A few months ago, I had written about agencies becoming “AIgencies.” At that time, it felt like we were just changing who does the work.
Now it is starting to feel like we have changed what the work is.
I remember this being explained through Kotler’s book, that at some point advertising and branding are just parts of marketing. I remember it clearly because, for once, I was actually paying attention in the class.
Today, strangely, most of the stress seems to sit on advertising, a little bit on branding, and marketing has quietly become … a word we use in presentations.
And right now, both seem to be… loosening up.
A lot of what we used to call advertising is getting produced faster than ever. Maybe because of AI or maybe because of influencers. More versions, more formats, more “let’s just put it out and see.” This sounds pretty efficient, until you realise most of it disappears without anyone noticing… like posts or ad campaigns we all thought would “do well.”
Branding, on the other hand, is no longer the tightly held document we have all guarded like it contained nuclear codes. It is now more like a set of loose instructions that people interpret differently depending on the day, the platform, and how much sleep they got or if the hangover is still on.
You can see this play out everywhere.
Zomato will sound like one person on Monday and someone else entirely on Wednesday. Swiggy feels like it is just hanging out half the time. And then Fevicol quietly continues being Fevicol, not reacting to every passing trend, and somehow still being part of the conversation.
So it’s tempting to say, everything has gone a bit all over the place.
But step back a bit and it looks slightly different.
Because while it looks like anyone can say anything, there is still a lot of invisible structure holding things together. Put enough money behind something and suddenly everyone rediscovers process. Influencers, for all their “just being real,” usually have a fairly clear idea of what they can and cannot say.
And if you watch enough content in any one category, you will start getting the feeling of Déjà vu … Different faces, same points, same “I’ve been using this for a while now” energy.
So there is still someone behind the scenes yelling out “कंट्रोल उदय, कंट्रोल … this is Uday Shetty from the movie Housefull 😉
The thing is, that control is just not sitting in one place anymore. It’s just not sitting in one place anymore. It’s become… a bit omnipresent.
Once upon a time, brands decided what to say, agencies figured out how to say it, and media made sure people saw it and heard it.
Today, it feels like a game of Chinese Whispers … something gets created, something else gets understood, and something slightly different gets remembered. And all of this happens fast enough to give most approval processes palpitations.
And this is where things get interesting.
If advertising is easier to produce, and branding is harder to enforce, then both become… smaller parts of the job.
Not irrelevant. Just not the main event anymore.
And that changes what marketing starts to look like.
A lot of the job now is not coming up with one big idea and pushing it out.
It is putting out multiple things, seeing what lands, adjusting quickly, and making sure nothing goes too far off track. Sometimes fixing things quietly. Sometimes pretending it was intentional all along. And ensuring the LinkedIn Gurus talk about it 😉
Also, slightly uncomfortable truth, this isn’t just creative evolution. It’s practical.
Faster content costs less. Multiple experiments reduce risk. Knowing what worked (or did not) makes everyone feel slightly more in control.
That tends to drive behaviour more than any philosophy ever will.
Which means marketing today is part coordination, part judgement, and part sitting with numbers trying to figure out why something that “felt right” did absolutely nothing.
So when you step back, the shift is not really about agencies, or influencers, or any one piece of the ecosystem.
It’s this:
When advertising becomes easier to make, and branding becomes harder to control, marketing stops being about crafting the perfect message.
It becomes about managing what happens after the message is out there.
Which is a very different job.
And probably not the one most of us thought we were signing up for.
So the question is…
Are we still building brands?
Or are we just watching what the brand is turning into… and calling it strategy?
(Views are personal)
