“Marketers will have to be more intuitive, interactive, immersive in the new normal”

Shrugging off the disruptions of the year gone by, businesses and agencies are looking for a strong revival in 2021. Over the next few weeks, Adgully – as part of our annual TRENDING NOW endeavour – will be presenting the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of 2020.

Nikhil Rungta, Country Manager – India, Verizon Media, speaks about how brands will have to rethink solutions across the omnichannel media journey in the new normal. Along with all the ‘Digi-ruptions’, he also sees the good old email surfacing as the frontrunner.

Outlook for 2021

The pandemic had a huge impact on our technology reliance, propelling us forward many years. In the new normal, marketers will have to be more intuitive, interactive and immersive through the big shifts ahead:

Omnichannel everywhere! No surprises here, given how consumers now switch seamlessly between online and offline channels. Brands will have to rethink solutions across the omnichannel media journey – from Connected TV to DOOH. Indians have begun stepping out as the COVID-19 curve flattens in India and DOOH is set to explode via a combination of pent-up demand and the growing availability of DOOH inventory through programmatic channels. Add native formats, dynamic ads, Augmented Reality (AR), streaming audio and more to the omnichannel mix, and advertisers will have a range of opportunities to connect, with programmatic making buying easier.

E-commerce experience evolves: The e-commerce experience is set for a major upgrade. It will become much more multi-format and tailored, with a seismic shift in shopping content. For example, we’re likely to begin seeing more AR-enabled commerce, as well as richer forms of interactive video, including the ability to not only watch shoppable programming, but to do so with your friends. We also anticipate the launch of dynamically generated online storefronts personalised for the user to remove friction, guarantee the best price and offer a seamless buying experience.

Entertainmerce: Live Streaming + Shopping = Shopstreaming. Livestream shopping, where several current tech trends intersect – streaming, social, commerce – is already emerging in some parts of the globe as a way to bring entertainment to the shopping experience. It is engaging and easily accessible, as well as entertaining. An entertaining experience is the third leading purchase motivator – just behind free delivery/ returns and quick/ easy check-out.

Gaming and social have converged for Gen Z: The next big social media will be a game – like Discord, Twitch in the US. Even in India, things like Watch-and-Play are doing well. We are seeing good traction on Yahoo Cricket, where we have introduced game elements through quizzes and polls.

The cookie crumbled in 2020. What’s next? Good old email might just surface as the frontrunner. We are looking at a world where open source and proprietary data can live side by side, with identity differentiated by direct consumer consent and association to many deterministic signals that can be shared in a privacy-centric way. We are building something similar with our own identity graph, Verizon Media ConnectID.

Great expectations

I think this year is going to be a game changer – 5G will go mainstream, for real this time! We have been hearing about the benefits of 5G for years now, but it wasn’t until remote work, videoconferencing and digital collaboration became a core part of our lives that the need for reliable connectivity and more bandwidth became concrete benefits we could all wrap our heads around. But that’s not the whole story.

For brands, this is where it gets exciting. 5G will bring much faster data speeds and low-latency, and computing will increasingly be done at the edge of the cloud instead of inside a device. As processing for content experiences moves to the edge of the cloud, we will see significantly more personalisation opportunities for content owners as video, websites, and XR experiences are rendered in near real-time. It will allow for stadiums to be brought into your home – you can watch teams play in VR/ AR with interactive replays, stats and gaming, as the action happens.

Meanwhile, in retail, immersive experiences using AR and VR will be used to make shopping experiences smoother, allowing you to virtually sample products or see items in-use before buying online or heading to a store. With 5G, these types of digital touchpoints will ultimately become the norm, enhancing and, in some cases, replacing many in-person experiences outright.

Key learnings from 2020

Digital is now no longer a choice. It is a necessity. It is not just Gen Z and millenials, but also older generations who are now on digital channels or getting there. Digital is not just about discounts or convenience any more. Digital is about data, about knowing your consumers better, being able to connect with them and build deeper relationships. Digital is about being borderless and boundaryless, being able to sell anywhere in the world, to anyone in the world. Digital is about being desire keepers, being able to fulfil desires where the desires are created.

For marketers, this shift has to be anchored by transparency to serve Indians who were hugely ‘digi-rupted’ last year. A transparent experience, using data ethically, to serve genuine consumer needs, will result in long-term consumer trust and loyalty. Consumers aren’t averse to sharing data if brands use it to serve a genuine need. In fact, they want more personalisation, that has been a learning – “show me what is relevant”. Also, now more than ever, there will be a higher need for brand safe content.

The year 2020 also showed brands what ‘trust’ means for consumers. In Edelman’s Trust Barometer report last year, 71 per cent said they would lose trust in a brand (forever) if they perceived a brand was putting profit over people during the pandemic. Clearly, consumers who have gone through a challenging year – relying on their communities to get through their personal ordeals – want their brands to stand for similar values. That’s a learning brands will have to channel this year as they deliver products and experiences with purpose, trust and integrity.

In the last few years, there has been a lot of chatter about mindfulness, about slowing down, being in the present, enjoying the moment. But COVID-19 also taught us all about meaningfulness – everything will need to have a sense of purpose, whether it is a company, a brand or a product.