Front runners of the South India advertising industry discussed how the industry down there is different from any other region and further talked about the digital era and client-agency relationship, at the e4m Pride of India Chennai Summit held on January 24.

Pavithra Charan, Managing Partner, Inception Business Service started the conversation by sharing that the industry is different in several aspects, and adding #Thalaiva to the campaign does not make it go viral here, nor does spelling Diwali as Deepavali.

Mohit Jain, CEO & Founder, MJ Solutions, noted that it starts with the difference in the consumers and the texture of the target audience.

Rithesh R, Co-founder & Head of Digital, Deepsense Digital further talks about the different languages and nuances, how brands need to be open to accepting different dialects, and how Digital is the one place where they can tailor the ads.

Chiraag Kinger, Co-founder, Hashtag Inc. reckoned that the scale of media spends is different from what's happening up North. It has four languages in five states, and since the numbers are smaller several opportunities are also missed out on, and the openness to try new things is less, and needs to happen more. "There are so many brands that say this is nice can you do something similar... and don't try something new which has not been done in South India before", he adds.

Shrikrishna Tangatur, Founder, Open Designs, stated that South India is more festival-driven, and "South Indians prefer South Indian brands", and also mentions that a brand should not offend the audience here.

Karan Daswani, Founder, of Fingerprints Creative, said that the content that they consume is different, but brands should keep them from coming down and reducing them to dosa, idli or thalaiva. "We have several cultural nuances, that brands can cater and build affinity towards itself. The brands come in with the brand value and characteristics, that can be spiced up to cater to the audience. The messaging does not change, but how we deliver it changes".

Samuel Mathew, Chief Executive Officer, 7 Miles Per Second pointed out one stark difference between North India and South India: "Pushing the product happens in the North; in South, it would be subtle".

Charan then directed the conversation to Digital & the AI, AR, and VR takeover of the A&M industry. She stated that we're all worried about AI taking away our jobs, but using AI effectively also requires skill.

Rithesh R stated that AI has solved a practical problem, as it's always difficult to source visuals, and most of the ones available have North Indian models that do connect with the people, he also shared that slicing and dicing the data is another use case example.

Kinger reckoned there was always a concern where the client says "I'm not able to visualize the idea", which has been solved and AI also helps in storyboarding for films. "If you put a thought out there it gives you a mind map", he says.

Tangatur shared that chatbots are helping the banking and finance industry, and the technology would also support voice search as consumers are getting more into wearables now.

Daswani said that the technology is also helping in terms of execution and implementation and not just generation. He cited the example of Airtel's personalized data plans using the tech, which saw positive results.

Mathew pointed out that it has also drastically reduced the turnaround time. He said, "Earlier it used to take 5-10 days to write a script, and 5 more days for storyboarding, and the client gives us only one day... So the time has shrunk a lot".