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Most of Indian advertising just finished being futurologists for two whole days, at The Future of Advertising Symposium in Mumbai.
In the last two days, did we look too much into the past to learn about the future? I don't know, since at the time of writing, "The Future of Advertising" Symposium had not even started.
Spending too much time looking at the past is not such a good idea. But by the time you are reading this we will definitely know, and hopefully also have a much clearer idea of what the future holds.
Future challenges — the same or new?
The future is certainly about challenges. There will be more interesting challenges five years from now that we have now. That much we would have known all along.
The current ones like how much (or little) we get paid as a profession, or how buyers of our work are too dumb to understand what is good for them, still will be very much part of the set of challenges.
That apart, what would be five big challenges for the next five years? Will they be any different from what we already know, or what it was, say ten years ago?
If business is about growth, the important, and more difficult way for a business to grow is internal growth. Internal, organic growth is what reflects the real health of a company.
Internal growth as we all know can come from the power of a big idea — like the iPod for Apple, the Playstation for Sony and so on.
We also know it can also come from the strength and power of brands. Or both, big ideas and strong brands.
We cannot disagree that companies that develop and nurture brands have a strong future. Clearly, an advertising agency that understands that has a strong future with those kind of companies. And vice-versa.
So, the future lies in building strong brands. And an advertising agency's real challenges remain in doing just that. No rocket science so far, unless some bold new discovery was made at the Symposium in the last two days.
The real challenges for the agencies will lie in inventing newer ways to build stronger brands.
The key words there are inventing and newer.
The future challenges simply put will lie in inventing newer ways to build strong brands. The basic truths about our business never change. The challenges alter themselves, ever so subtly.
What might these subtly altered challenges be in the years ahead? Here is an attempt at hazarding a guess at five of them:
One: shampoo sachet samples via the Internet
They say that by 2007, Internet advertising will overtake magazines in terms of size in many markets, including some developing ones. How long will it be before we get free shampoo downloads.
Who would have thought that we could get shampoos in sachets in 1970? Leave alone get unasked for free samples in the 1990's and 2000's.
The future has suddenly presented us with a newer way of building strong brands. We did not even have to invent a new way.
Who all have already risen to this opportunity? I admire the people who thought up www.subservientchicken.com. What a way to grab the future. This is just the beginning.
How we use emerging and evolving new media to build brands in challenge No. 1.
It is a real challenge because new media will be far more measurable than ever before, making all of us far more accountable than ever before.
Two: 362 million kids smarter than you
The second challenge is to understand people. It is going to get tougher because people are changing so fast these days that before you can say jumping jack flash they have stopped reading magazines altogether. Thr splngs sk 2.
As home to one of the youngest populations in the world and undoubtedly the largest youth agglomeration in terms of size, the challenge is incredibly more interesting here in India than anywhere else.
Imagine! By 2006, we will have 362 million people under the age of 14. The well heeled ones will have never known life without a remote control, not unlike their western counterparts. The not-so-well-heeled ones are adopting/ adapting technology in millions of ways, so fast that it is likely that before they get to ten they will think development is spelt as dvlpmnt and a land line is something you get when you walk dragging a stick behind you.
We will need to be really inventive in how we understand them. To understand these people, who are changing at a pace so fast that for normal people they are a blur? How will we keep pace? Take recourse to technology, of course.
We need to use technology to capture their 128 frames per second lives and play them back at 24 frames per second to learn, frame by frame. At our pace. For that we have to be on top of technology. That is another challenge in itself.
To read the entire story, buy a copy of Impact Advertising and Marketing magazine dated November 14-20