes by the second. By integrating online news, blogs, and Google Analytics across 187 languages, the platform provides a full view of the consumer. “Twenty years ago, having the most data was the advantage. Today, the advantage is how fast you can generate insights from that data,” she remarked.

The panel discussion, “From Insight to Impact: Building Data-Driven Brands in Sri Lanka,” explored how global frameworks could be adapted to work within the local market, considering its unique cultural influences and business realities. DAT – The AI Company, Co-Founder and CEO, Muhammed Gazzaly highlighted a significant shift from performance budgets towards direct content investment, noting that changing algorithms now require more relevant content to maintain visibility. Gazzaly argued that larger brands must learn agility from smaller ones, as bureaucracy often causes big firms to miss trends that smaller brands adopt instantly. He further advised marketers to be precise with their ideas, stating, “Be a sniper with your ideas. In the language of tech, fail fast and learn faster.”

APIDM, Founder and CEO Amitha Amarasinghe noted that while marketers are quick to adopt technology, they must constantly navigate the battle between innovation and privacy. He urged Sri Lankan marketers to be fast to experiment and avoid waiting for others to make the mistake, stating, “It is better to fail in a small market now than to fail in a bigger market after expanding your business.” Amarasinghe compared the current shift in social intelligence to the digital spend surge of 2012, suggesting that those who start now will be the future market leaders.

As the moderator of the conversation, Thajudeen pointed out in his closing remarks that the market gap is a matter of mindset and courage rather than tool access. With 15 years of local PR experience, Mark and Comm Ltd has a deep understanding of what works, which gives Sri Lankan Brands a clear choice: they can either try to catch up or leapfrog the competition entirely by pairing Hootsuite and Talkwalker. To ensure they have everything they need to succeed, he left the audience with a final thought: “The question isn’t whether your Brands can listen, learn, or lead, it’s whether you will.”

Reflecting on the session, he noted: “What we introduced wasn’t just better social media monitoring. It was empowering Sri Lankan brands to compete globally with the same intelligence capabilities that drive decision-making in New York, Singapore, or London.”