Mumbai: 2023 has been a rather exceptional year on the advertising front, it’s been a year of personalization and redefining content generation with AI taking over the marketing sphere.

Some key trends that we witnessed:

AI took centre stage - AI was seen powering all marketing tactics in 2023 and integrated itself into the advertising & marketing industry whether it was for content creation or to create more personalized & custom campaigns. From writing & generating copies to helping us create brand creatives to showcase visual & innovative storytelling, AI helped us do it all. We managed to use it effectively to our brand’s advantage whether it was to tap into trending moments like reimagining key actors from the Amazon miniTV universe as Ken or Barbie or to reimagine a world of our own for Havmor ice creams. The current use of AI will only evolve further & it’ll be interesting to see the innovation it will bring along.

Rise in innovation of traditional media - Post-pandemic, with 2023 fully opening up, we saw a rise in innovation in Phygital Ads and we saw brands leveraging offline traditional mediums from OOH to print or on-ground activations with an integration of digital. We were quick to adapt in order to reach a wider audience and carried out multiple campaigns. For example, for Spider-Man Across The Spider-Verse we used VR in a marketing gimmick to open up a portal in Mumbai and amplified that on social. Similarly, for Croma, for their Festival of Dreams Campaign, we leveraged Flipkart’s BBD Ads with giveaway of the iPhone 14 Pro Max in a contest that was initiated via OOH and then amplified on social.

Onboarding newer platforms & features:

• WhatsApp channels - Being one of the most installed & commonly used apps by the Indian audience, when WhatsApp released channels, we were quick to adopt and got quite a few of our brands to create one. One of the brands was Amazon miniTV where we conversed with the audience from an admin’s POV with a first-person approach and we saw a spike in engagement rate with the brand hitting the 1M+ followers mark in the first 2 weeks itself.
• Instagram broadcast channels - IG broadcast channels were initially launched in Feb 2023 as a test roll out and was eventually rolled out to all creators and brands followed suit soon after. We used this as an opportunity for a lot of our brands to create an exclusive experience for the followers and gave them exclusive content on the channel to make them come back for more.

Overall, these new additions to the existing platform helped take personalized customer experience a notch higher and became the medium to carry out customer delight activities for loyal fans/customers.

A year full of trending moments: Trending moments also took precedence over BAU content with big moments like the ICC World Cup followed by the festive season and also smaller pop culture moments like Moye Moye, Arranged Marriage is Scary because... all serving as opportunities for us to put our brands on the forefront from a marketing perspective.

Crystal Gazing into 2024:

The expansion of AI: The advertising industry evolves quite a lot year on year and you never know what might become the next big thing. I’m really excited to see how AI will transform the marketing landscape in the coming year and it’ll be really interesting to see how it aids storytelling in the process for brands. The role of AI in personalized advertising is likely to expand further, enabling marketers to tailor their messages more precisely to individual preferences and behaviours.

The need for personalisation: With newer platforms, tools & mediums emerging every now & then, it will become imperative for brands to be present on these platforms & become early adopters to create & curate personalized content & campaigns to enhance customer experiences to stay relevant.

The collision of online & offline: As a consumer myself, I have always resonated with brand campaigns that I see everywhere, whether it’s online or offline. I would love for integrated campaigns to take the spotlight and see how brand narratives pan out across all mediums - social, digital, print & mainline which will also help reach a wider audience with better brand visibility and a higher ROI.

When brands have a 360 narrative, it paves the way for a better brand recall and experience overall.