All through December 2024, Manifest is running its year-ender series in which advertising, marketing and media leaders will be sharing their thoughts on the biggest development of the year along with a manifestation for 2025.

We continue our series with Mithila Saraf, CEO, Famous Innovations. 

The biggest development in the advertising, media and marketing space according to you in 2024 was...

There were two big developments that happened this year, out of which one I see as a negative. 

We are witnessing a trend plaguing us this year of the manufactured LinkedIn virality that marketers and agencies seem to be going after. I am seeing a lot of very average work being celebrated on LinkedIn and now more and more marketers wanting that kind of work. I don't know if it is paid influencers that are making it viral or other tactics. The benchmark of work on LinkedIn has gone down significantly to the point where I am finding it to be now kind of like how Facebook or Orkut had become back in the day which was just full of visual pollution and low quality content. I am afraid that our industry will suffer from this plague if we don’t do something about it quickly. 

One good trend or development that I can talk about is AI. As an industry or at Famous Innovations as an agency, the way we adopted AI and naturally integrated it into our creative process is something that really excites me. I see all of our talent working with AI as if it’s second skin. The efficiency, the creative power as well as the potential that we are discovering with AI is very very exciting. 

What is one thing you're manifesting for yourself and the industry in 2025?

Better work, better work and better work. 

I do feel that in the last few years maybe because of the instant virality trend of social media, we are not seeing deep quality well-crafted work with meaningful insights and meaningful marketing solutions. We are just seeing kind of instant hits that come in for a day or two and vanish. I really hope that all of us can commit to doing better work that builds brands that excites consumers and creates an impact in 2025.