When discovery, desire and decision collapse into a single scroll

New Delhi: Once upon a time, consumer journeys followed a clean path. A jingle on television created awareness, a visit to the store fuelled consideration, and a final nudge sealed the purchase. That tidy funnel is now history. Today, journeys look more like tangled webs, where discovery, desire and decision collapse into one restless scroll on a phone screen.

Marketers call this the “messy middle”, a place where old rules of loyalty crumble and new behaviours emerge at breakneck speed. It is here that brands are learning to rethink how they stay visible, relevant and trusted.

This shifting landscape formed the heart of a recent panel discussion at the launch event of DCODE, a digital marketing playbook constructed by a collaboration of WPP Media and DS Group. Leaders from quick service restaurants, FMCG, automotive, spices, publishing, and agencies came together to decode how the three Ds, discoverability, desire and decision, are being rewritten.

The art of being discovered

Parthasarathy Mandayam, Chief Strategy Officer, WPP Media, set the stage by pointing out that entire journeys are now compressed into single mobile sessions. “In one sitting, people move from brand discovery all the way to buying and perhaps even giving feedback,” he said.

For Haleon, where the portfolio includes household names such as Sensodyne, Crocin, ENO, Otrivin and Centrum, discovery has become an exercise in relentless relevance. 

“As far as discoverability is concerned, be it e-commerce, quick commerce, or interactive channels like Instagram, the rest of Meta, or YouTube, my ability to engage with cohorts is much higher. 

I personalise the content, I am present where they are, and more importantly, I sharpen the proposition across the funnel. That means I am driving awareness, but I am also driving consideration and engagement,” said Anurita Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer, Haleon India Subcontinent. 

Discovery takes a different shape in electric mobility. “The first choice a consumer makes is whether to buy a fossil fuel vehicle or an electric one,” explained Manav Sethi, Head of Media, Martech and Growth, VIDA. 

From there, he said, it is rarely sustainability that drives purchase. “People don’t buy EVs for sustainability. They buy them for cost per kilometre.”

Sethi added that even the assumption that dealerships are the default entry point has shifted. “We were the first auto brand on e-commerce. Today, people book test rides or even buy online without walking into dealerships,” he said. With EVs, he noted, consumers spend far more time researching before making a decision compared to traditional two-wheelers.

For Arnab Ghatak Choudhary, General Manager (Marketing) at DS Group, looking at Catch, discovery depends entirely on the category. For core spices, mass media still dominates, but for newer segments such as ready-to-cook gravies or premium salts, digital targeting creates precision.

Choudhary added, “Sometimes, discovery also reveals surprising demand patterns. “ When we launched pink rock salt, we thought it would be a metro phenomenon. But the demand we saw

From the publishing perspective, Jagran Prakashan’s Senior Vice President for Strategy, Brand and Business Development, Basant Rathore, highlighted how content discovery has been turned upside down by the democratisation of creation. 

“Earlier, an editor’s job ended when a piece was written. Now, their job begins after writing, because they must put the story out on multiple platforms to be discovered,” he said.

Desire is no longer linear.

If discovery has fragmented, desire has multiplied. The panellists agreed that the idea of a single consumer path no longer holds true. 

Sethi described India as a nation of micro-cohorts. “There is no linear path. India is not a monolithic cohort of one billion people. We are like half a million cohorts each, and if you have the right offering, you can create a P&L on that,” he explained. 

Adding to this, Rathore pointed out that consumers are no longer travelling through the funnel alone. “There are influencers, critics, reviewers and unboxers. Consumers move two steps forward and one step back. The journey has become messy, so it is important to engage not just with the consumer but with the entire community around them,” he said. 

Choudhary agreed that digital platforms now allow brands to run multiple narratives simultaneously. Unlike traditional campaigns, which had to land one uniform story, marketers today can serve tailored content to different groups at the same time, each with relevance to their context and culture.

Decisions happen in moments, not stages.

Few categories demonstrate the compression of journeys better than food (Quick Service Restaurants). Aparna Bhawal, Chief Marketing Officer, KFC India, described how discovery, desire and decision often collapse into a single impulse. “It is a split decision. Snacking has become a big occasion. Where do you feature on that occasion?” she asked.

For KFC, this means using data to anticipate intent, understanding where the consumer is, why they are hungry, and at what point in time they might choose fried chicken. Value, she added, shifts with wallet size. 

She explained how value plays out differently across consumer groups. She stated, “From someone spending 100 rupees to someone spending 300 and above, value has its own journey of discoverability and decision-making.”

Yet decisions do not guarantee loyalty. Bhawal added, “Brand loyalty is at its lowest ever. You cannot take loyalty for granted. You have to stay relevant every day.”

Her experience in smaller towns underlined the point. “When you open a KFC in a tier three town, it means the town has arrived. But when consumers walk in, the menu can be overwhelming. We found many people never came back to the store but started ordering online. That is when experience at the restaurant became critical,” Bhawal explained.

For Chopra, decisions are only as strong as the consistency of the brand behind them. “You cannot be a schizophrenic brand. You have to mean the same thing to everyone, though the version may differ,” she said. 

That philosophy guided Sensodyne to stay rooted in tooth sensitivity rather than expanding into adjacent categories. Centrum, on the other hand, is about building new associations around energy and immunity.

She said, “We know that one in two people will suffer from tooth sensitivity. That is the potential of the market.” Centrum, on the other hand, poses a different challenge. “I am building relevance, superiority, and what you should be feeling. The lowest hanging fruits are energy and immunity, and that is where I am going,” Chopra stated.

Storytelling and relevance remain timeless.

Even with technology, personalisation and data taking centre stage, the discussion kept circling back to an old truth: storytelling remains the glue.

Rathore distilled it to a formula. “Data, technology, content and smart spending will matter most, but storytelling remains timeless.” Chopra agreed, noting that while marketing has become more micro, brand building at the macro level will never lose relevance.

Mandayam, bringing the discussion to a close, reflected on what tied the perspectives together. “Everyone spoke about making yourself more relevant and more true to what your brand stands for,” he said.

The messy middle may look more like a spider’s web than a funnel. Consumers may loop, hesitate or leapfrog, but brands that remain authentic, consistent and relevant at every touchpoint are the ones that find their way through.