Mumbai: At FICCI FRAMES 2025, Sam Balsara, Chairman of Madison World, delivered a sharp, data-backed reminder to India’s marketing fraternity: “Branding helps achieve long-term success and deliver sustainable profit.” In a landscape increasingly dominated by short-term performance media, Balsara urged marketers to rebalance their focus toward brand-building fundamentals.
Drawing from over five decades of experience in advertising and marketing, Balsara questioned whether today’s marketers are losing faith in branding. He observed that while India’s growth prospects remain strong, urban consumption has shown signs of weakening, leading to heightened short-termism in marketing investments.
“Marketers, often under pressure from CEOs and investors, are allocating disproportionate budgets to performance media—search, e-commerce, activations, and promotions—at the cost of long-term brand equity,” he cautioned.
Balsara revisited the essence of branding as the process of shaping identity, building trust, and fostering emotional connection—pillars that performance-driven strategies often neglect. “Stories build brands, and emotional appeal is twice as effective as rational appeal,” he emphasized, citing multiple cross-media studies that show TV environments drive emotional engagement most effectively.
He noted that digital platforms, while commanding nearly 70% of global ad spends, are constrained by “snacking” consumption habits. Short-form, distraction-heavy formats fail to deliver the depth of emotion that builds memory and loyalty. Citing a Comcast study conducted with MediaScience in the US, he revealed that recall and purchase intent were significantly higher when ads were viewed in a TV or CTV-like setting compared to mobile feeds—3.4x better recall for new brands and 30% higher purchase intent overall.
With connected TV (CTV) adoption surging across India—now reaching 60–65 million homes—Balsara described the medium as a bridge between the immersive power of television and the precision of digital. “Branding works best in a CTV medium but also works on digital,” he said, reinforcing the opportunity for advertisers to recreate TV-like emotional depth in digital environments.
Concluding his session, Balsara advocated for a balanced media strategy, highlighting the 60:40 split between branding and performance as the most effective formula for sustainable growth. “Spending on branding drives performance KPIs too. We’ve seen search volumes and e-commerce sales rise when TV ads run during major events like the IPL,” he remarked.
With a clear call to return to fundamentals, Balsara’s message underscored the enduring truth of marketing: while performance media drives short-term sales, only strong brands deliver enduring value.
