What we have learned, written down.

Notes on running events, activations and campaigns in India — costs, timelines, what goes wrong, and what we would do differently. Written because clients keep asking the same questions, and the answers deserve better than a sales call.

• Meta Ads

  Meta quietly changed what a "click" means

  Several of this year's Meta changes did not touch your campaigns. They touched the definitions underneath the report — which is why results moved while nothing you did had changed.

  7 min read

• Experiential Marketing

  The QR code is not the strategy

  An activation with a QR code on the backdrop is not phygital. It is an activation with a QR code on the backdrop. The join has to be designed, or there is no join.

  7 min read

• Performance Marketing

  The shelf moved into the app

  For decades the most valuable advertising space in retail was eye level on the shelf. That shelf is now a search result inside a delivery app, and it is sold by the click.

  6 min read

• Reach & Distribution

  Rural is carrying the growth. The kirana is carrying rural.

  Brands planning around quick commerce and metro modern trade are planning around the part of the market that is growing slowest. The growth is in a district town, on a shelf behind a counter.

  6 min read

• Automation

  WhatsApp will now answer your customers for free. Decide what it is allowed to say.

  The tool most small businesses paid a vendor for last year is now built into the WhatsApp Business app at no cost. The question has moved from whether to automate replies to which replies.

  7 min read

• Audience Building

  Every audience you use is rented, except two

  You do not own your followers. You do not own the people your ads reach. Change one algorithm, one policy, one price, and the audience you spent years assembling is behind a paywall.

  6 min read