Digital is but a medium

First, the disclaimer. I am a confirmed conference junkie. I have attended almost all the AdAsias (organised by the Asian Federation of Adverting Associations, AFAA) since 1995 and many of the World Congresses (organised by the International Advertising Association, IAA) around the world. I have been a part of the organising team for the AdAsia Jaipur 2003 and New Delhi 2011 so I can claim to have a fair idea of what it takes to host these events. Let me assure you, organising one is not for the faint-hearted. On the other hand, attending one is a different story altogether. The scale (always over 1,000 delegates; this time 1,075), the cultural diversity, the opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones, the learnings from the many distinguished speakers, all contribute to make these events very special. And as everywhere, you take away as much as you want. You could enjoy yourself exploring the night spots and resting during the day, or taking in the many sights of a new city and shopping till you drop, or you could attend all the sessions, or as many as you can, pen and paper in hand. The choice is entirely yours. The result, in all these cases, is a lot of fun.

As Piyush Pandey said in his very well received presentation, work can be a lot of fun. And it’s up to you to make it that way. His presentation might have appeared to be retro-fitted to suit the topic – fun at work – but the content was excellent. The work he and his team have done over the years not just make us proud to be Indian advertising professionals, but bear testimony to the fact that language is really no barrier to great communication. The Google ad he showed at the end of his “fun” presentation had most of the audience misty-eyed.

Digital is now Of late, digital has ruled the roost at most seminars. After all, it is, as one speaker put it, not the future anymore. It is all happening right now. And so one had the inevitable presentations on the kind of reach and penetration the mobile phone had right now, its usage, the innovations that are being churned out to use this little screen to devastating effect, and the research that proved that the TV screen shared your attention with other happenings in the room, but the little screen in your hand and up-close to your face had your complete and undivided attention. And, of course, the fact that the mobile phone was now becoming an enabler of commercial transactions that could and will change the way we spend money completely.

‘But don’t get carried away’ So much for technology and the digital scenario. Some senior professionals stressed the fact that while automation was a major trend they saw in the year ahead and in the near future, technology is just an enabler. In fact, it could distract us from the undeniable fact that people have not changed fundamentally over the years. It is just that technology has given us more refined ways to reach them. As one speaker observed, we have been around for about 84,000 generations and just seven of them have passed through the Age of Industrialisation. As he pithily remarked, our modern skulls still house Stone Age minds. And it is this mind space that every marketer seeks to occupy. Therefore, the logical corollary was that the time-tested approach to capture mind-space could still be very traditional. For example, the essence of a story well told will still resonate with the consumer as long as the story has relevance to her.

The un-sexy endures The marketing paradigm was defined by a speaker as not just the allocation of 70 per cent of the budget to what we knew worked well, 20 per cent to innovation and 10 per cent to brand new ideas. Very often an inordinate amount of time and effort was spent on the last 10 per cent as it was the most sexy thing to be doing. Instead, it was suggested that the maximum time should be spent on experimenting with the rock-solid 70 per cent which would really yield rich results. So the importance of story-telling remains undiminished. However, the need is to tell good stories. Stories that are agnostic to media or technology platforms.

Change approach, say agencies While the future trends were flagged as automation, the hiring of specialist human resources such as editors of magazines for content writing in advertising agencies and people holding doctorates in Maths, speakers urged clients to change the way they dealt with their agencies. They contended that rather than present a creative brief to agencies, they should be presented with a business problem, the desired commercial objectives, and the challenge that agencies design business solutions with commercial deliverables. Agencies possesses the know-how to deliver on such challenges and this would, in fact, keep them relevant in the face of other competitors such as like consultancy houses which were reducing agencies to mere implementers of strategy.

This year, the organisers of the AdAsia invited TedX to present sessions on two afternoons. The result was pleasantly surprising. The speakers constituted music producers, an artist who mixed light and sound, a performing artist, a photographer who documented the world poverty line with pictures and so on. All creative people in their own right. All very different points of view that came together delightfully to present a whole new way to look at creativity. They truly made one understand what Albert Einstein meant when he said that “creativity is intelligence having fun”.

And finally, India mobilised the largest delegation to the AdAsia with about 141 professionals. Raj Nayak, the leader of the delegation, has every reason to be proud. As does Pradeep Guha whose term as Chairman AFAA came to an end. A term that saw AFAA growing and maturing and also a term that gave Indian leadership respect and dignity.

And so the new executive committee of the AFAA takes over with Raymond So of Taipei as Chairman and Srinivasan K Swamy as Vice-Chairman. We wish them well. And wait with bated breath for the next AdAsia, in Bali, 2017.

Ramesh Narayan has held various leadership roles in the Advertising Club, Advertising Agencies Association of India, Asian Federation of Advertising Associations and the IAA