#Recap2019: Digital Marketing budgets grew between 40-200% YoY, says Sanjay Mehta

Mirum India’s Joint CEO, Sanjay Mehta shares why client’s conviction in digital marketing is strengthening, predicts regional languages will define trends in the digital space in 2020 and the big digital trend that emerged in 2019.

Which were your favorite top 5 digital campaigns of 2019? (Can be local or global)

 #FlirtWithYourCity by Times Of India

#KitnaKata by AMFI

#VoiceOFHunger by Swiggy

#EscapeTheClown by Burger King (International)

Cadbury - Donate your words (International)

Last Saturday in Ely, customers could 'Donate their words' for anything in this @Age_UK shop. People didn’t need to pay for any of the items. Instead, we asked them to 'Donate their words' to lonely older people. And you can #DonateYourWords too: https://t.co/wA5dZYrsKL pic.twitter.com/nXZttldHgR

— Cadbury UK (@CadburyUK) October 22, 2019

Did any creative trend or strategy catch your attention? What was it and how was it different?

I would refer to influencer marketing as that one strategy. While so-called influencer marketing has been around for a while, it used to be largely about doing a twitter trending activity, or getting some bloggers to blog about your brand once, etc. Essentially it used to be a very one-off transactional involvement of influencers. In 2019, we saw a bit of coming of age of influencer marketing. Where brands engaged influencers in a more immersive manner, more seamlessly, somewhat more long-term basis, etc. And it seemed to work well, in many cases.

In terms of brands spending and adapting digital medium, how was 2019 vs 2018?

Basis the experience we had with our clients, we saw digital marketing budgets of a client, grow on a year-on-year basis anywhere between 40% to 200%. So most certainly, there was far more conviction about the medium, and brands put more money where their mouth was.

And, what's the next big thing in digital in 2020?

While there are many new things that are happening, be it marketing automation, voice technology, AR/VR, etc., specifically for 2020, the one big shift that I would bet on, is the regionalisation of content. We are definitely seeing a massive growth in the Internet user base, who prefer a regional language as their first choice. And at this time, the Indian Internet space is still massively English oriented, in terms of the content available. So, brands will need to embrace regional languages rapidly and get a lot of their existing content converted to regional, rapidly. And that will be a big trend for 2020.

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