Campaign India is ending the year by asking industry leaders about what this year taught them and an outrageous prediction for 2022.
Here's what Prasoon Joshi, CEO and CCO, McCann Worldgroup India, and chairman, McCann Asia Pacific, had to say:
Your stand-out moment or learning from 2021?
Consumer behaviour was intriguing and brought many a moment of learning .
This is the time of conscious consumption, not necessarily conscientious consumption.
On the one hand, we have a large segment that in the pandemic phase heartrendingly contended with losing livelihood or drastic cuts. The changes in their consumption and buying behaviour are stark and apparent.
There are others on the top of the pyramid where the income is not impacted, but extravagance opportunities have contracted.
Then there is 'create more than you consume' millennials who want to focus on invention and actual value creation and not mere transactions.
It's the in-between segment that perhaps is displaying the more intriguing behaviour. For you see, there is a bit of all of the above into play here. Here the desire to spend- on exotic food, fashion, fun remains intact but finds more covert ways of playing out. There may be hesitation of going to a shopping mall, not for safety reasons alone but also to guard against appearing insensitive. To honestly declare you are shopping or in a fancy restaurant whilst talking to a friend or colleague dealing with health issues or having the driver and staff view the fancy packets is uncomfortable.
How the marketing and advertising industry straddled this dichotomous consumer behaviour of consumption without exhibition was interesting .
An outrageous prediction from 2022?
The brands in the pandemic phase felt compelled to speak in overt social voices. Empathetic, restrained, responsible. If life eases out in 2022, we will see increased legroom for whacky, fun, bizarre humour again.
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