But what lies ahead? 2025 promises to be a game-changer, with immersive experiences, data-powered creativity, and cutting-edge marketing strategies redefining the industry. To explore what’s in store for this dynamic, tech-driven landscape, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Amin Lakhani, CEO of Mindshare South Asia.
Edited Excerpt:
Q: What for you were the really big things from 2024 that have truly shaken up the industry, as well as media buying and planning for an agency like Mindshare?
Lakhani: 2024 has been a challenging year, to say the least. From economic to political uncertainties, we’ve seen it all. And when we look back at the year, organic growth has been extremely challenging for businesses. So, that’s the first thing that I look at.
The second one is that the conversation around growth has moved from only growth to sustainable growth. That’s the second big learning or push that we’ve seen. And what all of these things, if you put them together, have done is open up room for optimisation and consolidation.
When I talk about consolidation, you’re seeing consolidation across the industry spectrum. You have clients consolidating, coming together, and we have agency, of course, consolidating. And then you have media owners consolidating, something you’ve just recently seen in the Disney-Jio merger.
It has also opened up an opportunity for collaborating to win in the same challenging environment. Clients are now shifting the ask from siloed expertise to stating it’s very difficult to manage 10 partners or multiple partners; how can Mindshare come and solve this for us from one brief to one execution? Therefore, simplification is the next big thing that has emerged in 2024. So, lots to learn, lots to chew upon. They say that you either win or you learn. I think 2024 for us as leaders has been a great balance of both winning and learning a lot.
Q: 2024 was also a big year for pitches. There were lots of very large accounts up for grabs. I mean, some of the estimates suggest ₹2,000 crore in total. Tell me, how competitive was it? But if you look at it from an industry perspective, how good and bad was it to have that many pitches in what some people would say is a challenging year of sorts?
Lakhani: So, pitches are always a great challenge primarily because they push you back into thinking, thinking on your feet, and bringing all your capabilities together when you are thinking about bringing in the client or bringing in new business. For us, all of that and more went into when we presented our vision to extend our partnership with Unilever. The entire centre of the conversation is how Mindshare is partnering with the client to transform itself to help the client grow and continue to win in the market. So, that was a very, very enriching experience. But not all reviews or pitches are enriching experiences. Yes, there’s a lot of stress, there is a lot of push, there is a lot of pressure. However, we are in the service industry, and I think pitches are the new normal when we look at the new agency business model.
Q: Going into 2025, which categories do you think will emerge as the big spenders?
Lakhani: I would rather take a step back and see where clients will continue to spend and dial up more. For example, quick commerce and e-commerce is a great enabler. We’ve seen huge traction this year, and the clients continue to build capacities and capabilities. They are trying to navigate that entire commerce environment. and we are partnering with them, and that will continue to grow significantly.
Digital as a workstream, as a medium with its capability now to deploy across the funnel, will see massive growth and massive unlock waiting to happen. So, I think that’s the second piece of growth that will come through. Within that, and if you look at what is happening in e-commerce, the retail media and the opportunity therein, I think we are only very limited in our view of what we are doing with retail media, but there are huge opportunities that retail media has to offer, and I’m seeing that clients will adopt that much more. And since we are on to 2025, influencer marketing again will take centre stage. A huge amount of fillip has come a long way, but there will be a sense of rationalisation. Clients will ask the questions and, more importantly, how do we measure an influencer marketing campaign? What efforts are agencies making to ensure we’re doing the planning thought right on influencer marketing? And how are we increasingly taking influencers through the consumer journey? So, I believe there are more relevant, important questions that will move from a nice-to-do, cherry-on-the-icing conversation to a significant conversation.
Gaming is another big opportunity area. We are seeing that time spent on gaming is increasing. However, brands are still considering where this gaming opportunity fits into their marketing solutions game. So, that’s another area of opportunity that we will see going up in 2025.
Watch the accompanying video for the entire conversation.
