82% of active internet users have online shopping and research experience: Amazon Study

From the micro wave and lockdown at the start of the year to the Russia-Ukraine war, inflation and global economic downturn, 2022 has not been a good year for everyone in the marketing and media world.

Many consider the year to be the first post-pandemic “normal” year in which business and consumer sentiment returned to pre-Covid levels. It was a year when the performances of the brands that flourished during the pandemic were tested. Marketing strategies have evolved rapidly in 2022. Brands have gravitated towards influencer marketing, which places more faith in content creators than celebrity endorsements. The massive churns kept marketers on their toes.

e4m reached out to some of the top marketers in the industry and asked how they will remember the year 2022, and which platform they think can give the maximum ROI in today’s times. Take a look at what they said.

Rajiv Dubey, Head-Media, Dabur India Ltd

After two years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, one hoped that this year would bring some relief. But that didn’t really happen, as the year started with omicron in January, followed by the Ukraine war in February. The war led to inflation, which led to lower demand for certain categories. The holiday season has been tepid, and one hopes that as inflation eases, volume growth will settle into the high single digits in the coming months. However, people in the automotive, travel, airline, hotel industries laughed all the way to the bank.

Similarly, the growth in the television industry in terms of viewership was negative. In 2022, the consumption of television decreased compared to earlier two years. Bad news for television meant that advertising on digital grew by leaps and bounds, growing almost 90% on last year’s figures. As more money has moved to the performance side of the business, one sees a slowdown/rationalization of spending in app-based businesses, e-com, edutech and demise of crypto-economies. However, digital business is likely to continue to grow at low double digits next year.

Platform that gives the best ROI: Influencer marketing has seen massive growth in the past few years, it is likely to get even bigger. Although it is difficult to predict what will work better in terms of ROI, I sincerely hope that sports start to give better ROI.

Dipali Patwa, Group Head, Brand, Digital & Community, Fabindia

This year was the year of the customer who is the creator. Content marketing, more than ever before, is driven by the consumer. The business of advertising and marketing has been and will continue to be more diverse, inclusive and connected to real customer needs. Marketing has moved beyond branding and advertising and brands are adapting to build great customer experiences and engage them for their long-term loyalty. After the pandemic, 2022 changed consumer behavior and attitudes, improving brands’ marketing strategies and plans.

There are five central disruptive shifts that have affected consumer attitudes, engagement and behavior – digital and mobile shopping, marketing localization, experiential retail and personalization at scale, live and conversational commerce, social accountability and sustainability and the rise of the crib economy.

Platform for the best ROI: Seamless customer experience from initial interest to customer service after sales, a customer-focused culture throughout the customer journey; a business that delivers quality experience across all channels is more likely to deliver the ROI. Simply put, focus on “word of mouth” and “real customer service”, but use digital tools and data to engage the consumers in a more meaningful way and help solve their needs. Simply right!

Maneesh Krishnamurthy, Marketing Head Eye Care Division, Titan Company

This year it was back to brand love. In 2022, branding and storytelling have made a comeback. The biggest concerns expressed by marketers were the rising cost of acquiring new customers and over-indexing on performance marketing. Brand budgets have returned after a two-year hiatus and the talk of building successful grooves through brand love has become acceptable again.

This year too, brand supporters weren’t just celebs. The trend of founders and consumers appearing in advertisements has taken a huge leap.

Platforms that give the best ROI: Affiliate channels (PhonePe, Paytm, Jio and GooglePay) trumped social media (Google and Facebook) in new consumer efficiency. We were also surprised by the continued effectiveness of SMS over WhatsApp in customer retention.

Naveen Murali, Head of Marketing, Pepperfry

The past two years have seen rapid growth in advertising online. The rise of influencer content, short-format videos, conversational commerce have all paved the way for limitless possibilities for brands to explore new formats and connect with audiences almost anytime, anywhere.

At Pepperfry this year, we reached out to our consumers across channels, be it TV, outdoor, digital, audio streaming platforms or others, depending on the campaign. Our Diwali 2022 campaign, ‘Pepperfry Meme Superstars’ with brand ambassadors Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan was a first-of-its-kind 360-degree campaign where we achieved this fusion of the online and offline worlds, by ‘ a ‘MemeVerse’ concept.

Platform that gives the best ROI: Digital should continue its bullish run given the greater visibility on returns and in general, the higher ROI. Also within digital, it will be interesting to see how brands capitalize beyond the usual SEM and shopping channels. Influencer-led advertising is also expected to grow in size and at the same time take better shape as the norms fall into place. Hopefully this will also be the year where we figure out how to better capitalize and monetize the newer channels, for example metaverse. The surprise I think could be from traditional formats reinventing themselves, tracking better and thereby offering better ROI.

Pragya Bijalwan – Head of Marketing, Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals

The year was a challenging and exciting one at the same time. After two years, people started walking out of their homes, festivities returned to pre-covid times and life returned to normal. However, the war in Ukraine, inflation and global slowdown weigh on overall business sentiments. Nevertheless, as an organization, we have remained committed to investing in brand building initiatives across all our key categories.

We have been active on impact real estate in India; IPL as well as top channels on TV in key genres across India during the key summer season. We have significantly increased our spend on digital platforms, knowing that more than 80% of information search takes place online while a large proportion of sales can still be through the traditional channels.

On digital, we have significantly increased our presence on high-reach platforms such as YouTube, Google Search and social media to drive awareness.

Platform that gives the best ROI: The number of smart TV and OTT users now exceeds 1 billion. With this, the role of connected devices is increasing and advertisers will use it wisely to target relevant consumers with curated content. Data suggests that streamers spend 66 hours per week watching video content and 64% pay the most attention to ads on streaming services (more than 3X the attention driven by video ads on social and websites). With greater engagement on streaming platforms, the role of CTV will increase and marketers will tend to get higher ROI with the right content.

Tanveer Khan, GM, Brand Marketing, Dunzo

It’s been a year of firsts for us when it comes to national campaigns. We used to focus on growing the brand and building the q-commerce category through digital channels and targeting, strong content strategy and brand communication on select channels and social media. In 2022, we decide to take a step further and be a part of national events like IPL.

The year also gave us the opportunity to experiment and learn with campaigns like Fridgesh Coolkarni, QR Code TVC and Bored Games which achieved success and a lot of brand love, which helped us grow the category and business. Through other campaigns like Dunzo Wali Diwali and city-specific campaigns, we have learned consumer preference, shopping behavior and intent, which we will definitely replicate and scale across India in the coming year.

Platform that gives the best ROI: There is a massive potential in the regional and HSM (Hindi Speaking Market) space, which is gaining a lot of attention and traction across all age groups and which is sure to be a prospect for the coming years.

The other trend is sports. While cricket is still a very popular sport in our country, other sports events like kabaddi, badminton and football are seeing the audience taking a new found interest in it. These new avenues will open new doors for marketers to find new niches.