In today’s marketing landscape, digital is no longer just one channel, it is the ecosystem itself. Consumers live across platforms, shift seamlessly between devices, and engage with content in ways that change rapidly. For brands, this presents an exciting but complicated challenge: how to plan effectively, minimize spillage, and maximize engagement.
Recognising this challenge, DS Group, a multi-business conglomerate with a legacy of over nine decades, known for iconic brands across F&B, hospitality, luxury retail, and more has joined forces with WPP Media, one of the world’s leading communications and media investment companies, to create a pioneering solution. Together, they have unveiled DCODE, a first-of-its-kind digital marketing playbook designed to serve as a compass for professionals navigating India’s ever-changing digital landscape.
While DS Group has always been at the forefront of innovation and consumer-centric strategies, WPP Media brings unmatched expertise in data, insights, and cutting-edge media practices. DCODE is the outcome of this collaboration, a framework that not only guides effective media planning but also sets out best practices for an entire industry that is hungry for structure and clarity in a rapidly evolving environment.
“India's media and advertising landscape is experiencing rapid growth, poised to expand by 7% in 2025 to reach ?1,64,137 crore, adding an incremental ?10,730 crore. Within this, digital is expected to grow at 11.5%, capturing 60% of the market share and accounting for ?10,225 crore of the incremental advertising spend. While the ecosystem is being reshaped by digital dominance and shifting consumer behaviours, the digital landscape continues to face challenges such as fragmentation, inconsistent methodologies, inefficiencies, and untapped opportunities. To bridge this gap, DS Group and WPP Media have come together to develop an evolving playbook that will be regularly updated with the latest best practices, ensuring it remains relevant, actionable, and impactful in navigating India’s ever-changing digital landscape” said the press release
“In today's rapidly evolving media landscape, digital isn't merely an option; it's a strategic imperative for connecting with consumers and an increasingly important pillar of our outreach. Understanding the immense power and complexity of this ecosystem, it was clear we needed a comprehensive resource to navigate it effectively,” said Mr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, DS Group. “We're thrilled to introduce DCODE, a groundbreaking playbook that captures the best practices to remain relevant and efficient, guiding everyone from marketers to digital enthusiasts. It represents a significant contribution to the industry, designed to empower professionals and agencies to optimize their digital strategies, drive efficiency, and achieve unparalleled marketing excellence. We believe this will truly be a legacy resource for the Indian marketing and media industry,” he added.
To understand the vision behind DCODE and the role it hopes to play in shaping digital marketing in India, we spoke with Rajeev Jain, Sr VP, Corporate Marketing, DS Group; and Amin Lakhani, President Client Solutions, WPP Media, who shared valuable insights on why this initiative matters, the trends it uncovers, and how it will empower the next generation of marketers.
The excerpt from the conversation
What role do you see the Playbook playing in helping brands navigate the evolving digital ecosystem and build more impactful marketing strategies?
Rajeev Jain: The digital ecosystem is fragmented, marked by inconsistent methodologies and inefficiencies. DCODE addresses this by simplifying complexity into actionable steps—giving marketers practical tools and knowledge to craft strategies. It empowers teams to embed efficiency, improve execution, and adapt to new consumer behaviors at scale.
Why did DS Group and WPP Media feel the need to come together for DCODE?
Amin Lakhani:Today, we live in a multi-platform world and consumers are spending an incredible amount of time on digital platforms whether it is to buy groceries, entertain themselves or using messaging apps, or learning, or at work, and they straddle this around from multiple devices - whether it's their mobile phone, or computer screens, television sets -which are all connected today, and therefore, digital media world has become extremely complicated.
In this scenario, how do we enable a media planner to really ensure that he is asking the right questions, bringing the right data, making the right analysis to really make a well-thought-through media plan. Therefore, this is the media planning playbook that we have created for the industry at large. Of course, the entire idea started with DS Group, which is our client, and WPP Media working together to create a playbook for DS Group but when it started shaping up, the client had a wonderful idea to say that it is coming out well, and there's a huge gap on such information and such literature should be available in the industry at large. The thought was how we could dial this up, and take this to the industry. We loved the idea, and proposed to work together and launch it. Today, through this initiative called DCODE, we launched our first digital marketing playbook for the industry.
How does DCODE decode the behaviour and engagement patterns of Gen Z and millennials, two of the most digitally active cohorts in India?
Amin Lakhani: It starts with the client's brief as to what the client wants to achieve out of a digital media campaign. The brief is the moment of truth for the client to ensure that the media planner can generate the right plan that can achieve its objectives and therefore have a successful campaign. Therefore, what is expected out of a brief, the media playbook actually tells you that.
What data sources should you see before you start making a display campaign, an email marketing campaign. For example, how do you do SEO and make sure and clarify the fundamental building blocks of digital media planning. This is the attempt where we have covered all the literature that we could through experts in our teams. There are usable formats and templates that people can download and start using. There are reports and you can do a pre and a post plan analysis. There are many things added in this playbook, which I'm sure upcoming media planners, new media planners, college students, professionals and startup companies will be happy to use to ensure that their media plans are sharp and effective.
How do you see advertisement spends being allocated within the digital ecosystem in the coming years?
Amin Lakhani: The playbook is trying to answer exactly this; who are the audiences, how do you talk and engage them on the platform. For example, an individual on Snap behaves very differently on Instagram, or YouTube. We've spoken about Gen Z and now increasingly we have started talking about Gen Alpha. So, how are these digital natives behaving versus how their parents or grandparents would behave on a digital media platform or in media in general.
How do we drive incrementality to reach our audience and ensure our communication reaches as many people as it is possible? Those are the questions that we are trying to answer through this playbook. It is also an attempt to answer what are the right types of matrices that we should be looking at?
From here on, I'm sure that the industry will use and give us feedback on this playbook and we're happy to build it in as we go along.
There are a lot of free and paid resources to learn digital marketing. What makes DCODE stand out?
Amin Lakhani: This is extremely platform neutral. This is looking at data sources from a complete neutrality perspective. What we're trying to do is to do the right thing for the client's brief. It will follow net neutrality. It will follow a neutral or a media agnostic or a platform agnostic approach to media planning and doesn't depend on a single source. It recommends you to use the best available source for that particular task and helps you ensure that your basics and fundamentals are in place when you are planning on that particular platform or for that particular objective.
Do you anticipate a larger share moving towards influencer marketing, CTV and retail media?
Amin Lakhani: Yes, with the increasing amount of CTV penetration, we are seeing money moving towards CTV and no marks for guessing that because the more a platform or a medium attracts audiences, the more money it attracts. Likewise, we're seeing unprecedented growth in the way people are consuming influencer marketing content. They've already started monetising it and clients have started spending money and leveraging that area of opportunity very well. And these are still early days and there's a lot to be done. In this book, we've tried to attempt to take the initial few right steps in the world of influencer marketing.
In this AI-driven era, how do you see DCODE adding value and relevance?
Amin Lakhani: The fundamentals of media planning don't change. We've seen over the last couple of decades that the principles of media planning remain what they are.
Therefore, ours is an audience-first and platform-agnostic approach. It is committed to delivering the outcome or objective that the client is setting through the brief and what's the best way to achieve that. We will have to train the AI in running the processes that have been outlined in the media planning playbook. AI will have to be trained in the right direction, such that it gives you the right outcomes.
Is there an opportunity in leveraging AI in making sure that your media plans are highly rigorous and data-driven. The answer is a simple yes.
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