Year-ender 2022: Never take anything for granted, especially advertising budgets - Sanjay Mehta

 

If I recall advertising in 2022, some of the most visible and high-decibel advertising was for categories in cryptocurrency and online gambling. Clearly, they are both making a lot of money and can invest huge sums into advertising. I am not much of a target audience for either of them, yet I saw a lot of these category ads in my feed. I can only imagine how much more their target audience - and may I add, the more vulnerable - audience would be seeing! I hope to see a lot less of these next year, if not for anything else, only because these are being pitched to vulnerable sections of society, who end up putting up a lot of money into these areas, and often losing it all, and causing a lot of personal and family stress, as a result!

 

Your favourite ad campaign of 2022?

 

There were some amazing ad campaigns in 2022. There was also a very emotional happening for sports fans such as myself, viz. the retirement of the God of tennis, Roger Federer. For that reason, I would like to rate his campaign for Swiss Tourism, featuring Anne Hathaway, as my favourite for the year. It was done very well, moreover, it had Federer in it!

 

 

One learning from this year?

 

While this is not necessarily a learning from this year, the year only emphasised this fact, viz. never take anything for granted. Especially when it comes to advertising budgets, campaign lengths, and such. Thanks to the rollercoaster year, with Ukraine and inflation worries and whatnot, advertisers were seen vacillating in terms of budget allocations, planning, etc. Just as you put your heart and soul, not to speak of blood and sweat, behind a big campaign and you are set to roll it out, you are pulled back by an instruction to pause, due to some unforeseen developments. And just when you think things are going slow, maybe choose to take a break, or not replace some people who have left the agency since things are going slow, suddenly, things turn around and are at a high pace all over again. Always on the toes, always agile, has to be the way to go, then!

 

The overused marketing jargon of the year 2022:

 

I would say that the credit for that must go to Metaverse. Everyone seemed to want to take their brand into the Metaverse, and the hype truly got the better of most of these brands. To the extent that we read coming close to the end of the year, how, at a big-budget Metaverse event in Europe, they got all of SIX participants! Need to get a semblance of sanity around this idea!

 

 

Were you able to maintain your work-life balance this year? If yes, how? If not, how do you plan to correct it next year? 

 

2022 has been a decent year when it comes to work-life balance for myself. I think health has been a fair bit of a priority for the year. I took out some 10 days to go to a health and wellness resort and kind of got a detoxification done. Besides that, I have been looking for a lot of simple pleasures of life so I do these long Saturday morning walks exploring Mumbai city and those have been very rejuvenating and therapeutic. All in all, yes work-life balance has been a priority and I think I am on a good track, in fact, I am going on the Vipassana Program towards the end of this year. So, I hope to continue that going into 2023.