MAM
Sam Balsara warns marketers not to lose the plot in the age of digital frenzy
MUMBAI: When the world is scrolling, swiping, and snacking on content, Madison World chairman Sam Balsara reminded marketers at Ficci Frames 2025 that branding remains the heartbeat of advertising. Opening with his talk “A Marketer’s Losing Fame in Branding”, Balsara mixed wit with insight, calling out the obsession with short-term performance media and urging a return to storytelling that builds lasting emotional connections.
Reflecting on a career spanning 8 years in marketing, 8 years in advertising, and 37 years running his own agency, Balsara quipped that in India, “everybody thinks they are an advertising expert.” Yet despite decades of experience, he painted a sobering picture of the current marketing landscape: urban consumption in India has been declining for five consecutive quarters, pushing marketers to channel increasing shares of their budgets into performance media such as search, e-commerce, activation, and sampling. While these tactics are effective for immediate sales, Balsara cautioned that over-reliance is eroding the long-term ROI of advertising investments.
He reminded the audience that the global advertising industry, already worth 270 billion dollars in 1997, is projected to surpass 1 trillion dollars this year, with 70% of the spend now going digital. “Marketers are not wrong to follow consumers online, but we must understand the nature of digital consumption,” he noted. “Most online engagement is short, quick, and snackable. It’s easy to measure, but much harder to emotionally connect.”
Balsara then revisited the fundamentals: “What is branding? It’s more than a logo, a tagline, or a design. It’s about shaping perception, building trust, differentiating from competitors, and establishing a lasting emotional bond.” He emphasised that emotional appeal is twice as effective as rational messaging and that storytelling remains the most powerful tool for brand building. Over 50 years of experience had taught him that ads with strong narratives and emotional content consistently outperform transactional messages.
Supporting this, he cited multiple cross-media studies showing that TV ads excel at creating emotional connections. The rise of connected TV (CTV) in India with 60–65 million homes and counting offers advertisers the chance to combine digital agility with the immersive, story-driven impact traditionally associated with television. CTV delivers a “lean-back” viewing experience that enables 20–30 second emotional ads with a storyline, which are far more effective than brief digital clips for establishing memory and preference.
A US study conducted by Comcast and Media Science reinforced this point. The study compared ad recall and purchase intent across mobile digital platforms versus TV/CTV environments. The findings were striking: new brands saw 3.4x better recall on TV versus mobile digital, while established brands saw 4.3x improvement. Purchase intent was roughly 30 per cent higher when ads ran on TV first, and combining TV with subsequent digital exposure further amplified results. Balsara underscored that these insights are directly applicable in India: launching campaigns on TV or CTV before digital platforms maximises emotional impact and ROI.
He also offered practical guidance on budget allocation. Drawing on research by two contemporary scientists, Balsara advocated a 60-40 split, with 60 per cent of marketing budgets dedicated to branding to recruit new users and build markets, and 40 per cent for performance to drive conversions among consumers already in the market. He highlighted examples from IPL campaigns, where television exposure drives higher search volumes and e-commerce sales, often outperforming purely digital campaigns.
Balsara’s insights weren’t limited to statistics. He emphasised that creative messaging must align with human attention patterns: the large screen, immersive environment, and minimal distractions of TV/CTV are what allow brands to tell stories effectively. Digital publishers, he warned, must evolve to offer advertisers TV-like environments in digital contexts, replicating emotional storytelling and ensuring brand-building outcomes.
Performance media, he admitted, has its role especially for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in their early years but as brands scale, performance alone fails to sustain growth or build long-term equity. Branding, by contrast, delivers sustainable profit, loyalty, and market presence. “If you want a brand to last and scale,” he said, “you cannot ignore branding. The first exposure matters, the emotional appeal matters, and repetition matters.”
He concluded by reminding marketers that despite the digital frenzy, brand building is not optional, it’s essential. A carefully calibrated mix of branding and performance, emotionally engaging storytelling, and strategic sequencing across TV, CTV, and digital ensures that marketing budgets deliver both immediate results and enduring brand equity.
In a world dominated by clicks, short videos, and fleeting attention spans, Balsara’s message was clear: don’t lose the plot chasing short-term wins. Stay invested in stories, invest in emotion, and let branding drive both present performance and future growth. After all, in advertising as in life, the brands that tell stories that stick are the ones that endure.
Brands
Google nears Nvidia in race for world’s most valuable company
Market cap gap narrows as Google hits $4.65 trillion, Nvidia at $4.86 trillion.
MUMBAI: In the AI gold rush, even the giants are sprinting and Google is suddenly gaining ground. Google is rapidly closing in on Nvidia in the race to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, with the gap between the two narrowing sharply amid diverging stock momentum. The tech giant’s market capitalisation has surged to around $4.65 trillion, following a more than 140 per cent rise in its share price over the past year.
That rally has added over $2.6 trillion in value in just 12 months, including nearly $900 billion since January alone. Its stock recently hovered at $381.80, slipping marginally by 0.04 per cent, but still reflecting strong upward momentum.
Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot with a valuation of approximately $4.86 trillion. The chipmaker crossed the $5 trillion milestone in October last year and peaked at $5.27 trillion on 27 April. However, its shares have largely plateaued over the past six months, rising just 0.2 per cent recently to $199.99.
The contrast in trajectories is striking. While Nvidia has seen relatively flat movement, Google has gained over 36 per cent in the same six-month period. Barron’s estimates suggest that if current trends hold, the valuation gap could shrink to as little as $190 million by the time Nvidia reports its first-quarter earnings on 20 May.
Daily momentum paints a similar picture. Nvidia recorded average daily gains of about 0.66 per cent last month, compared to Google’s stronger 1.42 per cent, an edge that could prove decisive in the short term.
Driving Google’s resurgence is its aggressive push into artificial intelligence across its ecosystem, from search and YouTube to cloud computing. The company has already invested $144 billion in capital expenditure over the past two years and plans to deploy a further $490 billion over the next two.
Its cloud division is also gathering pace. Google Cloud reported an order backlog of nearly $220 billion in the latest quarter, with total backlog touching a record $462 billion, around half of which is expected to be realised within two years. The company’s entry into chip sales is also beginning to factor into its growth narrative.
The last time Google briefly topped the S&P 500 by market value was in February 2016, when it edged past Apple for just two days. This time, the stakes and the numbers are far higher.
At the heart of the contest lies a single force: artificial intelligence. As both companies pour billions into infrastructure, chips and platforms, the leaderboard is no longer just about size, it is about who can scale the future faster.
