No matter how good you are, you can be replaced: HRX’s Ajay Singh on the fight for consumer attention

MUMBAI: In a marketing environment where brands are increasingly competing for the same consumers across an expanding number of platforms, being visible is no longer enough. The bigger challenge, according to HRX Business Head Ajay Singh, is remaining relevant and staying top of mind.

Singh, who has been associated with HRX since 2016 and has moved through marketing, operations and alliances roles before taking on his current leadership position in 2023, believes marketers today have to be far more deliberate about where and how they spend their marketing dollars.

That also extends to the increasingly popular world of reality entertainment.

Reality shows have returned strongly to the cultural conversation, with formats such as Lock Upp and The Traitors generating significant audience and social media attention. For advertisers, such shows offer scale, visibility and awareness. But Singh believes brands should not automatically follow the crowd.

“For us, we have sort of stayed away from this,” Singh says, while acknowledging that he sees the value reality shows can offer. The decision, he explains, is less about questioning the medium and more about whether it fits HRX’s objectives as a fitness brand.

According to Singh, reality entertainment can expose brands to audiences beyond their immediate target group. He points to his own experience of seeing clips from shows he does not actively watch appearing repeatedly on Instagram as evidence of how powerful the ecosystem can be.

“It’s definitely a big platform from a visibility point of view, from an awareness point of view, from a scale point of view,” he says.

But visibility alone, he argues, should not be enough to trigger a marketing investment.

Singh believes marketers can often fall into the trap of FOMO — the fear that a brand will miss out if it does not participate in a platform or trend that competitors are embracing.

“As a brand marketer, I would say that I am very conscious with these feelings,” he says, adding that sometimes it is perfectly acceptable for a brand to not be present where it does not see sufficient value.

For HRX, that means choosing platforms and opportunities that are closely aligned with what the fitness brand wants to achieve rather than simply chasing reach.

From aspiration to participation

The shift in fitness itself is another change Singh has witnessed during his decade with HRX.

While fitness marketing has often relied on aspiration, he believes community has always been at the heart of the category. From people walking together to organised group workouts, the underlying idea has remained the same: people are more likely to engage with fitness when there is a sense of collective participation.

Singh points to his early days at HRX, when one of the initiatives he launched was a community of runners in the city.

“I personally, because I’ve been into fitness almost all my adult life, felt the importance,” he says.

He also points to the growth of formats such as HYROX, marathons and group-based workouts as evidence that fitness is becoming increasingly community-driven.

HRX was also among the brands that partnered with Cult when the fitness platform launched its group-workout concept.

For Singh, this is not necessarily a new phenomenon. He recalls how even in his father’s generation, people would gather to walk together and socialise around the activity.

What has changed, he argues, is that community-led fitness has become more organised, visible and accessible.

“Fitness has always been driven by community,” he says. “It is just becoming more and more defined.”

AI is making marketers faster, but is it making them better?

Artificial intelligence has become another major talking point in marketing, but Singh takes a measured view of its impact.

For him, AI’s immediate advantage is not necessarily that it creates something entirely new. Instead, it allows marketers to process information, analyse data and execute tasks much faster.

“Does it bring something new? I don’t know,” he says.

AI, he argues, is largely working with information that already exists, but its ability to find information quickly, bring it together and generate detailed analysis can significantly reduce the time required for tasks that previously demanded substantial manual effort.

Used correctly, he believes AI can provide marketers with valuable insights that can influence brand and marketing strategy.

The technology can also provide another layer of validation for ideas, he says, giving marketers an additional tool to evaluate and shape their thinking.

The opportunity, therefore, lies less in treating AI as a replacement for marketing expertise and more in using it to accelerate the marketing process.

Performance still rules, but brand-building is coming back

When it comes to marketing investments in 2026, Singh sees two broad buckets: performance-led activity directly connected to ROI and longer-term brand awareness and brand-building.

Performance marketing continues to win the allocation battle, particularly in categories where multiple brands are competing for the same consumers.

“We are in the era where there are so many brands competing for the same category, same products, same consumers,” he says.

Social media, accordingly, remains critical.

Singh describes performance and social media marketing as the “bread and butter” of marketing, arguing that their importance has been established over the past 15 years and is likely to continue for at least the next decade.

At the same time, however, brands are increasingly recognising that performance cannot operate in isolation.

For HRX, the growing popularity of community-driven fitness events provides an opportunity to build brand awareness beyond conventional digital advertising.

Singh points to HYROX and the increasing number of marathon events across India as examples of where brands are putting money behind community-led experiences.

The broader approach, therefore, is becoming a balance between immediate performance and sustained brand salience.

Fitness is no longer just about the gym

Singh believes the growth of the fitness market is ultimately being driven by a fundamental change in consumer behaviour: more people are taking fitness seriously.

Fitness, he argues, has moved well beyond the traditional gym.

It can begin with waking up on time, sleeping better, making a healthier dietary choice or simply reducing certain habits.

“The growing number of options that people have now to start their fitness journey is what is driving fitness,” he says.

He points to the willingness of consumers to spend on activities such as HYROX and marathons, as well as the increased awareness around protein consumption, as indicators of the category’s expansion.

The important shift, according to Singh, is that fitness is becoming more adaptable.

For his generation of millennials, fitness was largely synonymous with going to the gym. Younger consumers, however, have a much broader understanding of what fitness can involve.

Gen Z, in particular, has helped accelerate that change, while millennials themselves have evolved alongside the category.

HRX, having entered the market early, is now operating in a much larger and more diverse fitness ecosystem.

The biggest marketing challenge? Staying top of mind

For Singh, however, the expansion of the market also creates its biggest challenge.

It is no longer simply about having competitors. There are now “so many good players” in almost every category.

That makes top-of-mind recall exceptionally difficult.

The pressure consequently moves beyond communication and media to the product itself.

Brands have to deliver on what they offer, get the pricing right and continuously find ways to reconnect with consumers.

The challenge becomes even greater because consumers have an increasingly large number of alternatives between purchases.

And increasingly, the decision is not always driven by need.

Convenience can be just as powerful.

Singh gives the example of a consumer choosing a product that can be delivered within 10 minutes over one that takes two days.

In such an environment, brands that fail to keep pace with consumer expectations can quickly be replaced, regardless of how strong their product may have been historically.

“If you are not there up with the trend, if you are not there up with the demands, then no matter how good you are you can be replaced,” he says.

Gen Z doesn’t just listen to brands — it checks them

This challenge becomes particularly pronounced when marketing to Gen Z.

Singh does not believe brands necessarily need completely different strategies for Gen Z and millennials. Instead, the way brands communicate and prove their proposition has to evolve.

Gen Z consumers are more opinionated and have significantly more options to explore.

“They are going to explore more,” Singh says.

That means a brand cannot simply tell consumers once that it is the best and expect that claim to carry indefinitely.

The brand has to make the claim, prove it and then continue proving itself.

For Singh, this is not a criticism of Gen Z. Rather, it reflects a consumer generation that expects value for its investment.

Millennials, by comparison, grew up with fewer choices. While they too are now exposed to the same brands and options, Singh believes they can be somewhat more relaxed about brands they already know and trust.

If a millennial has established comfort with a particular brand, there is a greater likelihood of continuing with that choice.

Gen Z, on the other hand, is more spontaneous and willing to explore alternatives.

For marketers, that means catering to this energy rather than resisting it.

Relevance over FOMO

Ultimately, Singh’s perspective across these different aspects of marketing comes back to a single principle: brands cannot afford to confuse visibility with value.

Reality shows can deliver scale. Performance marketing can deliver measurable ROI. Social media can keep brands in the conversation. AI can make marketing faster. Community can deepen engagement.

But none of these automatically guarantees relevance.

For HRX, the approach is to choose platforms and marketing opportunities based on what the brand wants to achieve rather than participate simply because everyone else is doing it.

The same principle applies to the wider marketing landscape.

In a market where consumers have more choices, more information and less patience, the brands that survive may not necessarily be those that are everywhere.

They may be the ones that give consumers a reason to remember them.