"Fraud is always going to be a cat and mouse game"

One is the ongoing Myntra campaign, which is not a ‘campaign’ in the traditional sense. We created content and produced a reality show with Myntra, in which designers competed with each other to create new looks and styles, that were then amplified by influencers. This campaign used content to engage with consumers, as opposed to traditional forms of advertising. Similarly, the ‘Big Billion Days’ campaign for Flipkart was supremely successful.

From the P&G portfolio, Ariel’s ‘Share the Load’ campaign made waves. In fact, we’re seeing that grow into a bigger theme. It’s an example of a campaign that’s changing and creating culture.

Addressability is a big trend, not only with digital consumers but in the non-digital space as well. Second is the role content is going to play. I strongly believe advertising is going to move away from its traditional forms to resemble content pieces. It's not about doing four campaigns a year; it's about working together to create exciting content.

India will be one of the fastest growing markets in terms of ad spends. As an industry, we have leapfrogged two to three generations and are far ahead of other markets in terms of spending on digital. Focus is going to be on reaching the large volumes of people who are online today.

No product group is unscathed, but there are some that are less affected, like the FMCG sector which has remained relatively stable. But for other consumer groups like consumer durables, auto, telecom, etc., it has been a bloodbath.

But instead of looking at product groups, if I look at ‘Indian companies versus foreign multinationals’, I think Indian companies are more stable right now. Indian corporations are aggressively maintaining their spends and are continuing to acquire more customers. Their inherent belief in the economy is stronger.

Let me take the example of our client Emami – mid to smaller towns is their key market. Despite all the economic stress, they’ve still maintained reasonable growth. The space is so large that we’ve been working continuously to grow different markets. Overall, strategy and execution are going to be critical for growth.

We’ve been extremely paranoid about ad fraud. Brand safety is a big one for us, globally. We’ve partnered with multiple agencies and third party tech providers to ensure we provide the safest environment for the brands we manage.

We’ve launched an influencer marketing tool called INCA, which uses AI to find out which influencers have a genuine following and detect which ones are sourcing followers through bots and fraudulent sources. We as a group are investing in technology to fight ad fraud.

You have to constantly play this game. You’ll innovate to beat fraud, then the guys who want to carry out the fraud are going to innovate further… so it’s always going to be a cat and mouse game.