A panel of practitioners discussed ‘The Future of Advertising’ at the inaugural Medianews4u.com Futurescope Conclave in Bengaluru on 15th July 2022.
The session was moderated by former adman Lakshmipathy Bhat, now Senior VP, Global Marketing & Communications, Robosoft Technologies.
Panellists included Nagaraj Krishnamurthy, Chief Strategy Officer and Analytics Head, Madison India; Parthasarathy Mandayam, Chief Strategy Officer, Group South Asia; Priyanka Borah, Founding Partner, Talented; and Kaustav Das, Chief Executive Officer, Ralph&Das.
The conversation veered to who will lead the mandate on advertising in future, with several genres of specialist agencies emerging from a once-unified model.
“The important factors are integration and specialisation. And as long as there is an entity that is able to integrate specialisations, that’s where the future goes,” noted Mandayam.
He continued, “I believe the future is going to be based on a couple of things. The first one is consent – in the early days, ads didn’t depend on consent. But, increasingly, ads are going to be based on people giving you permission to say that they are okay with receiving messages from you on this device in this manner. The second factor is authenticity.”
Das noted that whoever is able to articulate the vision for the brand and knows how to bring that alive, will lead the conversation.
Responding to Bhat’s question on whether the ad agencies as we know them are dead, Krishnamurthy said, “There was a discussion even during the 1960s that the concept of the agency model is dead. This happens because we are defining agencies and have a specific definition of what an agency should do. That gets transformed.”
He continued, “If you define an agency as something that helps the marketers meet the end goal, being true to the consumers, I don’t think it’s ever going to die. The shape and structure will change, and they have changed. The old agency model does not render itself to agility. The agency has to change its structure economically. And marketers need to understand that agility comes with a cost.”
On the notion that the CEO of the day is far removed from advertising, both Krishnamurthy and Mandayam offered an opposing point of view. “CEOs are very interested in advertising because it’s the second largest expense on their P & L and, at the end, it’s about accountability,” said Mandayam.
The business of awards
Borah, the core founding team of whose agency is credited with the globally awarded ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ for Vice at their earlier employer, Dentsu Webchutney, was probed on the business of awards and the value they add to the real advertising that works in the market.
Borah said, “Creative awards are a great way to attract the kind of clients you want to work with; it gives them confidence. It is also a confidence boost to the talent.”
Das, who has worked for several agencies before launching independent Ralph&Das, noted that if the question had been posed a few years ago, he would not have attached any importance to awards. In its early days, Ralph&Das avowed to steer clear of awards. But now, creative awards are becoming a necessity to attract talent, he revealed.
“Creative awards are good for our business. What we need to do is clean up the awards,” Das surmised.
