Advertising: More reasons for optimism

The fact that we live in a VUCA (volatile, unpredictable, complex, ambiguous) world was underscored in 2017. The two disruptions of demonetisation and GST were unprecedented. Though demonetisation was announced in November 2016, its effects were felt all the way through the first quarter of this year. These two events added to the relentless disruption that technology is causing to business models in just about every industry. As India’s largest communications group, we work with a very diverse base of clients: across industries, across regions and local as well as multinationals. We, therefore, had a ringside view of how these happenings affected this diverse client base. The impact was, obviously, not uniform but they affected everyone.

But that is now behind us. So are the two state elections. Therefore, I look forward to 2018 with renewed optimism. I believe, on the economic front, India will fare much better than in 2017. Our industry is closely linked to the performance of our clients’ businesses. With business performance improving next year our industry, as a whole, will have a much better 2018.

The explosion of choice for the consumer will remain unabated in 2018. More brands and more categories will compete for the consumer’s attention and wallet. Ayurveda will continue to compete with science. Strong regional brands will compete with the big MNC brands. Chinese mobile phone brands will give established players a fight. More startups will get funding and try and raise their valuations. All in all, 2018 will provide the advertising industry with lots of opportunities to grow.

Fragmentation of media continues. Consumers are consuming content on many more platforms, at the time of their choosing. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Hotstar, Sony LIV are all providing such opportunities. Social media players are also getting into the content game. Facebook’s bid for the IPL rights took everyone by surprise.

A new trend that I see emerging is the demand from clients for an ‘integrated’ communication solution. With a plethora of communication platforms there has also been an increasing number of partners that the CMOs are working with. It puts pressure on their time and the risk of the brand message getting diluted/fuzzy is very real, besides being cost inefficient. This is the opportunity for the creative agencies to step forward and provide that leadership. To be that single point of contact for the communication needs of the brand. No one else is better placed to be this brand custodian, or rather, the ‘creative steward’ of the brand. We are already working as the ‘creative custodian’ to some of our large clients and I expect more clients to demand it of us in the coming year. The challenge for the agencies, though, is to be able to build the diverse capabilities necessary to provide this leadership and also have an ability to work in a collaborative way with many partners.

Tarun Rai is CEO, J Walter Thompson South Asia

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