By Sumit Roy

As I sit here and look at my white, luminous screen, at the beginning of this millennium, I see a century that is far more exciting than the adrenaline-pumping present. It's a pity I can't see the whole of the 21st Century. The images blur beyond 2005 A.D.. But the view, 5 years ahead, is clear. It doesn't even require a magnified image.

It's less than 5 years ago that cellular-phones started. Now, they are ubiquitous. So, it's fairly safe to predict that what is cutting-edge today will be the norm tomorrow. Here's what I see: Net-access through mobile phones and hand-held devices. Voice-activated computers. Refrigerators hooked to a shopping dot.com. The Indian Languages Net. Housewives realising that they can run two careers from home: a home-maker and a Netprenuer. House-husbands realising that they can do the same. Education is finding the Net to be a great distribution vehicle. Long-distance calls becoming as free as Hotmail.

The convergence of media. Business becoming even more consumer-centric. Prices dropping as it becomes easier to compare offerings. Genuine value-added services increasing as major players keep using more of their brain power to survive in an even more competitive world. Consume to consumer marketing becoming the largest channel for growing a loyal customer base. The consumer's whim will become everyone's fancy.

And just as TV never killed Press or Radio, even when the Net becomes as mainstream in India as it is in, say the us, all existing media will grow. And converge. The infotech- and Net-revolution does not herald the death of one media and the total supremacy of another. Already, you see dot.com companies using off-line media to promote on-line products and services. Sure, the share of the pie will change. But, individually, all these media are in for a boom time, thanks to the economic power of the Net. If media companies have been intelligent enough to create a brand, that brand will rule over converging media.

Apples may become more popular than oranges. But the overall consumption of fruit will grow as it becomes less expensive and, paradoxically, more profitable. People will find greater satisfaction out of delicious and imaginative renderings of fruit punches that pack quite an income-inspiring wallop.

A few dinosaurs, however will become extinct. The 15 per cent commission that has been a pegasaurus hanging round the Indian advertising industry's neck will whither away, giving birth to a whole breed of professionals who are multimedia savvy. They will earn far more than their 20th Century counterparts since they get not only a comfortable retainer, but a very handsome success-fee. The fat will fall away as the race quickens its pace.

Only those who have consciously trained for it will survive. In any case, they will be earning in dollars as the world's marketers make a beeline for them as they realise India's proficiency with ideas and English-the world's language of commerce.

Alyque Padamsee is quite a visionary. He invented a term-Circa 1996-that's going to be the way communication will be practised in 2005 AD around the world: Brandvertising. This is the discipline of integrating a multitude of communication options, beyond advertising, to grow brands with more economic leverage than ever before. Branding ideas will run through communication vehicles as diverse as interactive outdoor signs, consumer communities on the Net, and shopping mall experiences.

Today's savvy advertising agencies in India do not chase the 15 per cent rainbow anymore. They concentrate on growing brands, not on how to engineer releases in mass and conventional media. As the brands they handle grow, their fortunes grow. By 2005, this will be what the late adopters amongst today's advertising agencies will also be practising. The other option is to shut shop. By 2005, we'll see an increasing polarisation in the kind of communication consultancies available. At one end will be the large, full service, integrated brand communication consultants who offer communication services through a plethora of specialist divisions and subsidiaries. Their challenge will be to learn how to move fast enough for clients who are increasingly more well-connected with their customers.

At the other will be small, flexible, independent, and specialist boutiques. Often, there will be SOHO operations. Their challenge will be how well they network to get economies of scale, yet maintain their creative independence and focus on the client's customer. From brick-and-mortar consultancies, we'll move to virtual organisations. Today it is so easy to create a virtual organisation. We thought up LocoNotion Idea Studios in early 1999. It got incorporated in Washington in August, 1999. Diane Garrod, the CEO, lives on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. Nanette Kelley, the Creative Director and coo, lives in Fresno, California. I live and work from Mumbai. We have never met face to face. We have over 60 writers, Web-masters, idea architects, graphic artists, photographers, e-pr specialists, translators and Net-based marketing specialists networked over 5 continents. Our clients range from established transnationals to garage start-ups happy to pay us handsomely for creating and implementing ideas that help them magnetically attract consumers and keep them loyal.

Not a single dollar is invested in real estate. Yes, it is invested in servers and communication tools. We all operate from our homes and are happier for that. Most of us have never met physically. But every month we celebrate as revenues keep leap frogging. There seems to be a shortage of ideas and idea implementation skills. Demand seems to be outstripping supply. That's what the next century is going to be about. Ideas. Ideas as big as the pyramids. As magnetic as the Statue of Liberty. As ubiquitous as the telephone. As stirring as Mother Teresa. Just that the ideas that will happen in the next century will make more of an impact on our lives than all the ideas that have echoed across humanity since a biped mammal decided to invent speech.

Issac Asimov wrote an article once commenting on how his father got to see the Wright brothers take off in flight and man land on the moon. All in one lifetime. I'm glad that my daughter and my son, and indeed all of us, will see more changes happening in the next 10 years than has happened in the last 100 years of our lives.

Sumit Roy is the brand identity 
Director of loconotion studios

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