2023 a year of continuous resilience and cautious growth: Girish Upadhyay

The start of a new year is seen as bringing in new operational efficiencies, stronger strategies, a far greater emphasis on building deep bonds with various stakeholders and consumers. In keeping with the current market ecosystem, technology and a human approach are seen as going hand in hand.

As 2023 kicks off, Adgully has approached key industry leaders to Crystal Gaze into 2023, as part of our annual Trending Now series, to highlight the major trends and developments that they see dominating the industry in the year ahead.

Girish Upadhyay, CMO, AxisMyIndia, highlights how 2023 will be a year of continuous resilience and cautious growth, the growing trend of phygital shopping, and more. He also stresses on decoding the actual Bharat for brands to cater to the diverse consumer profile in India.

Key trends dominating Media, Marketing, Advertising in 2023

I would say 2023 would still be a year of continuous resilience, because there is a lot of complexity in the market. Something like a failure is inevitable, but what brands are doing and what people like us and the consumer data space are doing – we are trying to anticipate failure, we are trying to monitor it and then respond to issues in an encouraging way. So, 2023 is going to be a cautious growth year, according to me. Growth will happen, but we have to be a little cautious about it.

Moreover, continuously new trends are emerging, so if I have to point out the trends that one might see in 2023, the first is of course the growth of digital and social media that will happen. And the way it has changed the consumer experience in different spheres of life will continue to happen. For example, creating content for Instagram or YouTube by using an AR/ VR device for testing and byproducts. Consumers have accepted it to a certain extent, and it is going to be accelerated further.

The trend of phygital shopping in terms of evaluating a brand in the online space and then buying it in the physical space will continue.

In terms of media, I’m a big supporter of the Metaverse, which everyone is talking about. It will have a gradual progress, but I think it is going to be a game changer in terms of how we accelerate the product adoption process at an overall level.

In terms of advertising, I would say digital viewership will keep on growing, the multi-screen dominance which we saw will only grow from here. With the access to knowledge which a consumer has, they have started to make smarter buying decisions. So, things like e-commerce, D2C brands will grow further.

Major expectations

Overall from an industry point of view, keeping this resilience and caution in mind, we as marketers need to reinforce the positive belief in the minds of the consumers. Consumers in general would be a little scared and cautious, but how do we make them comfortable, how do you align the messages to a consumer mindset, how do you create new offerings basis the existing trend or the emerging habit – we have to be tuned to that.

From a market research point of view, I think one thing that we need to do is see things differently. Because the consumer habits and buying sentiments vary – for instance, an urban consumer is different from a rural one or a small town consumer. But what is happening is that brands in general still rely on a few thousand samples to represent the country. That’s not a very correct representation of a country as diverse as India, so we need studies which are more representative of the entire country. The research outcomes should have a resonance on the ground, and the industry should be open to new thoughts.

In terms of advertising, we are talking of almost Rs 100,000 crore of advertising expenditure this year, so the industry needs a study which is more exhaustive, which can measure cross-media consumption and look beyond the metros and the smaller towns. How you decode the actual Bharat is important.

Key focus areas for AxisMyIndia in 2023

From AxisMyIndia’s point of view, I would say it’s almost like an inflexion point for us. One is in the new offerings which we are launching in the consumer research space, one big offering which should see the light is the first online-offline people empowerment platform that we are building. Basically it’s a platform which will be focused on listening and facilitating resolution of various issues of a everyday Indian, including various information telling about various government benefit entitlements, recommending them plans based on their needs, giving them employment opportunities, curated content. Thus, we are building what we call – a people empowerment platform. It is going to bring a meaningful difference to the life of the everyday Indian.