Agency of the future needs to maintain a state of self-disruption: Divya Karani

The exchange4media group hosted the 21st edition of its flagship event e4m Conclave on Monday, 13th December 2021. Stalwarts who have been in the industry for a long time gathered to share insights at the conclave. Divya Karani, CEO - South Asia, Media Services, Dentsu was the headline speaker at the conference and she spoke about ‘Balancing Traditions With Innovations: The Agency of The Future’.

Karani opened her session by sharing the importance of traditions and mentioned how traditions as a term can be flipped with ‘constants’ that have held importance 30 years ago, do now and in most certainty, will do in the future as well. She said “Few of these constants can be easily demarcated, first being consumer-centricity i.e. stitching holistic strategies that centre around delivering consumer experience is what we need. Second, storytelling creates value and builds brands. Third, loyalty is comparable to gold. These parameters are going to stay.”

She walked the audience through the multiple changes that consumers have undergone in their lives and shared how we live in the era of an empowered consumer. She added “10 years ago 2/3rd of all touchpoints were brand-driven while today 2/3rd of all touchpoints are audience-driven. There is a fundamental shift from a brand-led world where the audiences were captive who had forced exposure in line with the marketer’s agenda to a consumer-led world of an opt-in culture where rich experiences are getting aided to drive the consumers’ agenda. There has been a shift from just changing consumer behaviour to also changing brand behaviour as well.”

Karani further went on to reflect upon how marketers of today need to craft their communications keeping certain pointers in mind and added “For us to be able to keep up with how consumers think and react to the brand communication projected at them, as marketers we need to keep three things in mind. First, much more connectedness, understanding the action consumers are taking today and anticipating their next one. The second is contextual, engaging with the environment of the consumers in the way they live their life. The third is personalization, how we add value to the lives of consumers will always remain important.”

She suggested that marketers need to talk to consumers on their turf and shared some future-proof themes that will sit well with the consumer and said “There are five key catalysts - the new media habits of the consumer wherein the time and engagement of the user with digital have surged and that has ramifications, we now have new standards of engagement. Therefore, it becomes important to deliver experiences that supplement or even surpass reality. Secondly, the pandemic has given exponential growth to Omni commerce, and therefore consumers of today want to shop at their pace, in their time with their preferred option to pay".

"Aiding that is the rise of social commerce and live commerce, wherein brands that are able to connect commerce with social engagement & live steaming right are winning. Third, brands do not have very many ways to hide today as consumers expect too much from brands today, and therefore brands who choose to stand with something also need to top it up with actions. The fourth category is creative problem-solving, as creativity is the most actionable driver of brand effectiveness, and so it is important to be creative outside of traditional spaces to build unique possibilities of consumer-driven experiences. Today, it is important to give weightage to utility and substance over appearances and adding technological value. Finally, loyal consumers are intrinsic to brands, brands that approach this disruption with a mindset of strength vs survival have managed to explore opportunities that they can seek to bring value to the consumer and therefore ensure brand loyalty", she added further. 

While concluding her session, Karani spoke about innovation. She said, “The problem with innovation is that it is easy to spot, but hard to define and harder to produce as a habit. If you get it right, innovation does drive brand value, brand growth, competitive advantage and acts as a magnet for talent as well, but only if you do it right as a habit. How we ensure that it is a process and not a one-off thing is a challenge as an agency. Therefore, at Dentsu, we focus on how we build innovation as a process".

"Innovation is not about a lone genius, a eureka moment, a paradigm shift or a ‘thing’ anymore. On the contrary, today it is about teams and diversity, stimulating and building upon each other, an intersection of reflection and shaping culture, it is a process that we are trying to inculcate. We are in very many ways competing with ourselves and therefore the agency of the future really needs to think that it is about competing at the speed of learning. This definitely leads to innovation driving a performance culture. Agency of the future, therefore, needs to maintain a state of self-disruption", she added.