Over the past few decades, the influence of the Internet, digital media and e-commerce has had a huge impact on consumer marketing and shaken up the traditional structure and dynamics of the world’s advertising and market research agencies. While AI will further accelerate the change, in my MxMIndia column this fortnight, I outline the blossoming opportunity for a new kind of marketing services agency.
Time moves fast. AI seems to move faster. Three years after I first wrote about the Diffusion of AI, a revisit reveals that it has moved from the challenging “chasm” phase to storming through the world like a “tornado”. In this fortnight’s MxMIndia column, while marvelling at its speed, I find that AI is an ecosystem that needs to share its bounty with the users, unlike the creators of social media platforms, who only harvest their attention and engagement. The best catalysts for harnessing AI’s full potential are its users, provided AI platforms treat them as partners and co-creators.
This week I’m travelling abroad on business and am therefore time-challenged. My editor suggested that, instead of my usual article, … More
As years go, 2025 will probably be remembered in the short term as an “annus horribulus” given its geopolitics and the overall state of the world. However, over the longer arc of history, it will probably be remembered as part of the beginning of the age of AI. In my MxMIndia column this fortnight, I look forward to 2026 in the light of the longer frame.
Back in 2019, when I first wrote about Narrative Coherence as a brand equity dimension, social media, influencer and performance marketing were beginning to push traditional advertising to the margins. In 2025, as the transition is almost complete and another transition – the age of AI – looms, I revisit the topic
Over my four decades in advertising, the last decades have seen the most change. The mean constraints of performance marketing, the obscurities of Big Data and soon the uncharted territory of AI. To regain its mojo, advertising needs to be more creative — not less —more in touch with the human side of the consumer, and move towards realising its potential as an art form. This fortnight, my MxMIndia column cloaks this thought in the form of a new theory of advertising. Sort of.
Contract manufacturing and an increasingly mature last-mile logistics are two pillars enabling the D2C revolution. How does Amazon fit into this revolution.
With a new generation of consumers classical marketing is set to make a comeback even while marketing and advertising technology conquer new frontiers. Today’s post on my marketing blog outlines the path.
Marketing is a socio-cultural and socio-economic activity. Great marketing success often lies in anticipating and acting on change in societal and cultural trends which are not yet mainstream but around the corner. Today’s post on my blog is about one such change waiting to happen at the deepest level of society and culture.
Once in a while comes along a book or a body of thought that impacts one highly because it is both revolutionary in its newness while at the same time being resonant with one’s deepest notions of self and society. This post is the result of one such book that has crystalized in me a marketing project of global scope and deep societal impact that I hope to evangelize over the coming years. Write to me if you want to join in this nascent effort
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