MUMBAI: The consumers of today are more complicated than ever. They are educated, smart and can easily call out a bluff if they spot one. They value experiences more than creatives. Advertising and marketing, therefore, is becoming more dynamic and consumer-centric to woo the ever-growing consumer base, which owns more disposable income but less time to invest. Therefore, a brand needs to look beyond a communication-based promotional approach and really work hard to generate not just a greater brand recall but strategise to better get hold of consumer attention on the racks as well.

Wolfzhowl Strategic Instigations chief strategist and founder Kalyan Ram Challapalli believes that strategists are becoming more relevant and important in today’s time to help brands sail through the competition.

In an exclusive conversation with Indiantelevision.com, he said, “Behaviour and culture is larger than just an ad or campaign. We can do much more than just (helping with) a firm’s communication. We decode consumer and culture to help brands. What we always strive to be a little more positive towards the consumer and the society, and not just (drive) business transactions.”

But with businesses moving to in-house strategists or working with agencies for the purpose, how can specialised firms like Wolfzhowl attract prominence?

Challapalli noted that agencies are more business- and number-driven than consumer-driven. "What is happening with advertising is that the topline and the bottomline are shrinking. The strategists are not getting trained the way they should be because where is the time for training when you have less people to do more work. The role of a strategist is to be a brand business partner beyond what one’s firm does but that is not happening. It is because there are more brands and less strategists and they aren’t trained well.”

Speaking more about the same, he added, “On the digital side, there are bright young boys and girls working as strategists but they are more channel driven.”

He insisted that brands today are looking more than what these strategists at agencies have to offer. They want their business problems solved and not just channel or communication problems.

“There are two things that are missing. One is an integrated strategy and the second is efficacious media-neutral strategy,” Challapalli noted.

However, he agrees that for some reasons, the independent purely strategist companies are not surviving in the market. But he sees the emerging trend to be providing more opportunities and scope for them in the coming times. He attributed it to the growth of the gig economy where more and more young people are leaving their fancy agency jobs to do freelancing and more versatile work.

He also noted that the CXOs of today have become as smart as the advertising people, which was essentially not the case earlier. “The CXOs have big decision making power now. They are meeting more interesting people like travel bloggers and product designers when agencies are putting their heads down creating artworks and TVCs,” he said.

This makes businesses more demanding and aware of the fact that not just communication can solve all their business problems. They need more integrated strategies, from product design to user experience to improved sales.

He feels that strategists are going to rise as a threat and a pain point to the advertising agencies. “Advertising really lost the game in the early 2000s. When clients cut media budgets and put them on a time-sheet, advertising agencies also put their passion on excel sheets. Whereas, advertising was never a rational business, it is now about putting as much passion as there is money. Another part is that advertisers were cutting-edge thinkers once. Their exposure to life and consumer cycle was higher. But how many people in agencies today go out for a vox-pop or research? They have so much work to do that they prefer searching on google. That is something that a client can also do.”

Challapalli shared that while advertising is not dead, its role has been reappropriated with the rise of digital and trends like experiential and AI, VR, ML marketing. “I am not saying that agencies are not growing to fit the trends but they are in silos. There is no integration.”

And that is the exact pain point that strategists and firms like his can address.