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Chitrahaar-Ah! Those days when life was simpler!

That line for marketers meant that customer was actually, and may be, thankfully a tech-moron of sorts. What happened in a short span of last few years has given a big jolt to marketers, brands and in turn, to IT too; a refreshing session at C-Change 2015 shakes us a bit

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Pratima Harigunani
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Sreedhar

KOCHI, INDIA: This was in many ways, a commercial break of sorts for a conference full of CIO narratives. It was short, energizing, and did talk about money; albeit, not in the same sense.

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K V Sridhar, Chief Creative Officer, Sapient Nitro paved the new road that today’s customer is walking today in his stimulating talk on ‘New Contours in Digital Advertising’ here.  He rummaged some memories from Doordarshan days, jogged us back in the land of Chitrahaar and Buniyaad and left both the generations (Generation Doordarshan and Generation MTV) in awe at the furious and fast change that has hit the Indian psyche in only a few years.

“Back then, it was all about putting an ad on TV. Life was simpler. Everything was pushed towards customer and they had fewer choices. Today the push-economy has changed to a connected-consumer economy where the new challenge is a fast moving target. These customers are always on, extremely tech-savvy, live with multiple devices, amidst channel blur, changed shopping behavior, collapsed transaction time and compressed purchase cycles. It is a world where Google has democratized everything.”

He interpreted this irreversible shift well when he noted how it is becoming difficult for brands to command premium. If the relationship between the brand and the individual is based merely on price then life will keep turning difficult for brands. This age’s customer lives in three spaces – and the virtual space is as much inhabited as the physical or emotional space, he highlighted the intersections here.

The juice as he distilled finally may be bitter to swig but a healthy fix nonetheless – People do not want to just hear a story, they want to be part of the story. We learn more from experiences than just a story.

Can brands see these pills in the digital jam? We will keep watching for that one.

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