It’s safe to touch the now

• The world as we knew it, has perhaps changed forever. However, the current situation also has some positives. Look at how the Covid-19 disruption is already proving to have positive environmental benefits.
• Brands will now be recognized basis what they do, how they do it, and what are they bringing for the community at large. Consumer decisions will be based on social dimension more than functional & emotional.
• Mamtah Sabhrwal Group Head - Account Planning, Isobar writes about how things might be different in the post Covid-19 world.

We will come out again. We will rise, we will run, we will fly again. The world is waiting to live the future & skip the current times. But is this time to run into the future or run back in time? Is this the time to edit the story without mercy or writing a new one?

Everything changes when we go through unprecedented & difficult times. And times like this not only change the way we view things, but it changes the more fundamental assumptions we make about our lives, seeing things taking new shapes and asking more confounding questions about our true existence. Humans are incredibly adaptable, so the evolution with time is indisputable. And while the changing times will show us the future in the due course of time, taking note of things that could have been better in the journey of human civilization can be another way to write a new story. And we see something similar taking place with brands too, there is more of action & less of talking.

Advertising industry has always been fearless in taking bold steps and pushing the culture forward. It has created stronger purposes for the companies and more innovative ways to connect with the audience. We have come a very long way when we look back at our journey in the advertising from Lalithaji on making your whites whiter to Hamara Bajaj in celebrating the spirit of new, young & aspirational India, from changing the culture narrative with share the load to the content boom of long format ads with prison break . We were always ahead of the curve in molding & transitioning from the golden age of advertising to witnessing a boom immediately after a global recession with liberalization in 90s.

Look at how digital advertising changed the rules of the game by making the consumer the king in deciding to watch or skip ads. And when the industry was at the mercy of the consumers’ choice, it again evolved us into becoming content creators. It moved away from interruption to engagement. It moved from forced concept of advertising to entertainment through un-advertising. Today, a great advertising campaign either entertain or engage. It is an exciting time to work in the discipline of foresight, to lean into this changing landscape, imagining new possible scenarios and building future-fit strategies to turn this uncertainty into action. Right now, businesses need to recalibrate and regard fear as a positive catalyst, not a threat to all that we currently know. And we need to start with rethinking the most fundamental things ranging from work to entertainment to living to communicating to consumption. And nonetheless witnessing this time is going to create a long-term memory, hugely impact us in completely changing us for the coming times.

Advertising in the new decade will expand from communication & content to real action. It is going to be the decade of undoing what humans had done in the past. From reconnecting with the neighborhood to again learning to live with limitations. Look at how the Covid-19 disruption is already proving to have positive environmental benefits. And similarly, brands will be recognized basis what they do, how they do it, and what are they bringing for the community at large. Consumer decisions will be based on social dimension more than functional & emotional. Consumers will ask themselves what is in there for us instead of asking what is in there for me. Communicating through action is going to take the center stage soon. The world will move away from the concept of CSR which focusses only on giving away a part of the profits in doing good. It will move into the concept of building brands & business models that are sustainable & continue to take actions for the community. Traditional businesses will reconsider their revenue-models or extinct in the new scheme of things. Social entrepreneurship will become mainstream. Non-contributing nature of businesses will be rejected by the consumers, lip-services by brands will become a thing of the past & doing-good will be the new business as usual. Purposeful marketing will be the only marketing left in the future. Brands will be creating products by integrating the needs of the consumers as well as the society.

The future is as uncertain as this pandemic but most effectively we can move into the future through rethinking the divide in the society, reconsidering the effects on the environment & recreating our communities are going to be the new buildings blocks for brands & businesses to reimagine/reassesses its position.