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Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
The Algorithm Doesn't Care About Your Campaign
By Vivek Pradeep Rana Let's be honest: most marketing teams don't really know what they're doing with AI. There's a ChatGPT tab open, maybe a pilot project underway, a few enthusiastic decks floating around, and a creeping suspicion that something big is happening—but no real plan. Meanwhile, the tools are evolving faster than your brand guidelines can keep up. The truth? We're not in the post-AI marketing phase but in the pre-replacement phase. Unless something changes, fast. According to Adobe's 2024 Global Digital Trends report, 81% of Indian marketers say they are experimenting with GenAI tools, but only 27% feel confident about integrating them into long-term strategic planning. Meanwhile, Salesforce research indicates that 65% of global marketers now use GenAI to personalise content, and India leads emerging markets in adoption for campaign automation. For decades, Indian marketers built competitive advantage through a unique combination of market insight, distribution muscle, and cultural storytelling. The best campaigns found resonance in complexity—navigating language diversity, regional behaviours, and socio-economic gradients with skill and empathy. But what happens when the tools to decode that complexity, create content around it, and distribute it at scale become democratised? When can a prompt generate a campaign draft, a product description, and a visual storyboard in seconds? When competitors are no longer limited to incumbent brands but include agile startups operating from dorm rooms with zero legacy constraints and infinite AI leverage? The marketing function is not facing obsolescence. But it is facing redefinition. The skills that once made teams effective—speed, executional polish, and replication at scale—are no longer scarce. What is scarce now is judgement, narrative integrity, ethical discernment, and contextual sensitivity. In a world where creation is infinite and attention is finite, it is not the marketer who produces the most content who will win. It is the one who knows what not to produce—and when. The Illusion of Mastery in a World of Infinite Tools One of the great traps of this moment is the illusion of control. Many Indian brands have rushed to adopt AI tools without revisiting the assumptions that underpin their marketing strategies. Creative workflows are being 'streamlined.' Copywriting is being automated. Personalization engines are being tested with pilot data sets. But in most cases, this is surface-level adaptation—efficiency gains applied to an outdated operating model. The danger lies in assuming that AI will simply plug into the existing architecture of marketing and enhance it. That's a misread. AI doesn't just optimize workflows; it alters the logic of value creation. It collapses cost structures, reduces differentiation, and compresses timelines. What used to be a premium capability—say, developing 50 versions of an ad for testing—is now trivial. A 2023 report by McKinsey estimates that GenAI can reduce creative production time by up to 40% and marketing content costs by 20–30%. This is particularly consequential in India, where marketing has often relied on scale and repetition as proxies for insight. But AI doesn't reward repetition. It amplifies originality—or punishes its absence. The Real Risk Isn't Job Loss. It's Strategic Irrelevance. Much of the current discourse focuses on job displacement—how many roles in marketing will be replaced, augmented, or reskilled. A Nasscom-Zinnov report predicts that by 2027, up to 45% of creative marketing tasks in India could be AI-assisted or fully automated. While that is a valid concern, it misses the deeper strategic threat: the erosion of marketing's central role in value creation. If marketers become mere executors of prompts generated elsewhere—whether by data teams, AI systems, or leadership—then the discipline risks becoming ornamental. To avoid this, Indian marketing leaders must confront a hard truth: marketing's future influence will depend not on how well it adapts to tools but on how ambitiously it redefines its mandate. This begins with reclaiming the responsibility to think. Over the past decade, marketing in many organisations has been reduced to a campaign factory—briefs in, creatives out. AI can perform that function more efficiently. But what AI cannot do, at least not yet, is reason about long-term brand equity, synthesize cultural undercurrents into insight, or weigh narrative risk in a volatile society. These are judgement calls. And they are becoming more important, not less. What Indian Marketers Must Do Differently First, they must invest in building internal AI literacy—not to turn marketers into data scientists, but to ensure that strategic decisions are made with an informed understanding of how AI systems function, where they fail, and what biases they embed. A 2024 study by WARC revealed that less than 18% of Indian marketers surveyed had formal training in AI systems, despite 73% expressing intent to increase AI investment. Second, marketers must reimagine their organisational structures. The traditional linear pipeline—from insight to brief to creative to media—assumes scarcity at every stage. That scarcity no longer exists. In its place is abundance, but with abundance comes the need for new filters. Functions like 'prompt engineering', 'cultural moderation', 'data narrative translation', and 'synthetic brand testing' may sound niche today, but they will be critical capabilities in tomorrow's marketing organisation. Third, marketing teams must recalibrate how they measure value. The metrics of the past—impressions, GRPs, CTRs—were always proxies. In an AI-driven landscape, they are not only insufficient but potentially misleading. What matters now is coherence. Does the brand's narrative hold together across fragmented channels and accelerated cycles? Does it build trust in an environment where synthetic content is indistinguishable from authentic voice? These questions require marketers to engage with harder-to-measure dimensions like meaning, memory, and perception at a systems level. India's Structural Advantage—If It's Claimed India is not at a disadvantage in this transition. In fact, it may have a unique edge—if it chooses to act on it. The very complexity that has long challenged Indian marketers—multilingual audiences, divergent digital maturity levels, and high platform fragmentation—can now become a training ground for globally relevant, AI-enhanced marketing systems. Digital consumption in India is projected to exceed 1.3 billion connected users by 2030, and vernacular content already accounts for over 60% of all online engagement. The data signals are rich, messy, and deeply human. AI trained on this complexity can power the next generation of cultural understanding and creative adaptation. But this requires ambition. Not the ambition of producing another award-winning campaign or chasing quarterly uplift, but the ambition to reshape what marketing does for the business and for society. There is a vacuum forming at the intersection of marketing, technology, and ethics. Indian marketers have an opportunity to step into that vacuum—not just to protect the discipline but to lead it into its next phase. This means becoming custodians of coherence in a world of content deluge. It means designing systems where human values are not just protected but encoded. It means thinking less like advertisers and more like architects of trust. The Future Is Not Waiting The pace at which GenAI is evolving will not slow down. OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo has already redefined multimodal engagement, and Google's Gemini is actively being embedded into consumer products at scale. The systems are improving. The expectations are rising. In such an environment, hesitation is not caution. It is irrelevance by another name. Marketing as we knew it is not coming back. But what can replace it—if we choose to build it—is something more rigorous, more intelligent, and far more consequential. The future of marketing in India will not be defined by how well we use AI. It will be defined by how deeply we understand what only humans can do—and have the courage to do more of it. (The author is managing partnet, Gnothi Seauton. Opinions are personal)
The Hindu
6 days ago
- The Hindu
Figma aims at $16.4 billion valuation as tech IPOs bounce back
Figma is targeting a fully-diluted valuation of up to $16.4 billion in its initial public offering, as the cloud-based design software firm prepares for a debut on the NYSE that could inject fresh momentum into a resurgent market for tech listings. The San Francisco-based company, along with some investors, is eyeing proceeds of up to $1.03 billion by selling nearly 37 million shares priced between $25 and $28 each, it said on Monday. The listing could be a major milestone for Figma, coming more than a year after its $20 billion sale to Adobe failed due to regulatory hurdles in Europe and the UK. An equities rally and a bunch of strong debuts recently have helped remove the IPO market overhang. Figma is expected to start trading close on the heels of stablecoin giant Circle , which debuted with eye-popping gains last month and has continued surging since. As a major technology player that appears supportive of bitcoin, Figma has already drawn attention on social media. The company had around $70 million invested in Bitwise's bitcoin exchange-traded fund as of March 31 and intends to allocate a further $30 million to bitcoin, its filing showed. Figma expects to list under the symbol "FIG". Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Co and J.P. Morgan are among the underwriters for the offering. It was valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer last year that allowed employees and early investors to cash out a portion of their stake. Figma is a cloud-based design platform that allows users to collaboratively create and edit apps, websites and software interfaces. Its customers include ServiceNow, Workday and SAP. Its revenue rose 46% in the first three months of 2025, while net income jumped three-fold. "Figma's product is its primary marketing engine. Its collaborative nature fosters viral, bottoms-up adoption, leading to a best-in-class sales efficiency," said Tomasz Tunguz, founder of venture capital firm Theory Ventures. The company has also signaled it may take "big swings" with M&A, with co-founder and CEO Dylan Field saying it is prepared to "make decisions that may not seem immediately rational." Still, the listing will take place at a time when the industry landscape is shifting. While Figma is sharpening its focus on AI, it has also warned that design tools driven by the technology could make some customers less reliant on its platform. The company has noted that restrictive immigration policies could impact its ability to recruit talent, citing past adjustments to hiring practices due to changes in visa assessment frameworks. A majority of its revenue in 2024 came from outside the United States, exposing it to potential demand softness if international clients tighten their purse strings in response to tariffs. Renewed trade tensions could also add to the caution among IPO investors, risking further disruption. Against this backdrop, investor attention remains firmly on companies with solid fundamentals and a clear path to profitability, said Leslie Marlow, a corporate attorney at Blank Rome.
Economic Times
7 days ago
- Economic Times
Figma aims at $13.7 billion valuation as tech IPOs bounce back
Figma is targeting a valuation of $13.65 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, as the cloud-based design software firm prepares for a debut that could inject fresh momentum into a tech listings market already roaring back to San Francisco-based company, along with some investors, is eyeing proceeds of up to $1.03 billion through a sale of nearly 37 million shares priced between $25 and $28 each, it said on Monday. The listing could be a major milestone for Figma, coming more than a year after its $20 billion sale to Adobe was terminated due to regulatory hurdles in Europe and the UK. While investors have been eager for new share sales for months, the uncertainty sparked by President Donald Trump's tariffs kept a major recovery in an equities rally and a bunch of strong debuts recently are helping lift the overhang. Figma will start trading close on the heels of stablecoin giant Circle, which debuted with eye-popping gains last month and has continued surging a major technology player that appears supportive of bitcoin, Figma has already draw attention on social media company had around $70 million invested in Bitwise's bitcoin exchange-traded fund as of March 31 and intends to allocate a further $30 million to bitcoin, its filing is a cloud-based design platform that allows users to collaboratively create and edit apps, websites and software customers include ServiceNow, Workday and SAP. Its revenue rose 46% in the first three months of 2025, while net income jumped three-fold."Figma's product is its primary marketing engine. Its collaborative nature fosters viral, bottoms-up adoption, leading to a best-in-class sales efficiency," said Tomasz Tunguz, founder of venture capital firm Theory company has also signaled it may take "big swings" with M&A, with co-founder and CEO Dylan Field saying it is prepared to "make decisions that may not seem immediately rational." Figma expects to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FIG". Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Co and J.P. Morgan are among the underwriters for the offering. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. From near bankruptcy to blockbuster drug: How Khorakiwala turned around Wockhardt Paid less than plumbers? The real story of freshers' salaries at Infy, TCS. What if Tata Motors buys Iveco's truck unit? Will it propel or drag like JLR? As deposit ground slips under PSU banks' feet, they chase the wealthy If data is the new oil, are data centres the smokestacks of the digital age? Stock Radar: M&M likely to break out from 1-year consolidation range; time to buy? Will consumer stocks see a comeback this festive season? 12 stocks to keep an eye on even when analysts are not bullish Don't fear volatility, focus on businesses: 5 mid-cap stocks from different sectors with upside potential of up to 27% Best way to deal with volatility, just ' Hold' for wealth creation: 7 large-cap stocks with an upside potential of up to 41%
