MUMBAI: Winning 50 awards in 2018 has not dented Logicserve Digital’s urge to keep progressing. The Indian media agency arm of Logicserve Group feels it still has a long way to go.

In an exclusive conversation with Indiantelevision.com, Logicserve Digital co-founder and CEO Prasad Shejale outlined the major marketing trends that the agency will be focussing on in 2019 for an even better growth trajectory. Logicserve Digital is looking beyond the realms of existing marketing trends that focus heavily on technology, including neural network and programmatic AI, and is also focussing heavily on customer satisfaction driven by creativity.

Shejale sees that people are not buying voices now, but experiences. Any technology or campaign should look at giving consumers a better experience. “The consumer is changing and so are technology, marketing and advertising. The technology has got incorporated very much into day-to-day life. So, the trends must go beyond these existing paradigms. I think it is a combination of technology, consumer behaviour and marketing which will give a greater experience to the customer and will help in creating successful campaigns. Technology is evolving, so many changes are happening every day, which is great! But to create a seamless experience we need to strike a balance between man and machine,” notes Shejale.

Speaking about the first of the three major trends that Logicserve Digital is eyeing in 2019, Shejale mentions that next year is going to be for those who understand the consumers and have consumer experience at the core of their strategies, irrespective of the technology they use.

Elaborating more on consumer trends, Shejale mentions the mantra of ‘video, vernacular, and voice’. He says that video is getting maximum attention and vernacular content is driving a lot of population to these videos. One needs to tap this trend smartly and in a responsible manner. “Agencies should start realising that even while the ads are free, they eat my viewer’s time. That’s why advertisements should be responsible. A line needs to be drawn as to how much is too much and how are ads affecting the life and time of a consumer who is not interested in their content,” he says.

Shejale notes that personalisation of the ad content is a must in today’s times. “There is a huge divide between India and Bharat. A good amount of people from the latter group have found their way online and probably have the same aspirations as those of a metro person. The focus here shifts on how we interact with those people,” he mentions.

He adds that due to the new alert customer, there’s a huge responsibility on brands to bring in the right experience — it has to be subtle and personalised. It also has to solve the problem of the customer. “It can’t be spray and pray. If you do spray and pray, the amount of money you will spend will go against your plan,” he says.

Giving the example of Kia Motors, he says they personalised social media campaigns by introducing real-time marketing. He quips that one needs to keep going back to technologies that are already in place to work on such meaningful campaigns that not only hold consumer’s attention but also drive satisfaction by having an impact.

There is a huge boom in the technology sector and a continuous evolvement of the space is also happening.  While it is mandatory to incorporate these new technologies in the marketing campaigns, it is much more important to back these up with creative storytelling. Shejale believes that creative people in the industry will have to be constantly on their toes and grill their brains to think of creative concepts to drive successful marketing campaigns.

“Today’s consumer has a very short attention span. The format of ad consumption is changing—shorter yet impactful ads work. The storytelling has completely changed, wherein it starts with a big impact then there is a build, and then probably the impact or reinforcing of what to be told,” he says.

However, he isn’t averse to the idea of long-form traditional storytelling. “Yes, formats are changing. The ads are getting shorter. But having said so, we also have n number of examples where, if the story is told well, people are willing to go for longer formats too.”

Shejale says that it all boils down to only one point - the understanding of consumer journey lifecycle. Agencies should have an idea of how are they getting into the life and awareness phase of a viewer and know where they can’t demand too long a time from him/her. And this is where technology comes into play.  Agencies must use technical tools to form a good database about the consumer in terms of age, gender, profession, among others and then personalise their ads accordingly.