"This year will be tougher than 2019"

Early last year we won Spotify; the global music streaming service wanted to enter India, with a mix of Indian and international music, with over 40 million songs. We made the simple yet decisive call to go with an audience-first approach, leveraging data to identify a personalised connection with content, and eventually linking it to every single instance in the consumer's life.

We used neuro-imaging techniques coupled with mind-and-mood studies to co-relate music content with finely split user micro-moments, thus moving seamlessly from mass to individual content. With over 1,000+ micro-moments mapped across over three billion playlists, we personalised content at an unprecedented scale, through our People-Place-Moments (PPM) framework.

It’s exciting to see the coming together of two strengths, from the past and the future – the scale of legacy media with the personalisation of new media. Personalisation at scale is like an open and shut case for the future.

Here’s what should concern us: While marketers know that technology and data stacks will raise their brand scores, barely nine to ten per cent of them have a stack that they're using optimally. Brands that move with speed to put together an optimised, inter-operable marketing stack will have a major strategic advantage over brands that don’t.

That India is a complex and vast country is so true that it's a cliché. In many aspects, some of our databases are far more evolved than globally available ones. However, the global learning curve on digital, mobile and e-commerce is way ahead of ours. While in India we are comforted by the fact that traditional media - TV, print, radio - is still growing, we must pick up global lessons on digital. Our raw material is far superior but our mining processes are fairly dated. However, even globally, they haven't been able to agree on a common measurement metric for digital.

This year will be tougher than 2019. While last year saw a decline in GDP, the fall in consumption was also due to emotional sentiments. This year, due to the global health crisis and the dependence on manufacturing from China, we will undoubtedly face added challenges.

While last year saw a dip in auto, BFSI and real estate, this year we will see challenges in durables, travel and tourism, fashion retail and pharma. Even if the consumer regains spending power, he/she is certainly spooked; it will be a while before they feel confident again.

In most downturns, high-income urbanites can withstand a depression far better and recover faster than their rural counterparts. The intensity is usually more in rural areas. Moreover, the monsoons haven’t been consistent, so the agri-economy has not had a very good time.

With advertisers investing more and more on digital it is inevitable that audit and transparency will have to come into play. While technology companies are working on this aspect, I think for every solution a new trick will emanate from somewhere. In India, BARC has been pushing for digital ratings and transparency for two years now. I truly hope we find a solution that is accepted unanimously across large digital companies.

That media has proliferated is beyond discussion. Lodestar UM, for instance, tracks over 68 touch-points through a single source study - Moments. Thus, specialists and integrated strategists are direly required. Also missing are data scientists and analysts.

…invest a bit more in research.