Juan Isaza de DDB Latina
Juan Isaza, VP of Strategy and Innovation at DDB Latina, said that a need exists to build brands based on consumers with the most awareness in three areas – themselves and their health, society and how brands help solve problems of the community, and the environment. “I believe that those consumers will be with us for many years and that brands must realize that this is not just a matter of the moment,” he told PRODU. Isaza has two key words for 2022: uncertainty and anxiety about the future. “Whether it’s because of the latest virus variant, the scarcity of raw materials or wondering when life will ever get back to normal, we can’t get rid of the feeling that nothing is under our control,” he said, and cited a recent Ipsos study in the U.S. in which more than half the people interviewed consider that life will not get back to normal for at least another year. He noted that despite everything, the ad industry took a number of steps forward last year, resuming many of its events, while many clients that had cut back their promotional activities in 2020 began investing in marketing and brand building once more. “Many revived their product launches and other projects they had shunted aside.” But he added that perhaps the most negative element in 2021 “was that we saw the start of an economic pandemic – which is to say a blow to people’s pocketbooks by the high levels of inflation, the scarcity of products and the loss of jobs from which many countries have still not recovered.” As for the non-fungible tokens (NFT), he believes they will surely have many implications for investment in such areas as art and design, as well as in the development of new ideas in the world of videogames and entertainment, “so that marketing, due to the high rise in content, could well take advantage of the NFT as a means of connecting brands with consumers,” Isaza said. During these times he recommended reading the book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, “because there you will find a theoretical framework of the future. It’s a really good way tp understand what’s coming with all the technological, geopolitical and social transformations involved.”
