Every scroll, every tap, every “Add to Cart” feels like a small win. We live in a world where marketing has become instantly measurable, where dashboards glow with numbers and success seems just a conversion rate away. But somewhere between chasing performance and building perception, brands have begun to drift. Because while clicks can be counted, connection cannot always be quantified. And yet, it is connection that lasts longer than any campaign.
In a landscape obsessed with immediacy, the real question isn’t how fast a brand can sell, but how deeply it can stay.
Raja Chakraborty, CMO, Continental Coffee, has spent years navigating this very intersection, between what delivers today and what endures tomorrow. And if there’s one idea he keeps returning to, it’s this: the industry may be chasing performance, but it is still built on belief.
“Brands need to be cautious not to mistake performance marketing with brand building,” Chakraborty said.
“Today, companies focus a lot more on performance marketing so that they can get a complete input-output ratio of marketing spends to revenues. But if genuine brand building is not happening parallelly, then those spends may not be sustainable.”
At a time when dashboards dictate decisions, he pointed to a deeper truth. “Consumers repeat the brand not just because of pricing or promotion, but because of the functional benefit and whether the brand’s ethos, purpose, and emotion connect with them.”
And then came the line that quietly reframes the entire debate: “In my view, brand building itself is performance marketing.” Because the absence of it, he warned, can do more harm than good. “If you’re only focusing on bottom-of-the-funnel communication, eventually it may hurt rather than help the brand,” he added.
He acknowledged that the confusion isn’t accidental. “Organizations want measurable results for every penny being spent. Therefore, they start confusing performance marketing with brand building, and that is not the right way to treat brands.”
The North–South Reality Check: Growth Is Not Uniform
For Chakraborty, marketing strategy begins with accepting that India behaves like multiple markets, not one. “Currently, maybe 70% of my spends are in the South and 30% are in the non-South,” he said. “But if I have to grow, my percentage increase will always be more skewed towards non-South.”
That shift is rooted in category behaviour. “For North India, coffee is a comparatively luxury category. Penetration is very low,” he said. “You don’t need mass media because you are talking to a much smaller audience.”
Which fundamentally reshapes the media mix: “Your media mix is far more skewed towards digital and connected TV rather than mass media.”
The ambition, however, is aggressive and clear: “In the next three years, it should become a 50-50 mix.”
But growth here isn’t just about budgets, it’s about relevance. “For a North Indian consumer, I position it as ‘filter coffee ka swaad of instant’ or ‘give your day a strong start,’” he said. “But in the South, I talk more about ‘chicory,’ taste, and richness.”
Execution, therefore, becomes a testing ground. “I am creating 5 different creatives for the same product and testing what works,” he said. “Sometimes even a pack shot versus a consumption shot can make a difference.”
Digital Is Driving Growth But Platforms Are Rewriting Behaviour
The shift to digital is no longer emerging, it is defining growth. “70% of our e-commerce business comes from quick commerce and 30% from marketplaces,” Chakraborty said.
But what looks like a channel shift is actually a behavioural shift. “Quick commerce is not just impulse. It is fundamentally changing shopping behavior.”
And crucially, convenience isn’t diluting loyalty. “My organic to paid sales ratio is similar across Amazon and quick commerce,” he said. “A lot of consumers who are trying quick commerce are also buying again and again.”
Which signals a deeper transformation-habit formation, not just impulse buying. And as marketing itself begins to evolve at this pace, technology is accelerating the shift just as rapidly
As AI begins to reshape marketing workflows, Chakraborty sees both power and peril. “AI is an enabler in better decision-making. It helps fast-track work and improves conversations,” he said. But the caution came just as quickly, “If you start believing everything that AI is telling is true and stop applying your own mind, that is the biggest risk.”
He illustrated this with product development. “Earlier, you would spend months doing research. Now you can get a better starting point in weeks. AI can expand your thinking and give ideas.”
Yet, reality doesn’t always agree with algorithms. “Some of the concepts we tested with consumers completely failed.”
Why? “AI is still artificial. It generates hypotheses based on data, but human behavior is not driven only by data. It is driven by functional and emotional needs.”
Even as AI reduces dependency on agencies and speeds up content creation, he maintained that human judgment remains non-negotiable: “Everything AI cannot do. Human mind intervention is very important.”
The Great Agency Shift: From Big Ideas to Continuous Iteration
The traditional agency model, according to Chakraborty, is already evolving, and fast.
“The thin line between media and creative is merging,” he said. “There is no one creative today. There is one messaging, but it can be delivered in multiple formats.” Instead of a single big campaign, brands are now in a constant loop of iteration: “You can continuously create newer formats and figure out which is most effective. That’s creative optimization.”
This shift is also redefining cost structures: “If creative development costs are coming down, the agency business model has to evolve.”
He pointed to a broader transformation: “You may not need very highly paid creative directors in the same way. A content creator who understands reels may be better equipped than someone who has only worked on television films.”
But despite the disruption, he didn’t foresee extinction. “Brands will still need agencies because agencies bring width of knowledge, while brands have depth. When both come together, good work happens.”
The Fine Line Between Influence and Identity
As brands increasingly rely on micro-influencers, Chakraborty flagged a growing risk. “Brand can’t be made disposable,” he said. “You lose the essence of the brand if it becomes too flexible.”
At the same time, he acknowledged the reality of content-first platforms: “When content creators weave the brand into their content, storytelling becomes more important. The brand takes a backseat and content takes the front seat.”
But that balance must be managed carefully: “There has to be a narrative. It has to feel organic, but there has to be a lens.” Because in a world of infinite creators, consistency becomes the real differentiator: “You cannot let every influencer represent the brand in completely different ways.”
Experience Still Matters, But Not Always at Scale
Even as digital dominates, Chakraborty sees experiential marketing holding its ground, ‘selectively.’ “If a brand has a certain ethos, experience can help build that identity,” he said.
He pointed to cultural activations: “You are not selling the product, you are propagating what the brand stands for.” For premium categories, the role becomes sharper: “Experiential marketing generates word of mouth, but the experience has to be memorable.”
But he remained pragmatic about its limitations, “If you expect experiential marketing to create a mass brand, that may not be possible because the cost is very high.”
Its real power lies in amplification: “The lifetime value of that event is high because it also becomes content for digital.”
Across every theme (performance, AI, agencies, influencers, and teams) one idea threads through Chakraborty’s perspective: marketing is expanding, not replacing. It is becoming faster, but also more complex. More measurable, but also more human. Because even in a world driven by data, the brands that endure will still be the ones that feel.
