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<ul><li><keyword id="5998660" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wipro-Lighting">Wipro Lighting</keyword>’s latest campaign highlights their ‘Safe and touch-free’ offering.</li><li>It seamlessly weaves its contactless offering into the narrative of this heartwarming story. </li></ul>Wipro Lighting has released its latest digital campaign highlighting their Contactless lighting technology that breaks the clutter in the category by <keyword id="9948602" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="humanising-technology">humanising technology</keyword>. With the rapid spread of coronavirus, social distancing, and constant vigilance on sanitization, have become basic necessities in our daily lives. And while we continue to hear of developments in technology to minimize physical contact, not many exist in India – at least till now. Wipro Lighting’s range of lighting controls enabled with voice instruction is a revolutionary move in the current scenario. <div type="Youtube" id="QmhJwvxgJ-w" title="Wipro Touch-free Lights | #SurprisinglyHuman | Contactless lighting" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QmhJwvxgJ-w/mqdefault.jpg"></div> The latest campaign by the brand depicts its concept of touch free lighting through a fascinating story with a focus on the message of “one less touch” in our daily activities. The film opens in the middle of the night as a doctor returns home from duty. Instinctively his hand reaches out for the switchboard to turn on the lights, however, he quickly backs up and gives a voice command for the lights to turn on – avoiding any physical contact. As he goes on to search for some snacks, an innocent yet stern voice is heard as his daughter interrupts him saying, “Alexa, switch on the Wipro dining room lights,” and then points out: “Sabka khayal rakthe hai. Par khud ka kaun rakhega?”. The campaign manages to beautifully capture the story of our frontline heroes as they attempt to keep their loved ones safe at all times, while depicting the benefits of this ‘contactless’ lighting range in their day to day activities. Talking about the campaign Sanjay Gupta, Senior Vice President &amp; Business Head, Wipro Consumer Lighting and Switches said, “Covid-19 has impacted everyone’s life and has completely changed the way we went about doing even the normal things. This new advertisement from Wipro lighting is to highlight the need to inculcate one more change for everyone’s good and safety. It brings out one of the benefits of Wipro smart lights whereby the consumer can avoid touching the switches; thereby ensuring “one touch less” for safety of everyone. We also zeroed in on this script as this also highlights the sacrifices being made by doctors (all health care professionals in general) and their family during these difficult times” "While technology products often choose the cold and direct approach, Wipro has always emphasized on taking the softer, warmer route for their communication. This one is no different. Considering the troubled times we are in; this is more of an homage to our doctors than a hard-selling product film. The smart light consciously takes a backseat in the narrative and plays an enabler of sorts, making its role surprisingly human," said <keyword id="978561" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nikhil-Narayanan">Nikhil Narayanan</keyword>, Creative Director, Ogilvy.

Wipro's latest ad humanises technology; aims to show the role gadgets can play to make our homes seamlessly contactless

<ul><li>In our latest series, we look at different industries to understand what 2021 was like for them and crystal gaze into the upcoming year, identifying some of the trends that will set the tone for 2022.</li><li>We speak to Design Gurus to find out trends that 2022 has in store for us.</li></ul>Each year brings along shifts in trends and the year 2021, in particular, brought a faster pace of changes in marketing strategies, product design and execution -- opening up a huge window for innovation and experimentation. It pushed all brands and agencies to think on their feet. Everyone had to go back to the drawing board to think of new ways to communicate with consumers as they started demanding products that are designed in comforting and sustainable ways with smart features that offer convenience and personalisation. Consumers’ outlook towards their health and wellness also evolved as the pandemic pushed them to re-evaluate their lifestyle. They have become increasingly aware of climate change and are willing to take an active approach to do something about it. They are also expecting brands to act as agents of change, be more transparent about the raw material they use and act sustainably. So, in 2021, brands like Colgate, Diageo, WOW launched paper-based packaging and started keeping sustainability at the center of their products. With this trend, it is no doubt that all purchase decisions in the future will be completely driven by a product’s packaging material. Apart from a product’s ingredients, brands will be required to explain their recycling process too to attract consumers. As per a recent study conducted across Asia, <a href="https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2821-consumers-relationships-brands.html">consumers</a> are paying attention to a product's environmental impact, and affordability and quality were still the main driving factors behind a vast majority of purchases. As a result, product designs have changed in the last two years. Brands have increased their focus on the ‘safety’ aspect of product packaging and design. And as consumers looked for ways to escape from reality, elements of optimism and local community flavours took center stage in the product design industry. Brands played more with bright, positive designs across communication, packaging, and other large facets of brand architecture. With the arrival of Meta, the growth of artificial intelligence will also accelerate across the globe and brands will integrate AI into their product design. As the year draws to a close, we speak to design gurus to find out what challenges lie ahead and a few trends that would monopolize the marketing world in 2022. Here is what experts had to say: Lulu Raghavan, Managing Director, Landor &amp; Fitch India: The design trend that has accelerated sharply in the past few years and that will explode and firmly take hold in 2022 is sustainable design. This is because of the perfect storm of environmental consciousness coupled with a desire for meaning that most of us as designers and creatives are experiencing. The pandemic sharply exposed the horrors of climate change to us. It made us sit up and think hard about humanity’s collective actions that have contributed to the unprecedented global warming that has been creeping up slowly but surely in the past several decades. Whether it was the forest fires in Australia, the Winter storms in Texas, the devastating flooding in Maharashtra or the many other extreme weather events that popped up around the world with alarming regularity, we were choked beyond words and stirred up to think about how we got here in the first place. The pandemic also created existential angst as we were stuck at home, attending to our daily routines, wondering about the purpose of our lives. This search for meaning has made us question everything from mindless consumption to what success means. As a result, as designers, we will be consciously re-examining every problem we are given to solve. We will more fervently be looking through the lens of sustainability for better answers towards the greater good. Whether we will be designing new products, new spaces, new packs or creating new brands, we will be thinking hard about sustainable design solutions that can do their small but important bit for our planet. A Appadurai, Country Manager for the HP Indigo: The labels and packaging industry in India is on an upward growth trajectory bolstered by the rapid expansion of organized retail, the growth of exports, and India’s rising e-commerce sector and start-ups. Furthermore, consumer behaviour has massively transformed post the pandemic. Consumers are demanding brands to be more secure, culturally and environmentally responsible and provide consumer experiences that are in sync with the brand purpose. In the future, offerings will be tailored not just to stated preferences, but also behaviour. This has made packaging a critical touchpoint to base purchase decisions on, and the industry must adapt how they can optimize their packaging to meet the upcoming trends to meet customer expectations. In the years to come starting 2022, personalized and innovative packaging will help keep customers highly engaged with the brand thereby establishing greater brand affinity. Therefore, ‘packvertising’ is an effective tool that marketers can use to strike a chord with their end consumers. Moreover, with increase in online shopping, the threat of counterfeit products is growing. By 2022, counterfeiting is projected to cost the global economy US$4.2 trillion^ This will require vigilance and continued investment in new solutions - like serialization, invisible inks, track &amp; trance, and origination software to protect them from counterfeit packaging vulnerabilities. Brands are discovering massive cost benefits of On Demand Packaging / Printing against the traditional Scale of Economy Print &amp; store model because of the rapid changes that happens in the market. Agility and time to market have become super important for brands today and On demand printing / packaging exactly helps in the cause. Most importantly, consumers today are more aware of the kind of products that they use and the brands they are associated with. They are environmentally more conscious which has driven up the demand for holistically sustainable goods. Marketers must therefore increase their focus on sustainable printing &amp; green packaging. To claim sustainability proof points, brands must examine the entire lifecycle of the packaging, including its use in supply chain, basic function, marketing, usefulness to the consumer and recyclability. This should also involve examining the packaging’s credentials under the three common pillars of sustainability: people, planet, and profit. One approach which can help incorporate all these elements into an integrated strategy for sustainable packaging is carbon-footprint labelling. A carbon-footprint label shows the product’s carbon footprint from manufacturing, through use right up to eventual disposal. Ashwini Deshpande, Co-Founder &amp; Director, Elephant Design: Connected for better: That would be my key prediction for the coming year. Mobility, retail, gadgets, personal/ home care, and foods - everything will see a surge in use of technology to understand users/ consumers better. Every product, service and brand will try to understand usage patterns by embedding codes or chips to gather data more than ever. Products will also be built to communicate with each other to gather data indirectly. Such products will also help consumers understand supply source, fair practices, carbon footprint etc. Increased awareness towards sustainability, well-being of self and the environment would largely be the drivers. There are many parallel developments happening across material sciences, manufacturing technology and embedded electronics happening across the world. All these come together to create better products for the connected world. Kiran Khadke, Co-founder and Creative Head, Hyper Connect: While most of 2020 &amp; 2021 went blah! It continued to keep the creative &amp; digital studios on their toes to keep UX at the core and keep products minimal, clean, user-focussed and simple. While AR/VR was still finding their footing and voice led product experiences was still nascent and un-integrated with the overall product. In 2022, there will be a quantum leap, creative &amp; digital studios will have to integrate deeper with tech developers and analysts to create experiences for the new digital paradigm like Metaverse, Serl.io, Uhive and likes… The new paradigm of product design would need to consider 3D, multi-dimension, Voice, AR, VR integrated together seamlessly to create a real-like experience in the growing virtual world. The next wave for advertising agencies is to bring all these aspects together in cohesion and we at Hyper Connect are working on similar projects set to launch in 2022. Shashwat Das, Founder, Almond Branding: After a chaotic year, 2021 was the year for brands to understand their consumers all over again as a lot had changed in her life amid this pandemic. A lot of it is still evolving while brands are trying to align themselves and Design is bound to reflect such changes in our society and environment. Motion Design We are going to witness more and more motion in brand design as an engaging approach to storytelling. Just having static graphics as part of your visual assets is not good enough anymore. As consumer touchpoints get more digitised, brand design language will be incorporating more of motion graphics, gifs and animations. Going forward most logos will have an animated version. And motion is not limited to websites or apps, we are seeing the advent of AR fused with design. Coming year, we are going to see more Packaging where you scan a QR code and you have elements from the static design springing to action to narrate the brand story in a more engaging manner. Humanisation of Brand Design The years gone by have redefined our priorities. With several months of social distancing, we all have been missing the personal touch. Brands are going to humanise more in their attempt to build stronger relationships and engage better. At Almond Branding, we are happy to notice that our clients are preferring the proposed conversational style of messaging more, be it Packaging or Communication Design. Going forward consumers will be expecting a more personalised experience while connecting with brands. And Brand Design will make them feel that they are buying from a human and not a company. Environment-Friendly Design The pandemic has made consumers more conscious about their environment. While several brands have taken on the mission of being planet-friendly, it’s now time to walk the talk. Consumers are clever and can now easily spot greenwashing. What it means for us in the business of design, is that we have to do much more than just use the colour green to signify that we are planet-friendly. Going forward, brand designers will have to actually choose substrates and packaging formats that are truly sustainable, recyclable and low on carbon impact. 2022 is going to be year of Design for Sustainability. The last 2 years have taught us that the future is uncertain so be prepared to change drastically. The same old ways of thinking and approach are no longer going to work. The way the past 2 years have been, it can only go bigger and better from here. We all have immense hope from the Big year that is upcoming. Embracing the newer trends will be the best way for brands to dominate the market and outshine their competition. Adil Singh, Co-founder, Lights Out Studio: <div type="image" title="Adil" msid="88320263" hostid="261"></div> Two trends that will gain momentum in the coming months: Web3: Everything about block chain and its benefits has been spoken enough. Right from brands dropping NFT’s to allowing customers to buy products in crypto, would start peaking highlight of the more progressive brands. Owning a piece of the brand through the block chain network not only allows you to build a deeper connect with the brand, but also a loyal network of customers who are tech-savy and can contribute back to the brand in multiple ways. Community Building: Harped enough in the past few months, a solid community can help you with product feedback, primary research, uder generated content and also word of mouth evangelism. Communities will go beyond the ‘social media influencers’ to HXC’s (high expectation customers) that the brand targets. These are people who not only can become ideal users / adopters of the product, but also solid leaders / community builders within their personal &amp; professional networks.

Design: The trends to watch out for in 2022

With technology at the forefront, the world has been changing faster than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated these shifts, plunging all into a digital-first world, and forcing even the most traditional businesses to transform and adopt digital strategies to remotely extend personalized and humanized experiences and services to their customers. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Business challenges in the new normal" comment="subhead" text="Business challenges in the new normal">Business challenges in the new normal</cmsannotation> COVID-19 brought with it a tide of uncertainty and disruption for all businesses. Multiple waves of the pandemic and lockdowns were unpredictable, making it harder for businesses to operate. The most practical solution was to go back to the drawing board to devise a customer strategy for the new normal. A customer wants a quick yet uncomplicated experience online -- from browsing products to placing an order, every tap of the process requires attention to detail and personalization by the brand. As consumers continue to raise the bar for experiences they expect in today’s times, it’s becoming table stakes for brands to not only create compelling content but to deliver it to the right customer, at the right time, on the channel of their choice. It’s not just the customer that’s online - back-end operations are also remote today, requiring cutting-edge tools that enable collaboration across teams, vendors, and other parties involved. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="How Adobe is addressing these challenges" comment="subhead" text="How Adobe is addressing these challenges">How <keyword id="99699" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Adobe">Adobe</keyword> is addressing these challenges</cmsannotation> At <keyword id="11222369" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Adobe-Summit-2021">Adobe Summit 2021</keyword>, the company introduced new updates to its Adobe Experience Cloud- a collection of digital business products that helps brands deliver real-time data, scalable personalization, and every-channel delivery—all from a single platform, to their customers. “The pandemic has shown that brands that put a laser focus on <keyword id="1284549" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Customer-Experience">customer experience</keyword> management come out in front,” said Anil Chakravarthy, EVP, GM Digital Experience Business at Adobe, while announcing numerous innovations aimed to help brands optimize their digital customer experiences and marketing campaigns. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Timely Action" comment="subhead" text="Timely Action">Timely Action</cmsannotation> Due to an accelerated digital transformation journey undertaken during the pandemic, HDFC Bank managed to promptly meet the demands of its customers remotely. It leveraged Adobe Experience Cloud to exponentially increase conversion rates and reduce the time to market by enabling premium self-service and shoppable experiences. <div type="ExtQuote" text="If I were to boil down CX, it’s essentially customer understanding and timely outreach. We transformed our business and eliminated the need for papers. For large enterprises, it’s a collaborative problem-solving activity that requires deep integrations. We teamed up with Adobe to digitize our onboarding and superior customer experience." auname="Deepak Oram, Head, Martech &amp; Automation, HDFC Bank"></div> <div type="Youtube" id="ILfnivnW2Lc" title="HDFC Bank Personalizes the Customer Journey with Adobe Experience Cloud" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ILfnivnW2Lc/mqdefault.jpg"></div> <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Humanising Content" comment="subhead" text="Humanising Content">Humanising Content</cmsannotation> When the 97-year-old automotive brand, MG Motor entered the Indian market three years back, one of the foremost challenges the company had to address was brand awareness. As a digital-first brand, it wanted a platform that would allow customers to have an immersive brand experience online with scalability being another goal. MG Motor India leveraged the power of Adobe Experience Cloud, becoming the first OEM in the automotive space in India to use Adobe Experience Cloud in its entirety to create end-to-end solutions and cover all the customer touchpoints including physical dealerships, dealership websites, social media channels, television commercials, and even community building. <div type="ExtQuote" text="Our evolution journey involved constantly delivering an omnichannel journey for the customer. We emphasized the brand’s old British legacy, which was often considered rebellious. It had a human touch and helped us mould the brand’s image. We have a 5C approach -- content, collaboration and community, conversation, and commerce." auname="Udit Malhotra, Head Of Marketing, MG Motor India"></div> The company uses Adobe Experience Manager to facilitate the flow of content across different devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and desktops, thereby eliminating the need to redesign and recreate content to suit different formats and screens. The digital interactions between the brand and customers across these various channels are captured by Adobe Analytics. The insights gathered from these interactions are then leveraged to further deliver personalized customer experiences using Adobe Target. By using data generated by Adobe Audience Manager, second-party data collected from dealers and dealer websites, and third-party data, MG Motor has successfully been able to, and still continues to increase segment size and reach. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="The need of the hour" comment="subhead" text="The need of the hour">The need of the hour</cmsannotation> Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was able to leverage cutting-edge tech to roll out a vaccine quickly. It utilised Adobe Experience Manager to create a centralised repository of local data. A master template was set up to simulate the vaccine's action and then synced with localised models to ensure higher acceptability in adults globally. <div type="ExtQuote" text="We needed to serve a different experience depending on the country that was being accessed from. So whether that's the language, the regulatory guidelines that change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, etc. So each market would need a different experience. However, we also knew that we would need to use the packaging to direct traffic towards the site, so we imprint the URL and give a QR code on the medicine packaging." auname="David Simpson, Head of Global Commercial IT (Digital, Respiratory &amp; CVRM) at AstraZeneca"></div> All businesses are now digital businesses, and they need to continuously reinvent to cater to various expectations from the customers of today. While the situation continues to unfold, there is a need for businesses to invest in their Customer Experience Management (CXM) muscle and integrate the digital elements across the board. Adobe, being a trusted company in this sphere, is well equipped and uniquely positioned to support brands help their customers get what they want and when they want it. DISCLAIMER: This is a sponsored article in partnership with Adobe.

How brands are reimagining customer experience in a digital-first economy

<ul><li>2020 brought a lot of hurdles in our way but the creative industry proved, time and again, that united we stand stronger and nothing can ever put a lock on creativity.</li><li>The creative industry continued social distancing in a diligent manner, thinking out of the box and launching campaigns that reminded us of things that we should be thankful for. </li><li>Keeping these nuances in mind, creative folks tell us some of the trends that they expect to see in 2021. </li></ul>When the entire country is locked down and all you can do is move from your couch to your work desk for Zoom calls or catch some fresh air on your balcony, only to exchange awkward smiles with your neighbour, does that dampen your creativity? In 2020, our Indian advertising industry proved that nothing can stop them from coming up with out of the box (or with COVID, from inside the box) ideas. They were producing ads with minimum money, trying to operate within the government guidelines of production and selling it for expensive slots on television in the second half of the lockdown period. They were also expected to create ads that stood out in a sea full of cliches. They dealt with uncertainty, brainstormed ideas over a Zoom call, pressure to overperform in a dismal atmosphere, operate with salary cuts, take care of their kids and meet deadlines. Our creative folks were there to steer through these mood swings in the market and help their clients tide over treacherous waves smoothly. The worst is behind us and now that production is back and the industry is working at its normal pace, the creative folks have a lot to talk about. They have only come out stronger and with a new perspective to offer. Experts said that the future is empathy-driven and kind. We reached out to a few creative agencies to understand how they are planning to change their process as we move forward in 2021, some of the learnings that 2020 left them with and a few trends that are going to dominate the creative output this year. Here is what they said: <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Tarun Rai, Chairman and Group CEO, Wunderman Thompson, South Asia:" text="Tarun Rai, Chairman and Group CEO, Wunderman Thompson, South Asia:">Tarun Rai, Chairman and Group CEO, <keyword id="7067090" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wunderman-Thompson">Wunderman Thompson</keyword>, South Asia:</cmsannotation> Consolidation of client marketing spends: I have said that the pandemic has been more like an accelerant rather than a matchstick. I have said this since it has not necessarily lit any new fires (trends) but acted more as an accelerant, that when poured over the small fires already lit, transforms them into big raging fires. If we really look at it, this holds true for trends that were already shaping up in world economy, in politics, in global trade, reverse globalisation… Closer to us, even the use of technology, increasingly playing a role in how we work, was ‘accelerated’ by the pandemic. A case in point is Zoom that had 10 million participants a day in December 2019 and an astonishing 300 million in April 2020! One such trend, that was amply clear even before the pandemic, was the move of clients’ spends from traditional to digital media. And in this journey, clients were already finding that working with multiple partners was leading to diffused messaging because people were working in silos, and complicated coordination. The pandemic has accelerated clients’ digital transformation journey. More attention is now focussed on technology, on e-commerce, on data, on digital spends… And the pandemic has added another reason for clients to look to reduce the number of partners they work with – the need for efficiency; the need to stretch the marketing rupee. Clients will be, increasingly, looking for consolidation of their marketing spends with fewer partners – for cohesive messaging and for better efficiency. For companies like Wunderman Thompson, that have capabilities from long term brand-building and traditional advertising, to e-commerce and marketing automation, the next year will be full of opportunity. We are focussed, therefore, to work closely with our clients, partner them in their digital transformation journey and, in the process, open up many new revenue streams for ourselves. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder and Chairman of Creativeland Asia:" text="Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder and Chairman of Creativeland Asia:">Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder and Chairman of <keyword id="312631" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Creativeland-Asia">Creativeland Asia</keyword>:</cmsannotation> Even as business picks up and normalcy slowly returns to the new normal, the lessons of frugality and efficiency we have learned through this time beckon a refresh in thinking. From brands changing the way they communicate with their consumers to agencies who have manoeuvred to a different, tech-enabled way of working which is more contactless, yet connected, it has been a year of challenges and learning. Keeping these nuances in mind, one of the prominent trends I foresee in the industry is the advent of short-form videos and mobile advertising. With the constant evolution of technology and smartphones, easy-to-make, easy-to-watch, short-format video ads will definitely rule the roster in 2021. The ‘story’ format which is quite popular across all social media platforms, allows brands and users to ideate and do so much more than just rolling out a few second stories. Brands now have the opportunity to build meaningful and engaging content for their customers on these platforms. In addition, a stark rise in in-app advertising is expected. Since real-time streaming of videos are becoming popular by the day this will be yet another popular ad tendency businesses will explore. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO, Famous Innovations:" text="Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO, Famous Innovations:">Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO, Famous Innovations: </cmsannotation> I can summarise 2021 in one word: Accountability. Our business has changed dramatically in 2020 and clients will want partners who are accountable for their business. This means being personally invested in the client’s success – an art that advertising professionals have forgotten about. Asking the tangible question - will this sell my client's product - and not just the vague one - will this build my client's brand. That’s the way things used to be when agencies were owned by the same people that actually did the work. That’s why independent agencies are designed for accountability. Because our success depends on the client's success. Furthermore, this means the end of segregation of agencies and the start of the hybrid era. Lately, a chasm is forming in the A&amp;M industry where on the one side, there are the large traditional agencies that can only play the large campaign and long-term game but don't understand new media and the new consumer as well. While on the other side, there is a sprouting of digital agencies that play the digital medium well but don't have strong strategic and creative pillars in place. In 2021, clients will increasingly seek integrated solutions and a hybrid agency like ours that combines the best of both worlds is well poised to address this gap. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous Brands:" text="Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous Brands:">Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, <keyword id="2949725" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Enormous-Brands">Enormous Brands</keyword>:</cmsannotation> Optimism is the one trend that I believe will be one of the most important in the industry in the coming days. With the way the world is slowly but surely coming around and the way the businesses are turning a corner, a certain bullishness is to be expected both from the makers and the buying publics. Brands should look at tapping into the emerging positivity and the new togetherness, generosity, kindness in these times. Brands looking at connecting with their audiences on an optimistic emotional level will do well in creating salience for the brand. The changes coronavirus has made across our society have been unpredictable, but for marketing and advertising, it is an opportunity now to change the course of the conversation from extreme caution of the year gone by to a gradual but imminent change. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Debashish Ghosh, National Creative Director, 22feet Tribal Worldwide:" text="Debashish Ghosh, National Creative Director, 22feet Tribal Worldwide:">Debashish Ghosh, National Creative Director, 22feet Tribal Worldwide:</cmsannotation> I feel it will be an empathy-driven flywheel. We talk about share economy a lot. One thing that’s shared the most is perhaps knowledge, opinions and views. People trust each other’s view and not a brand’s view. And that’s how they make decisions about who to engage with. The hyper-connected world is increasingly providing more avenues to amplify this behaviour. In this world, the consumer is not just the output but also the input. Delighting one person leads to attracting &amp; engaging another. That’s the flywheel. It’s not a finite CX journey but an on-going one. The idea is to open relationships and not close deals. Creativity will need to vitalize all the forces of this flywheel. Ideas with high dose of empathy and elasticity will easily wrap around it to attain sustainable growth. Being creative with content and stand-alone experiences will not be enough. As a norm, performance, automation, lead generation, on-boarding, CRM stack &amp; other consumer touchpoints will need to be creatively humanised. And existing tools will be creatively redeployed like podcasts being used as testimonials or self-service audio clips. All of it won’t happen in a year but it will be around the corner.”

Advertising: The trends to watch out for in 2021

<ul><li>2021, a year full of controversies saw brands turning to <keyword id="255227" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="public-relations" source="Orion">Public Relations</keyword> and Communications experts to save their reputation and regain consumer trust.</li><li>We look back at how PR evolved in 2021 and catch up with a few experts to discuss the trends that lie ahead.</li></ul>This year, we witnessed many brands become a victim of the boycott culture on social media and each of them adopted a different Public Relations and Communications strategy; while some decided to give in to the pressure, pulled off campaigns and maintained a low profile to cushion the blow, a few others stood their ground and fought back. Gone are the days where a brand could hope for social media controversies to die a natural death and wait for consumers to move on. Now, a small tweet can snowball into a boycott trend and a little bad PR move can cause a company’s stocks to plummet drastically or lead to a huge amount of audience permanently boycotting a brand. At the same time, some experts also advise that brands should not feed the trolls. So, in a year that saw numerous controversies, Public Relations and Communications experts proved their prominence yet again. They acted as the brand's anchor when needed and also helped them reach the shore successfully through tumultuous seas. During the initial stage of the lockdown, <keyword id="562730" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pr-agencies" source="Orion">PR agencies</keyword> had to think on their feet, engage with editorial media to help brands share their side of the story with interesting nuggets, offer positive stories, work on personalised pitches, ensure internal and external stakeholders were updated frequently with utmost honesty and transparency. PR experts also pushed brands to connect with their communities on a personal level through truthful, authentic human acts. The crisis also caused paradigm shifts in the industry and digital PR took the center stage. Experts were required to monitor trends in real-time, find various consumer touchpoints through social listening and offer predictive analysis. As we move forward, PR agencies are working towards expanding their offerings with allied competencies like creative, experiential and social media capabilities. They have also been helping brands to find the right balance between profit, people and the environment. So, the future of PR is in strong storytelling in the digital world. The future is also unpredictable and PR professionals can’t rely on annual calendars anymore. With the news cycle changing every day, PR experts are required to be more flexible and agile. We reached out to experts to look back at 2021, discuss a few trends that lie ahead in 2022 and understand what kind of role will PR play next year. Here’s what they had to say: Archana Jain, Managing Director, <keyword id="12776689" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pr-pundit" source="Orion">PR Pundit</keyword> The sway of top celebrities has diminished as was the case back in the days. With the advent of digital and social media, people have begun to trust recommendations from peers far more. Audiences find authentic content or recommendations by actual consumers to be more honest and believable than other forms of promotions and advertising by brands. This is reason enough for brands to actively nurture a community of advocates. PR will be required to work with brands to shape and foster a community of brand advocates. A set of loyal and vocal customers who can help humanise the brand in addition to boosting brand appeal &amp; trust, promoting its products &amp; services to new cohorts, providing invaluable user-generated content (UGC), word-of-mouth recommendations, and social media chatter. Community-led storytelling is more acceptable and authentic rather than a direct brand-led communication. Community advocacy will need to be consciously harnessed and not left to chance. 2022 will see many more brands structure a meaningful brand advocacy strategy. Ameer Ismail, President, <keyword id="10059988" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="lintas-live" source="Orion">Lintas Live</keyword> My biggest takeaway from 2021 is that agency brands and professionals have learned to be resilient and this is based on the multitude of challenges everyone has faced. Smart PR agencies have managed to reinvent themselves with offerings that are built for new realities and collectively have made sure that the relevance of PR is as strong as ever. While a move to everything digital will continue and a lot has been spoken and written about that, I feel that ‘collaboration and consolidation’ will be one the most important trends in that will emerge in 2022. This will be fueled by a few factors, first, resources will be deployed judiciously and talent will continue to be in short supply, the churn agencies have been experiencing at mid and junior levels will continue in 2022. This will lead to a need for agencies to find collaborative ways to deliver on client briefs and they will tap the vast pool of independent talent and specialized agencies and we will see newer collaborative models emerge. Second, clients will be in a hurry to get solutions from agency partners that can get their brands back in the mindspace of consumers and other target audiences. They will want to deal with fewer, better established partners which will lead to a need for consolidation. Deepshikha Dharmaraj, Chief Executive Officer, <keyword id="8878758" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="genesis-bcw" source="Orion">Genesis BCW</keyword> If there is one word that will be at the centre of everything in 2022, it is ‘people’. With the world—India included—teetering between recovery and anxiety around ever-evolving COVID variants, people will need to be communicated with, engaged, assuaged, motivated, retained, developed, and more. These people include every stakeholder a company has—customers/consumers, employees, partners, the government, the community at large. And public relations is the only marketing discipline that touches all of them. Digital will continue to be the medium of choice, and within that, metaverse will be flavour of the year. While the Indian industry still has some distance to cover in that, there is curiosity about this next big thing. No matter what the medium though, the message will have to be aligned to the company’s purpose. And delivered creatively, with authenticity. Akshaara Lalwani, Founder &amp; CEO, <keyword id="3573568" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="communicate-india" source="Orion">Communicate India</keyword> Over the past decade, PR has been moving away from traditional business models towards a more holistic and integrated approach. Whether it is the shift from pure media relations to content or the migration from print to digital, there is a marked change in the way the PR landscape functions. In 2022, this trend will further solidify its presence. There will also be a blurring of demarcation lines between PR, marketing and advertising, digital and offline, eventually leading to PR &amp; Communication professionals to further value the importance of integrated communications. Agility and the ability to pivot will thus be key attributes that will enable the industry to thrive. Also, since the protracted fight against the pandemic still continues, companies and organisations need to prioritise responsible communication over all else. We live in a world where the spread of disinformation and misinformation is not uncommon, hence, agencies need to be able to work in tandem with their clients to help them steer a middle course between capitalistic desires and ethical communication. Mayank Sen, Co-founder, Moe's Art For the longest time, ‘content’ has been the flavour of the season. At first, it began as an accessory, gradually ruling as a king on a kingdom. In 2020, content and its marketing became an undeniable powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. The evergreen axiom of marketing – ‘delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time’ – took a redefined meaning. And for the times to come, the fundamental aspect of the content ecosystem will be founded on a framework of a performance driven-model, driven by contextual marketing. Within the emerging framework, data and technology will take a strong precedence. The industry will focus on delivering optimal consumer experience while capitalising on the opportunities in hand. Attention will be paid to provide more personalised and relevant content. Measuring the performance will make sure that the experience is scalable. It will present a continuous assessment of how the content is performing, and from that perspective, make decisions on what to do with the content in the future. Measuring success, building a cohesive brand story, and fostering a transparent, interactive consumer loyalty will be the ‘WIN-WIN’ strategy for the year to come! Asif Upadhye, Director and The Dark Knight at <a href="http://www.sprd.co.in/">SPRD</a> If 2020 and 2021 have taught us anything, it’s that moving forward at a snail’s pace is undoubtedly the quickest way to get left behind. While pre-pandemic, the public relations and communications industry was already making significant strides in technology by analyzing data to craft a better customer experience, the pace of digital adoption and the advent of a digital-first PR approach have been accelerated. From my own experience, a key ingredient across PR strategies, content marketing, corporate communications, and media coverage that will rule the PR roost in 2022 is the crucial need to customize bespoke services and products, every step of the way. From unified communications (UC) that are employee-centric to personalizing media pitches, customization sits at the heart of nearly every PR and communications trend. Customers are growing tired of the ‘media universe’ and now look for frameworks based on behavioral and business insights that truly put their needs front and center. Eventually, this is what will separate the mediocre brands from the greats. Case in point, the State of PR 2021 report points to the fact that flexibility, agility and attention to detail when it comes to personalizing something as simple as a pitch email is 96% more likely to grab a journalist’s eyeballs, rather than sending out a generic email blast. While consumer habits and employee working patterns that have been developed over the past year and a half are likely to continue well into 2022, hyper-personalization will bear fruit and result in more contextualized communication and inevitably greater conversions.” <keyword id="10618036" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="tarunjeet-rattan" source="Orion">Tarunjeet Rattan</keyword>, Managing Partner, <keyword id="12776690" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nucleus-pr" source="Orion">Nucleus PR</keyword> There are three very distinct trends that we will see in the coming year: <ul><li>While the models of working and mediums will undergo a change, what will remain strong is the need for strong storytelling. What will change however is the degree of authenticity in storytelling. It will take a hard turn towards stark reality …almost raw. Consumers want to know why the brand matters, why they should care about it and what is the brand impact? How are you adding value to the life of the consumer? Authentic storytelling will win over aesthetics.</li><li>The role of the founding or leadership team will become even more crucial. One cannot hide behind a faceless brand persona or logo anymore. You will have to put yourself out there to create a strong, credible and believable story about your brand that brings out its authenticity. This also brings in a lot more accountability that brands will have to guard their reputation on. Consumers want to pick up brands that walk the talk. You cannot be a CEO that promotes mental health and fire your agency on twitter. You cannot be talking about environmental sustainability and create a toxic work culture for humans. It just won’t fly anymore.</li><li>Community Building will take Center Stage. We saw a strong glimpse of this across 2020 and 2021. This will gain more ground in the coming year where communities around a brand vision will be created and drive conversation around a challenge.</li></ul>Sonam Shah, Founder and CEO, Treize Communications 2021 saw high demand in PR, especially in the area of influencer marketing. Brands, big and small, capitalised on this rising trend in the first half of the year. But, once the ASCI guidelines came into place from June 2021, there was a downward slip observed in the engagement. Instagram algorithms underwent a great uphaul as influencers had to win against AI algorithms. This phase again got brands and companies to focus on creating news and building brand recall. While demand has been high for PR, there have been some apprehensions also noticed when it comes to being out in the open/media. The second half of this year, saw print media come back, as newspaper circulation started, and people started reading it like before. This behavioural change instigated a need to be present in Print media, via editorial articles, and this will be the biggest trend in 2022. The need to present in Print media. Print media has always been a factor in bringing in trust and authenticity and clients do require to build that kind of strong trust within their stakeholders to continue businesses in a post-pandemic phase.

Trends that will dominate the PR industry in 2022

<keyword id="323679" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Infosys-Employees">Infosys employees</keyword> who are looking to switch their job profiles will now be able to do so using a designated internal platform, called Compass. It would make sure that the employees don’t look outside when they want to switch roles, and instead find one within the company. 
 
Compass, the digital platform rolled out by the technology giant would also allow them to mobilise available opportunities on career growth, learning and networks. 
 <keyword id="6354512" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Infosys">Infosys</keyword> is trying to digitise all its HR processes, putting an extra focus on technology so that it can enhance the experience of its employees. In the past couple of years, it has introduced a range of such initiatives using available technologies, which help its employees be more productive. 
 
"Those who want a change from their current job profile or posting can now log on to Compass, and view a curated list of opportunities based on their skills and interests. Employees can create a humanised profile to showcase their professional achievements. Video CVs, endorsements, blogs and badges can also be shared," Richard Lobo, SVP and head-HR, Infosys, told <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/infosys-internal-platform-compass-to-help-employees-change-job-profiles/articleshow/52998947.cms">ET</a>. 
 
The platform can also be used as a networking website where like-minded people can interact, thus facilitating making use of existing expertise and experiences that the employees possess. 
 
On its launch, the programme, which is available to employees pan India, saw over 6,000 requests from employees in three hours. 
 
<a href="http://poetsandquants.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/10379313-54b8-4448-b3fa-367be8ac368bInfosys.jpg">Image source</a>

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