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<ul><li>After two months of joining Wunderman Thompson, <keyword id="2705387" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="shamsuddin-jasani" source="Orion">Shamsuddin Jasani</keyword> is all set to propel the agency's South Asia business forward.</li><li>Jasani talks to us about the future of the advertising industry, what employees are expecting from a leader as the COVID scare increases across the country, challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for him as a CEO of a creative agency, and his larger vision for the agency.</li></ul>After 13 years with Dentsu’s Isobar -- growing it from a two-person team to over 300-strong people across South Asia, Shamsuddin Jasani joined creative advertising agency Wunderman Thompson in October 2021. At his new stint as the Chief Executive Officer of the South Asian market, he is excited about continuing Wunderman Thompson’s creative legacy and marrying it with Data, Commerce and Technology. Before this huge career shuffle, he asked himself, “Where does the future of the agency model lie?” Telling us why he chose Wunderman Thompson, Jasani said, “The agency was right at the juncture where I thought we needed to evolve from. It also allows me the flexibility to have that vision and take Wunderman Thompson to where I feel the agency model needs to reach. The edge I want to bring in is from a creative and technology perspective, to add to the already existing beautiful legacy of a brand-experience creative agency.” The rules of the game, in a world as dynamic as digital marketing and traditional advertising, change every minute. Jasani mentioned that the kind of competitive set that exists today is very different from what it was even till a few years ago. He was quick to realise that he needs to be ahead of the curve and decided to move on from Isobar. He explained, “It means that our competitor set evolves from not only having the traditional agency model -- it will accentuate and evolve into completely different platforms. And that's why the idea is to take what I have learned, marry digital-first and technology thinking to creative-first thinking. The aim is to come up with the agency model which is more relevant in today's world. Wunderman Thompson already had those ingredients, it is just about putting all this together.” After the pandemic, there's no doubt that consumer behaviour and shopping patterns have changed. From medicine and grocery to luxury cars, internet users are making a lot of their purchases online. However, this doesn’t mean that people have lost interest in experiencing the physical world around us or buying on the basis of feel and smell still. So, Jasani is looking at enhancing Wunderman Thompson’s current capabilities and combining them with his specialty - commerce. “As we enhance our capabilities in commerce, we’ll also go to our clients and say, 'How can I marry that with commerce?' Because today, commerce is going to be as critical as just the communication in marketing that we're doing. We are going to break this journey up into six months, a year, and two years. The evolution is starting off as a brand experience agency that talks about marketing, advertising, and adding digital components to it -- the innovations that the new mediums are bringing up, exploring how online and offline co-exist. The whole Phygital experience of how we are taking people from online to offline and back again is going to be very critical for solving a lot of our client's needs. And it would be about how we can be relevant and work with them to solve their needs on every touchpoint of the consumer journey, including what happens post-purchase,” said Jasani. Preparing for the impending wave of COVID-19 Jasani moved into a new agency when COVID numbers finally seemed to be coming under control. With the number of vaccinated citizens increasing every day, hope and optimism was beginning to replace uncertainty and anxiety. Consumer sentiment was up and employees were back to working from the office. However, just in the last two weeks, India has seen a rapid resurgence of COVID cases. We might be heading into a recap of 2020 and employees will need their leader’s support yet again. Clients and their budgets for traditional mediums might also plummet. Jasani is confident that the employees and clients are better prepared for the third wave than they were back in 2020. He said, “The number one thing that is always on our minds is the health and wellness of all employees but I also wanted to talk about how this is a situation in which we need to be very agile in how we are reacting, in terms of the people and externally as well for the clients. So we are completely supportive. We have everything in place to make sure that our teams feel supported. They feel that they are a part of the Wunderman Thompson team but at the same time, they have their safety and security also taken care of. The converse to that is we still want people -- once things are back to normal, or at least the new normal, as they call it -- to start interacting much more. We are still working in an agency setup, which is all about people working together to come up with some brilliant solutions. While digital is a great medium, a lot of that is really widening off people really working together. So, we are looking at a very hybrid, agile model where we want to have these pockets of inspiration that we want people to get into, which can be physical and digital.” As we prepare for another possible wave of COVID-19, Jasani has one piece of advice for brands and agencies. Sharing what consumers will expect from brands this time, he said, “I think brands need to be true. People see through brands and businesses that are just doing public service announcements, so it's very important to be true. And secondly, we are slightly better prepared for this wave than we were in the last wave. So a lot of that communication still needs to be normal. We simply need to evolve our channels, the way our consumers can interact with us, reach to us and buy stuff It is going to be about making it seamless for them, in whatever communication that you're doing. It's about making things easier for the consumer. If I have to put it in one line, it is about how you are creating that sense of ease and seamlessness.” Larger vision for the agency Wunderman Thompson and Jasani’s vision for the next three years is to grow the agency to twice its size. On his game plan to achieve this goal, he shared, “We will do this by taking our legacy and adding a layer of commerce, technology, and MarTech, and also doing brilliant work creatively. I think that is something that does not change, creativity is always going to be the center of everything we do. In fact, this focus on creativity will only increase in 2022 and 2023 -- the focus on doing brilliant work, and helping clients really take part in this ever-evolving landscape and making consumer experience better. I think that's what 2022 is all about.”

Our evolution of Wunderman Thompson will involve taking its legacy and adding a renewed focus on commerce, data and technology: Shamsuddin Jasani

<ul><li>Isobar has announced the launch of Isobar Consulting in India. </li><li>It will help brands define their <keyword id="9616877" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-transformation-strategies">digital transformation strategies</keyword>.</li><li>It will also help brands construct roadmaps to unlock their exponential business growth within the country while reinforcing Isobar's strategic capabilities to deliver Experience-led Transformation and ensuring excellence in the delivery of end-to-end solutions to clients.</li></ul> Isobar, the digital agency from the house of <keyword id="6368370" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="dentsu-aegis-network">Dentsu Aegis Network</keyword> (DAN), has announced the launch of Isobar Consulting in India. A global transformation consultancy, Isobar Consulting will help brands define their digital transformation strategies. It will also help brands construct roadmaps to unlock their exponential business growth within the country while reinforcing Isobar's strategic capabilities to deliver Experience-led Transformation and ensuring excellence in the delivery of end-to-end solutions to clients. The offering has been developed to respond to the demand for customer-centric solutions to drive growth. It has been built on the strong plinth of Isobar India Group's existing consulting capabilities - powered by Fractal Ink and Isobar India. For the record, Fractal Ink and Isobar India have strong experience in delivering Experience-led Transformation projects in markets such as India, Switzerland, Mauritius, Indonesia, Kenya, Egypt, and parts of the Middle East. In its initial phase, Isobar Consulting will help companies build their digital culture. It will create digital transformation roadmaps by identifying internal operational efficiencies and opportunities to ace the X-factor for end consumers, partners, and employees, and, thus, foster the industry’s 4.0 capabilities. Isobar Consulting will be led by <keyword id="787400" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Priyanka-Agrawal">Priyanka Agrawal</keyword>, Co-founder, COO and Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Ink, as Country Head. Additionally, the agency has also appointed <keyword id="3588281" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="rahul-vengalil">Rahul Vengalil</keyword> as Chief Business Officer, Isobar Consulting. Both Priyanka and Rahul will report into <keyword id="2705387" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Shamsuddin-Jasani">Shamsuddin Jasani</keyword>, Group MD, Isobar South Asia. Shamsuddin said, “We have been readying ourselves to launch this world-class Experience-led Transformation business for almost 6 months now. However, we wanted to fine tune it before launch and now, on the back of two big wins, we are launching Isobar Consulting. I feel that by drawing capabilities from two of the finest agencies within the Isobar India group - Fractal Ink and Isobar India, we can deliver a roadmap for a lot of businesses that seek this transformation. Experience-led Transformation is our key offering, and we genuinely believe that we have a substantial competitive advantage in this space. With the addition of this service, the Isobar India Group can deliver end-to-end solutions to clients - right from consulting to delivery.” Commenting on this new chapter, Priyanka added, "The digital world is changing at a break-neck speed. We realized we need a new formula for the new era that a traditional consulting or design agency alone cannot deliver - an experience-led innovation consulting. We merged the design strategy, creative, and digital capabilities of Fractal Ink and the broad reach, mar-tech experience, and deep business and brand strategy of Isobar India to create something that brings immense value to our clients and catapults their growth. With depth, commitment, and impact in our DNA, we strive to orchestrate the capabilities to truly change the game and deliver insights at speed and solutions at scale. We are looking forward to be a part and reason for the digital transformation success stories of companies.” Speaking on the appointment and launch, Rahul commented, "Digital platforms and technologies have become an integral part of consumer journeys today. It is not an advertising platform for them. They are transacting, communicating, researching, building relationships, banking, etc. It is a different life for consumers on digital. Forward-looking businesses need to understand consumer needs and solve their problems using digital solutions. For this, we need to change the existing advertising codes and reorient the entire organization to keep consumer needs and problems at the centre.” Isobar Consulting will drive this Experience-led Transformation practice across all Dentsu Aegis Network offices in India.

Isobar launches Isobar Consulting to help brands define their digital transformation strategies

<ul><li>The pandemic-induced lockdown accelerated <keyword id="618493" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-marketing">digital marketing</keyword>’s adoption rate in India. </li><li>A lot of brands have a digital-first and digital-only approach, while there are brands that want to start and stay only on digital. </li><li>So will this be a strong enough push for clients to invest a lion’s share on digital? We reach out to digital agencies to understand what we can expect in the future as digital takes precedence. </li></ul>Digital marketing has taken precedence over all mediums since the outbreak of coronavirus. According to DAN’s digital report released in January this year, digital marketing was expected to grow by 10.9% and reach ₹75,952 crore by the end of 2020. However, with the nationwide lockdown, print, radio, OOH, in-cinema advertising saw a massive drop, enabling further acceleration in digital’s overall growth. 2019 was also another year with its own set of challenges. With the economic slowdown, advertisers decided to cut back on spends and market sentiments reached a new low but despite those hurdles, digital continued to flourish. Now with reading news, catching up with friends, dating, hanging out and many other social activities becoming virtual, the whole market dynamics have altered. This has led to marketers rethinking their strategies and digital agencies introspecting on how they can lead the change. As markets are now slowly opening up, we reached out to experts to find out if the ad revenue pie will change, too. Experts opined that most advertising budgets and brands will be digital-centric in the times to come once we recover from the dent that COVID-19 has created. Unny Radhakrishnan, CEO, Digitas India said, "Digital always had a year-on-year healthy growth. More often the growth stories are reported based on how much digital media spends are growing. While that is clearly an indication of growth, the current situation is triggering accelerated growth not just in digital media spends, but in the overall approach to digitisation. There is a renewed focus on digitisation of all customer touch points. Consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with digital interfaces - from virtual showrooms to OTT to digital news subscriptions to e-commerce. So brands will continue to invest in this transformation and investments could be significantly skewed on to digital. Most of our conversations and engagements with our clients are in the areas of these transformations and building digital brands." However, digital advertising will take some time to get its due back. Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar South Asia, highlighted that 95% of the ad revenue still comes from traditional beauty, FMCG and auto brands, who weren’t fully operational during the lockdown. He predicts a 40% drop in the overall digital revenue this year. “Consumption has gone through the roof for various forms of content ranging from video, gaming to education. Ramayan and news viewership also gave TV a push. Unfortunately, the clients aren't able to keep up with the pace. So far, only 5% of ad revenue comes from a pure digital brand and 95% still comes from a traditional FMCG or auto brand. They’ll start spending in the days to come. Apart from that, e-comm players told me that 75% of their sales came back in lockdown 3.0. Hence, people are going to put their best bets on digital again. Lockdown did have a long-term impact because the ad spends have cut down,” said Jasani. Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, CEO and Co-founder, Gozoop says an ‘even bigger uptick awaits us.’ “Digital spends are going to grow exponentially in the post-COVID era. CEO’s, CFO’s &amp; CMO’s are experiencing the benefits of having a digital-only marketing strategy and once they have tested success, I don’t see them resorting to other forms of advertising, at least in the short to medium term. There will be an increased focus on martech and performance marketing strategies. I also expect inbound marketing and performance-led influencer marketing to become a critical tool in the arsenal of most digital first marketing teams.” Sharing why digital has seen unhampered growth year-on-year despite the volatile environment in India, Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Mirum India said, “It was due to various advantages that it offers, including sharp targeting, being very measurable, being able to track the ROI well, very efficient to create and manage campaigns, usable for small and large budgets, ease of starting, stopping, and tweaking campaigns, and not needing to stay committed to a creative or a medium, for long periods of time, etc. For all these reasons, digital advertising has been growing for years now. But marketers were still spreading their spending across media, including TV, print, OOH, cinema, radio, etc. Since all these mediums saw a drop, digital became a natural choice.” Traditional brands who offer tangible products will also embrace digital in the days to come. Giving us an insight into which categories will be the first adapters during <keyword id="9318169" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Unlock-1-0">unlock 1.0</keyword>, Jasani said, “There is a clear transfer of marketing monnies from mediums like outdoor, in-cinema to digital. Now, with this markets opening up, you should see much more activity from brands like mobile providers, who aren't termed as essentials but are important. Auto will see a boom because people will avoid public transport. But you will not go for a test-drive. This whole process will move to digital. Marketing will be around how safely it will be delivered it to you. So a lot of money will be spent on safety whether it is tourism, food, airlines, etc.” Google’s report titled ‘What is India searching for’ revealed how dependence on digital is rapidly increasing as time spent on smartphones in the first 3 week of COVID-19 disruption inched towards 4.5 hours per day and online video accounted for more than 70% of India’s total data usage. As a result, clients who have reached out to Gozoop lately are demanding digital-first strategy and Naqvi predicts that it will now get the lion’s share. “A lot of brands that are coming to us today and want a digital-first approach with some only wanting digital as the main channel. I feel that the future of brand building is digital. It’s not just here to stay but is here to lead. When it comes to the brands that have traditionally relied on mainline, there will be some tactical work that will be done occasionally, but that’s not to say that print and traditional will die. However, the portion of spends will flip. Digital spends will go up from 20-30% of the current total media spends to as high as 60-70% in the post COVID era,” shared Naqvi. The sudden transition to digital wasn’t really smooth for marketers. They were trying to figure out the market sentiment and how to communicate with consumers. Eventually, the importance of ROI was driven home. “The economic challenges of the current period do force brands to think sharper on ROI factors, where marketing spends are concerned. Hence digital as a highly measurable medium, becomes a first call. Even within digital, data-driven marketing and marketing automation, become a must-do, since these generate even sharper focus and enable far better ROI on spends,” said Mehta. There is a silver lining to this whole situation after all. Jasani predicts this consumer sentiment will pick up come Diwali. “This is going to be the best Diwali since the past 2 years. First two months will go in stocking essentials but come Diwali, consumers are going to step out and buy things. It will be a good thing for the country and economy, overall,” said he. Digital experts said that this shift to digital is an irreversible change in the marketing landscape.

Unlock 1.0: Digital will continue to take the bigger cut, share experts

<ul><li>Narayan Devanathan is now President - Strategy &amp; Integration for dentsu India &amp; Head - Strategy &amp; Consulting, APAC.</li><li>Shamsuddin Jasani &amp; Sidharth Rao also get additional roles.</li></ul>On the back of its global organisational redesign, dentsu international has created a new structure for its creative service line in India. The restructure will bring together some of India’s best agencies along with their digital &amp; PR capabilities - all from the house of dentsu - under one umbrella with an aim to provide a more collaborative and aligned offering to clients. The brands that will come together as part of this redesign as dentsu Creative include Dentsu Webchutney, Taproot Dentsu, WATConsult, Perfect Relations, Isobar, Dentsu One, Dentsu India and Dentsu Impact. With the eventual consolidation under the two strong global brands - dentsumcgarrybowen (dentsuMB) and Isobar, dentsu Creative will provide digital-native, brand-led, customer-centric, creative, and strategic solutions to clients, effortlessly. In India, the dentsu Creative service line will be led by Amit Wadhwa as its chief executive officer (CEO). Amit will be responsible for the integration, co-ordination, and implementation of the overall strategy for dentsu Creative in the market. He will lead the dentsu India creative service line leadership team, reporting into Anand Bhadkamkar and the regional dentsu Creative leadership. Sidharth Rao, in addition to his current responsibilities, will now also be in charge of the brand dentsuMB Group in India as its CEO. He will work with the leadership team on dentsuMB’s brand strategy for the market. Shamsuddin Jasani, who continues to oversee the Isobar brand in South Asia as its Managing Director (MD), will also take on an additional role at dentsu Creative. He will now work with the regional and global leadership teams to support the Isobar practice area and will work closely with the Isobar Global leadership team on the same. Speaking on the new development, Anand Bhadkamkar, CEO India said, “This global restructure is about consolidation of capabilities across our brands and businesses with an aim to bring the best of our services to our clients and provide those specialisms without any hassles. The idea is to ultimately stand true to our #OneDentsu strategy and thus, transform into a sharper and leaner business partner to brands. The changes in the India leadership team only reflects a step ahead in bolstering and scaling up our market ambitions. Amit, Sid and Shams are amongst the strongest creative leaders not just within dentsu but across industry; and with the kind of experience and knowledge backing them, I am certain that they will steer dentsu towards excellence not just in India but beyond.” The network has elevated Narayan Devanathan as President - Strategy &amp; Integration for India, in addition to his current role as CEO, dentsu Solutions. This new role is designed to support and achieve dentsu’s strategic objectives by defining, implementing, and driving growth and other vital initiatives for the market. He will continue to report into Anand Bhadkamkar for his additional responsibility as part of the India market leadership team. Meanwhile, Narayan will now also don a regional hat as APAC Head for the dentsu Creative Strategy &amp; Consulting practice. “Narayan has been instrumental in driving integration across our units and, as part of the South Asia integration initiatives, he will be supporting the Sri Lanka team in strategy and integration across the two markets. He will now be moving away from his current additional role as Chairperson, Creative Service Line for India and will take up a regional leadership role as APAC Lead - Strategy &amp; Consulting Practice in the creative service line. In this role, he will be working with the Regional and Global leadership teams within the creative service line to help develop the area of Strategy &amp; Consulting Practice in the APAC region,” Anand added.

Dentsu India consolidates eight agencies under dentsu Creative, brings digital and PR capabilities together; Amit Wadhwa to lead the new structure as CEO

<ul><li>MMA and Isobar have launched a report titled 'The Voice Playbook.'</li><li>The report attempts to analyse COVID's impact on <keyword id="11144855" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="voice-marketing">voice marketing</keyword> and its growth in India. </li></ul>MMA and Isobar have launched ‘The Voice Playbook’ for India. The playbook aims to unfold the potential impact of Voice on the global and Indian media and marketing industry. It highlights insights that will help marketers win with Voice and enhance their brand-customer journey. For the record, 'The Voice Playbook' is powered by Slang Labs. The key focus areas of ‘The Voice Playbook’ are: <ol><li>Post-Pandemic, human behavior has shifted to more contactless experiences serving to grow the need for <keyword id="460561" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="voice-technology">voice technology</keyword> in both its pace &amp; popularity. Soon, consumers will have a voice option at self-checkout counters, ATMs, automobiles, elevators and anywhere else touch is currently needed.</li><li>Globally, over <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/google-assistant-now-has-500-million-monthly-users" target="_blank">500 million people</a> use Google Assistant every month, with Hindi second only to English as the most <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/hindi-second-most-used-assistant-language-globally-says-google/articleshow/71206202.cms" target="_blank">commonly used language</a>.</li><li>The integration of Indian languages in voice assistants has been the strongest growth driver for the tech across the six-to-sixty age spectrum and as the majority of Indians are multilingual, they find voice three times faster than typing. During the 2019 cricket season, Google Assistant received over 100 million cricket queries as people asked for news and live score updates. This means people of all ages and geographies can engage with voice-enabled technology more easily because it mimics normal conversation.</li><li>Voice search queries in India are growing at 270% per year. India is already a large video-first <a href="https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tag/internet" target="_blank">internet</a> market and with the demographics and large scale, smartphone adoption will become the world's first / largest voice-first internet.</li><li>Voice technology is playing a pivotal role in fuelling aided commerce growth as 82% of smartphone users are using voice-activated technology.</li><li>Growing adoption of voice technology in shopping online will leave voice assistant to suggest products to buy and this can affect people’s connection with brands as only convenience or a brand’s ‘top of mind’ will play a bigger role in making a choice. Hence, Customer experience will once and for all overtake social media presence or general marketing.</li><li>Voice assistance has been continually refined to be more realistic and human-like. Alexa just got its first celebrity voice in India. Brands are focusing a lot on the voice of the voice assistant as the majority of the respondents (86%) said developing a brand’s voice personality is extremely important.</li><li>We are already anticipating the emergence of voice ad exchanges, where advertisers will bid to get their brands to the top spot. The first execution of this solution has just hit the market: Instreamatic.ai is the first company to serve ‘voice ads that people can speak with’.</li></ol>Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar - South Asia said, " Voice technology will become the next great disruptor and India as a market is very receptive to Voice as a medium and Isobar is extremely excited to help brands ride on this new wave. This playbook gives marketers an excellent opportunity to understand how to use voice as a medium/platform to engage with their consumers. By 2021, it’s estimated that 72% of internet users in India will prefer to use a language other than English, and voice will help bridge that language gap. Just like Brands needed an internet strategy in the ‘90s, a search strategy in 2000, and a mobile strategy in 2010, we at Isobar believe now brands need a voice strategy.” Gopa Kumar, COO, <keyword id="3116493" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Isobar-India">Isobar India</keyword> added, "We firmly believe that Voice technology will become the next great disruptor and India as a market is very receptive to Voice as a medium. We are already seeing in India that people are skipping typing and moving to Voice and are completely at ease with the same. This gives marketers an excellent opportunity to use voice as a medium/platform to engage with their customers. While its use is becoming widespread and consumers are very receptive to it, there is still very less information on how voice tech will affect the various digital marketing platforms or the marketing mix. This playbook in association with MMA aims to decode the how and simplify it, this playbook will help you know about voice technology and will aid in not only being prepared but to position yourself or your brand ahead of the curve." <keyword id="6812225" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Moneka-Khurana">Moneka Khurana</keyword>, Country Head, <keyword id="3172346" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="MMA-India">MMA India</keyword> commented, “In post-pandemic times, contactless experiences, increased voice searches, consumption of vernacular languages, conversational commerce are riding the wave, making voice tech integral to the entire value chain. Hence, marketers recognise the potential of voice with MMA being the first trade body to take the lead to shape the future of voice in collaboration with our voice &amp; audio council enabling ongoing evangelism and education. The Voice playbook would act as a toolkit to empower and enable the marketer.” Kumar Rangarajan, Co-founder &amp; Obsessive Dictator, Slang Labs said, “When Slang Labs started about 4 years ago with the intent of empowering the digitally disenfranchised segments of the society to get the same kind of services that the digital-savvy people could, most of the marketing was still focused on the digital-savvy and majorly urban population of India. Post-Covid, even the non-digital savvy populations in urban and rural areas are getting onboard the digital highway. But the brands are unable to capture the full potential of this huge market of Next Billion Users! This is where we see Voice Playbook 2021 enabling marketers to understand the key challenges faced by this huge untapped market and engage them on their own terms using Voice as the ‘Bridge to BHARAT’!”

Voice search queries in India are growing at 270% per year: MMA and Isobar Report

<ul><li>With the industry changing at a rapid pace, throwing a new set of challenges every day, experts are hoping that 2020 will be a game-changer that will help them redefine a lot of rules in advertising, with smarter marketing techniques. </li><li>We spoke to a few industry experts to identify these new opportunities that 2020 will bring forth for the industry and here is what they had to say. </li></ul>2019 was an interesting year -- full of ups and downs for the advertising, media and marketing industry. While we saw <keyword id="618493" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-marketing">digital marketing</keyword> taking the center stage and brands experimenting with newer formats on the medium, the economic slowdown affected consumer sentiments, and naturally, the industry. However, during this period of tough economy, the industry tried to squeeze out the inefficiencies to make themselves more productive. As we enter 2020, the industry is hopeful to rise to its full strength together. They are all set to reap the benefits of AR and VR, voice, influencer marketing, and much more to stay ahead in the game. We spoke to a few industry experts to identify these new opportunities that 2020 will bring forth for the industry and here is what they had to say: Will Scougal, Director of International Creative Strategy, Snapchat: I don’t think there’ll be one dominant trend but several interlinked trends that have emerged over the last decade all achieving scale and creating real shifts in the way we experience and interact with brands. Over the last few years people have increasingly shifted their attention to mobile and, as they have become more confident navigating the world with their handset, they’re looking for quality experiences. What we’ve seen at Snapchat is that people are choosing to spend time adding a creative layer to their world through AR (Augmented Reality). As this format continues to scale, both on Snapchat and beyond, we are going to see more innovative, useful, and immersive experiences being built by brands embracing the marketing benefits of AR as a full funnel format. In addition to the growing popularity of AR, we are also going to see premium mobile video content gain more viewers. As audiences rise, we can expect to see more quality made-for-mobile shows from studios, publishers, entertainers and brands who are adapting to the mobile mindset of people. Ashish Bhasin, CEO - APAC and Chairman India, Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific: Voice and performance will gain much more prominence than they did so far in the industry. With the emergence of OTT and data rates going down, there is a natural preference towards digitisation amongst younger audience. Equally, voice is so intuitive, it will be naturally driven more and more on a daily basis -- whether you are driving or use some voice assistant on your phone, which will be simplified with time. On the other hand, clients are also under-pressure to deliver results every quarter, hence, they will be far more interested in performance rather than just pure brand-building. Prathyusha Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer, ZEEL: With consumption across platforms, the most dominating trend of 2020 would be brand and character love that transcends multiple screens. Viewers will share their dining tables and living rooms with our content on television satisfying the craving for anticipation of a new story, the first bite to savour the emotion and relationship with our characters every day. They will then stretch it across multiple screens and interactions binging on it, dipping in, dipping out and gorging on it through time and space. As broadcasters, we need to gear up our backend to tailor-make our content such that it is adept to the multiple platform front-end user interfaces. There is a shift needed from thinking of content development as an uncertain creative process to building a nuanced understanding the cultural core that makes viewers tick, what they want/ need, where do they need it and have the capability to evolve our craft to deliver that. To own multiple screens where stories and characters are loved beyond just television, content creators and curators, will have to manage the share of pie on each of platforms to maximise screen hours. Sameer Saxena, Chief Content Officer and Head of TVF: “For 2020, we will continue to strengthen our partnerships with OTT platforms and brands equally. We plan to venture into new genres like thrillers and romance amongst others. We will also explore non-fiction properties as there isn’t much happening in this space. Our aim is to release around 15 to 20 shows in the year including a few in regional languages starting with Marathi. In addition to new shows we're also planning the second seasons of some of our key shows like ‘Kota Factory’, ‘Cubicles’, and ‘Hostel Daze’.“ Dinesh Chhabra, CEO, Usha International: “The consumer durables sector has shown a consistent growth and Usha International Ltd leads this growth from the front riding on new product launches like the Bloom series and Racer fans, as well as the introduction of a whole slew of colorful new kitchen appliances. During this period of tough economy, Usha tightened its operating belt to squeeze out the inefficiencies to make itself leaner and more productive. Usha believes in keeping the customer at the core of our businesses and hence ensures that all the new products that we have recently developed keeping consumer insights in mind and built to fulfil their needs, thereby transforming their daily lives. We expect the New Year to fuel consumer demand and a stabilization of growth patterns in coming quarters. We, at Usha, will continue in our journey to launch new products and innovative technologies, and improve the depth of our distribution penetration specifically in the geographies which are growing at a GDP growth higher than the national average.” Koshy George, Chief Marketing Officer, Marico Limited: One big trend for me will continue to be digital. You will continue to find a lot more digital adoption because the rates, while they have gone up, continue to be rock bottom in the country. And you will find that a lot of time that consumers spend will move into digital and hence the focus to continue to build brands and invest there will be one big trend that we look at. And as part of that, there are a lot of medium like TikTok that have suddenly come and exploded out of nowhere. We have recently worked with the platform and seen really good results so that'll be an area of focus. Secondly, while the economy has been witnessing a slowdown, there is still a room for a lot of premiumization. And there's a big trend in sustainability that is slowly but surely picking up momentum and is something we will see more of in 2020. Amer Jaleel, Group CCO &amp; Chairman, MullenLowe Lintas Group: I see content saturation coming. We have to start seeing consumers as audiences in the Media Age. Everybody is creating content with ease through apps. While this explosion leads to satisfying the creative urge among people and that surely is a good thing, but coupled with the march of platforms and production, this is leading very rapidly to content fatigue. Once we see our consumers as an audience, we have to account for the fatigue they have to overcome to see the frankly poor quality of brand content that most of us are putting out. The only way marketeers and their brand partners have is to be ahead of and fresher than the content that's being dished out. I can clearly see that the phrase 'break the clutter' is outdated. We will have to preempt all the evolution of what we call clutter and be ahead of the thinking of the clutter makers. Gurmeet Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, Johnson Controls-Hitachi Air Conditioning India: To stand out from the crowd, companies are putting the customer at the heart of everything they do. This has led to the emergence of exceptional customer experiences. Marketing in the modern era has to play a significant role in shaping these experiences. Artificial Intelligence is certainly going to be a game changer driving the marketing landscape in 2020. This Next-gen technology will create new avenues of effective marketing and customer experiences. One of the trendiest topics across the world, both in B2B and B2C spaces, AI is going to take the charge as it holds the power to evolve businesses, accelerate customer experiences and boost sales like never before. Audience segmentation with in-depth understanding of the demand is key to success in any B2B module. Here AI will empower and align business, marketing and sales teams to accurately analyze the demand touchpoints much before a lead generation. This will ensure faster and concrete conversion of leads resulting in enriched customer experiences. Artificial Intelligence can play a significant role in influencing marketing strategies and predicting favorable product and service outcome. With AI things will become faster, easier, more convenient and affordable for business ecosystem to meet the ever evolving customer expectations. New India’s smart customer is globally connected and is curious to explore, experiment and experience. Today, customers are considering exceptional experiences as a critical aspect of their buying decision. In the B2C segment, AI has a huge role to play. It is also the responsibility of businesses and marketers to ethically leverage the power of this impactful tool. Without invading the privacy of customers, AI should aim at significantly providing intelligent and informed customer experiences by equipping marketing and product teams to effectively analyse consumer behavior, acceptance, demand and delivery points. This will ensure a smooth end to end customer journey that is more customized and interactive in the most natural and ethical manner. AI will also support the marketing landscape by enabling powerful and high-impact consumer insights to disrupt customer satisfaction and enhance success factors of product and service innovations. TikTok spokesperson: In 2019, we saw a drastic shift in online content consumption behavior. As the internet continued to democratize, Indians moved beyond the traditional consumption of entertainment content and are now avidly looking at videos to educate themselves on variety of topics such as self-improvement, health, fitness, e- learning languages, among others. In 2020, we foresee this trend to grow, with brands and NGOs leveraging short video formats with platforms such as TikTok. At the same time, given shorter attention spans, it will be critical for content to break through the clutter, be creative, fun and engaging, in order to attract audiences. Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar South Asia: Voice as a technology is coming into its own and is going to be a big trend in 2020. With Hindi as a language being made available on Alexa, it will open up huge opportunities in the future. Secondly, with advancements in technology, augmented reality is going to take off in a big way. And the third biggest trend will again come from the world of vernacular content. Local languages are going to explode as we go into 2020 and you will see more OTT players investing on local languages. Pratik Gupta, Co-founder, FoxyMoron: "2020 will be the year for digitally evolved agencies and digitally involved clients. Hyper-personalization of content through all digital platforms should be the biggest trend this year. Along with the innovation on digital; Voice, OTT, Social, Progressive Web Apps, the use of Hyper-Personalisation are going to be imperative. While the entire ecosystem believes that the consumer does not want to see advertisements, I believe that ads &amp; communication served to an exposed cookie pool at the right time and at the right place is the future. This year we will be working on creating workflows, technologies and teams to cater to this need for brands and consumers alike." Also see: 
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