Decoding the trends, learning in the A&M industry with leaders as we step into 2022

2021 came in as the knight in shining armour, expected to save us all from the excruciatingly painful year that was 2020. But boy, were we wrong!

From a never-ending and deadly second wave hitting us all in the first half of the year, it was clear that this year is not going to be any easier. And so, businesses continued from homes and a monotonous work life ensued. But people who perhaps had to be on their A-game more than ever before belong to our very own marketing and advertising fraternity.

Safe to say that the Indian A&M industry has not seen a single dull moment in the last two years. Owing to the diversity of the audience in the country and the growing number of brands (D2C brands, we are looking at you!), creativity had to skyrocket. Advertising and marketing agencies were expected to clock in those extra hours to ensure their clients stand out, especially in the digital ecosystem. They were also expected to stay on top of the ongoing trends, that honestly, come and go in less time than would require you to read this piece.

This very ephemerality of content, marketing trends, practices, and even platforms in today’s digital space paves the way for constant experiments by agencies. What works efficiently today might become a thing of the past in just a matter of days. And in 2021, the industry learned this by experimenting with a mix of tried-and-tested methods and adoption of new-age tools and practices.

“2021 was a roller-coaster but sanitize your hands before you hold tight onto your seat belts,” highlights Raghav Bagai, Co-founder, Sociowash, adding, “From starting the year with the second wave of COVID-19 to ending it on an Omicron note, we saw the challenges that were posed to brands, especially in rethinking their strategies. With the rising number of cases, we saw the shift in marketing trends move towards brands redefining themselves and working to add value to society.”

Whereas Sanjay Arora, CEO, ANTS Digital points 2021 was a Start, Stop and Run situation for Ants. “2021 has been a Start, Stop and Run situation for us at Ants. The last two quarters have been super exciting and hectic at the same time. Clients are looking at a full-service offering from Digital agencies. Since we have all five verticals Digital, Technology, Brand Marketing, Content and Creative it differentiates our offering and provides value to our clients. We had the privilege of working with clients as their true marketing partners and enhancing value for their brands. Right from suggesting names to creating logos and putting Visual identity and finally creating websites and DM strategies, it has been a super exciting journey. The power of scaling ideas couldn’t have been better so far.“

The year, 2021, led the agencies to take an extra leap in delivering brands’ messages to their target groups keeping storytelling at the heart of advertising. The year also witnessed agencies playing a pivotal role in shifting the brands from traditional marketing to digital marketing.

Highlighting how the role of marketing agencies has elevated in the DNA of today’s dynamic market, Khushboo Sharma, Founder – Zero Gravity Communications shares, “While we strive to work on big ideas for brands, clients are increasingly aspiring for sustainable incremental growth through futuristic digital strategies. Storytelling remains at the heart of advertising. But it is high time to marry creatives with performance. Equally significant is the significance of data in measuring outcomes and pursuing course correction. Digitisation has elevated the role of agencies. Today, it is no longer just another entity but an extended marketing arm whose performance is inextricably linked towards boosting client sales.”

Pointing to organic search as the key driver of digital performance, Prashant Puri, Co-Founder & CEO, AdLift comments, “We saw the dominance in organic search as a key driver of digital performance across all of the brands we work with. In addition, the growing importance of content across social, organic search and influencer marketing.”

Underlining the use of chatbots as a key differentiator and further supporting the significance of storytelling in advertising Shrenik Gandhi, CEO and Co-founder, White Rivers Media shares, “The year 2021 witnessed significant changes in digital marketing owing to the higher than ever penetration of mobile phones and internet across the globe, especially in tier 2 and 3 cities. Vernacularization of digital content has been seen to have a marked regional impact. Storytelling through short-form interactive video content in regional dialects looks like a promising way to attract an audience. Another milestone in 2021 has been the advanced development of chatbots that are increasingly making a difference in customer experience for brands.”

2021 also saw agencies making use of Artificial Intelligence and deploying a customer-centric vision for brands to take customer experience up the notch while paying equal attention to data security.

“A lot of changes have happened this year in the digital marketing industry and the adoption and growth of digital transformation continue to foray ahead,” adds Prasad Shejale, Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital, while underlining some key trends that dominated the A&M industry, “Some of the key trends that dominated 2021 were:

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) – CDPs have helped companies to adapt to new challenges and achieve marketing success
Digital Security – Security has been of utmost importance to safeguard the data and avoid any risks and, companies have been taking care of this aspect and focusing on building strong digital security measures
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – This technology has been utilised in multiple capabilities this year as more people understood the potential of AI and how it can transform the way we work or live our daily lives
Customer-centric vision – The pandemic brought around a lot of changes for all of us and made it critical for everyone to quickly adapt to the changes to continue growing. This year we saw many businesses shifting their focus towards building truly customer-centric processes, platforms, goals and the larger vision too.
Contactless solutions and digital payments – With the pandemic and the safety precautions around it, the usage of digital payments and contactless solutions has grown significantly. People also preferred the partners that allowed them to avail their services in a contactless manner and make payments digitally.”

Aashay Shah, Co-Founder, Django Digital shares that the A&M industry has discovered an arena of technology innovations in the past year. “The Advertising and Marketing industry has discovered an arena of new trends and technology innovations in the past year. Augmented and virtual reality has grown significantly, indicating a shift towards the metaverse. It is soon going to become a global playground for brands helping them have a global footprint.

With the onset of Non-fungible tokens, we’re seeing brands creating their own NFTs to gratify their customers and build an exclusive and engaging community with them.

Another key trend witnessed was Cryptocurrency and stocks becoming a large interest cohort for brands to build content around.”

Kumar Anish, Business Head, Ethinos further sheds light on some trends observed in 2021. “In 2021 we have observed the following:

Tracking : Post iOS update most of the agencies are switching to server side tracking. ( Conversion API )
Performance max : Agencies are whitelisted for performance max and have tried experimenting to get better CPAs. While the automation has made life easier, it’s too early to come to a conclusion on the performance
EAs ETA is going away and some accounts are only able to create RSAs. Everyone is trying to figure out ways to make full & better use of RSA to survive in the market.”

Harikrishnan Pillai, CEO and co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea shares companies are realizing the need of building the brand and are aggressively adopting e-commerce strategies. “We had the usual suspects and those who popped in new. Amongst the obvious ones was the growth and popularity of everything regional, from the breakneck growth of neo-social apps to platforms, like LinkedIn going regional.

We are seeing a lot of traditional brands adopting more aggressive e-commerce strategies. At TSBI we have seen a 300% growth in e-commerce spending coming from various categories like consumer durables, fashion, wearable tech amongst others. Social commerce is an able ally to this.

However, with platforms tightening data laws, performance marketing doesn’t have the sheen it had 2 years back. Brands are realizing that building a brand is as important even in the early stages. While transactional relations with customers are critical, the narrative comes back as a priority from its little business hiatus.

We feel NFT technology, especially for images, videos and music, will be a very interesting space to watch with sports, cinemas trying to make the best of their creative IPs.”

Talking about how brands moved an extra mile in laying a hand to take their customers to rise above adversities Raghav adds, “Brands started focusing on empathizing with their messaging and building it around people. They moved from talking about themselves and went the extra mile to be relevant. From finding beds to creating forums for accessing hospital information, brands went all out to be more humane in 2021. All in all, last year was a game-changer for the industry. In terms of trends, the humane side of brands and growth in content creators within everyone out there saw a rise. Influencer marketing was a side that saw a major glow up and is no longer just another tool in social media marketing but a full-fledged leg of digital.”

The last year witnessed an abundance of new trends in the global Advertising and Marketing industry. The year led the agencies to experiment with customer data from every single perspective to take the brand experience to a whole new level. It is clear that the new year will see marketing agencies playing a principal role in connecting brands with their target groups effectively, through their learning from the past year.

Sharing the key learnings of AdLift from the year 2021, Prashant explains, “With time spent online and on mobile devices increased 40 to 60% in the last year – digital is in the forefront of all marketing channels. Brands that have adapted their spending based on this transformation have seen a massive increase in their marketing ROI. Key learning for us here at AdLift has been to seek areas of opportunity for our partners across digital channels and hone in on ones that perform the best. We see a greater reliance on organic search with continued effort on content communication that drives customer retention.”

“The digital transformation has crossed all the projections made by the industry. Be it budgets for paid and performance marketing or for brand building, the industry has realized that digital is the only way in these unpredictable times. The consumption levels have been at an all-time high and the amount of funding that startups and new businesses have received is phenomenal,” shares Sanjay.

Further supporting the role that digital has played, Arora points, “The only way of doing business from small, mid-size and big companies is through digital. Consumers are suddenly finding new ways of ordering, consuming and communicating with the brands which is exciting. Ecommerce will flourish, 3PL will grow, EVs will emerge and consumers and the environment will benefit through this new transition that the world will see.“

In today’s digital market, understanding the dynamic behaviour of customers while being resilient is equally important. The rapid digital transformation and massive use of Artificial Intelligence(AI) in the overall marketing strategies will lead to the emergence of ‘Metaverse’ as the key focus area in the A&M industry for the year 2022.

“With the massive digital transformation that we have seen and that is expected to progress even further, understanding customer changing behaviours and expectations is more important than ever. The technologies are bound to grow and it is expected for brands to go more vigorous on contextual targeting using social listening, customer data, along advanced AI/ML. Social commerce and Livestream shopping can also be expected, which may result in the acceleration and adoption of Web 3.0 and Metaverse that will disrupt the digital world,” shares Gandhi.

Further supporting the role of digital agencies, Anish shares, “Post pandemic, the digital transformation took a rapid pace not only around the world but India too. Digital has gone beyond being business support to the business itself. What’s interesting is the change is being driven by the customer.Fortunately, putting the customer first is already at the centre of many organisations’ strategies. We believe the role of a digital agency is going to go beyond a support function, to being a business partner.”

Shah points, “The shift from traditional business models to D2C models, including the inception of homegrown brands, has raised the competition bar in the marketing industry. This also indicates the rise of acquisition costs and higher content velocity.

He further advises, “This trend is gathering speed and therefore brand managers need to be cautious with their daily spends and A/B test their content to optimise it and garner an effective RoI. Metaverse advertising is an exciting marketing opportunity we’re all on the lookout for. It will have its own budget in the marketing mix soon. However, its early adoption will help brands stay a notch above the competition.”

Prasad shares that the year 2021 has taught us the importance of perseverance and resilience. He shares, “This year has taught us a lot and, I feel, has pushed us to in a way go back to the basics and follow an empathetic and humane approach in everything we do. It taught us the importance of perseverance and resilience. It pushed us to let go of old ways of doing things, figure out alternatives and quickly adapt to the changes to be able to stand strong in the market.”

He further underlines some trends for the next year, “Some prominent trends for the next year are:

5G – 5G has been making good progress and I am sure we will soon see it become mainstream in the coming year. The government of India also has been supporting the development of 5G technology in India and, I am sure, it will be one of the most important technologies that will drive the digital transformation journey in the future.
Shoppable content – In an effort to provide a seamless shopping experience to users, we have already seen some newer formats and channels for shopping come into the picture this year. In the coming year, marketers will dive into the shoppable content space which allows users to directly shop their favourite products without having to leave the platform or content they are consuming in a few easy steps. Brands will surely use this trend heavily in the coming year to revolutionize the way people shop.
Visual and voice search – We have seen huge developments in visual and voice technology. This will continue to grow and will push businesses to rethink their digital strategies and figure out ways to be visible when people search for them via visual search or voice search. Some reports predict that voice shopping is going to reach $40 billion by 2022. Brands definitely don’t want to lose on this opportunity.
Short videos – This trend is already becoming mainstream. Short videos are everywhere now right from social media to shopping platforms. Owing to the shrinking attention spans of new-age users, this format is very apt for these audiences and it will continue to help businesses connect and engage with their customers in the coming year. We will also see a combination of other factors that will help brands provide personalisation as well as interactive aspects to their content to make it interesting and keep the audience hooked to their brand. There are endless ways to incorporate short-form videos into your digital marketing strategy and businesses will embrace this trend in 2022.
First-party and zero-party data – Data is extremely important for any business to serve their customers better, understand them and continue enhancing their experience. There is a growing importance of first-party and zero-party data nowadays and it is already urging businesses to change the way they collect information and use it mindfully. Some companies have started directing their efforts towards finding solutions to safely collect first-party and zero-party data and use it for designing their marketing plans. We will see more companies focus on this area and be ready for a world where third-party data will be long-forgotten.”

Pillai sheds light on some meaningful trends to look out for in the new year, “Key trends the industry should watch out for are:

Narrative will play a bigger role as performance marketing will become an uphill task. Only the best and the knowledgeable will be able to survive this. The role of experts in technology and platform understanding will be in demand and the creative minds will be prepping up for the coronation.
Social commerce will take priority which again pivots on the strength of content and relevance
Creating in-house or always on influencers. Businesses should look at converting their people as ambassadors providing a closer look into the brand, thereby increasing believability and providing proof of concept.”

Sharing her learning from the past year, Khushboo explains, “2021 has reaffirmed the significance of digital transformation as not merely a medium or an advertising vertical but an integral part of the consumer brand journey from brand conception, discovery, consideration, awareness, consumption and feedback from consumers. Hence digital transformation is the key to gaining an in-depth understanding of the consumer and tailoring offerings accordingly.

2022 is expected to witness the proliferation of technology, data-driven storytelling with the customer experience at the heart of advertising. The dynamic market scenario implies that innovation will be the key to standing out from the competition.”

To quote best summarises the key learnings of 2021- ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn’ — Alvin Toffler

“From Multiverse to Metaverse, 2022 is the year to expect innovation, leaps in technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The world took the last two years to build a virtual world and advancements in technology are anticipated in the coming year. Avenues are broadening for influencers and digital platforms and advancements like NFTs, virtual weddings, fashion shows, will evolve and improve in 2022. Recheck your seat belts are still tight enough for the crazy ride next year is going to be,” shares Bagai.

As pointed by Anish, the role of digital agencies in the A&M industry is going to go beyond being a support function to being a business partner. The year 2022 will see agencies and brands working closely in delivering the brand message while keeping creativity and artificial intelligence the core of their marketing strategies. With a rising focus on data-driven marketing, it can be anticipated the year will witness new technological innovations on customer data platforms as well. It can also be anticipated that the industry will witness a rise in Metaverse advertising enabling brands to communicate with their target group in a more immersive yet effective way. All in all, in the new year, the industry is expected to witness a more humane approach from brands towards their customers ultimately assuring them that they always stand with them in adversities.