Optimised to death, remembered by none

There was a time when marketing aimed to be remembered. Today, it aims to be measured, and preferably in real time, with a dashboard. Somewhere between CTRs, CACs, and “hyper-personalised nudges,” brands have achieved what can only be described as a miracle: reaching everyone, everywhere… and leaving absolutely no trace.


Muneer is a Fortune-500 advisor, start-up investor and co-founder of the non-profit Medici Institute for Innovation.


Welcome to the golden age of optimisation, where your toothpaste knows you better than your family, and yet you can’t recall a single ad you saw last night. Digital marketing in India is now a well-oiled machine. Whether it’s a fintech app stalking your browsing history or an e-commerce giant predicting your next impulse purchase with unsettling accuracy, the system works. Campaigns are sliced by demographics. Messages are tweaked mid-flight. Every click is counted, every scroll is analysed, every hesitation is monetised.

But, for all this brilliance, brands are not discovering a small truth: being seen is not the same as being remembered.

Marketing lives and dies on screens. It flashes, flickers, and vanishes… like a Swiggy notification you swore you’d act on but didn’t. These are not experiences; they are drive-by encounters. You don’t engage with them so much as survive them. Ironically, the most powerful marketing today might be the least “optimised”: the kind you can actually touch.

Consider the humble, unfashionable world of physical brand experiences. The tote bag you keep reusing. The T-shirt from a concert you attended years ago. The water bottle that has outlived three phones and two relationships. These aren’t just objects; they are silent brand ambassadors embedded in your daily life.

This phenomenon is everywhere once you notice it. Walk into any gym and count the number of people carrying premium shaker bottles or branded athleisure. Nobody remembers the Instagram ad that sold it to them, but the product itself? It’s now part of their identity. Or take the cult of IPL merchandise… fans proudly wearing jerseys of teams that may not have won in years but have certainly won wardrobe space.

That’s the genius of tangible marketing. It doesn’t interrupt your life; it moves in.

Research has long suggested that people remember what they physically interact with. But you don’t need a study to confirm what your cupboard already knows: we keep things that mean something. Not just because they’re useful, but because they’re tied to a moment, a memory, or a version of ourselves we liked.

This is where many brands get it spectacularly wrong. They treat physical engagement as an afterthought… a last-minute scramble for “event swag” that usually results in a pen no one writes with or a notebook no one opens. It’s like ordering dessert just because everyone else did. But when done right, tangible marketing stops being promotional and starts becoming cultural.

Indian startups have begun to understand this shift. Some D2C brands now design packaging so distinctive that customers hesitate to throw it away. Think of the rise of aesthetically pleasing subscription boxes or premium unboxing experiences that feel like ceremony, not delivery. The product is only half the story; the rest is how it lives with you afterward.

Legacy brands should rediscover this. Limited-edition collectibles, nostalgia-driven merchandise, or festival-specific product drops… these need not be just sales tactics but something that lingers beyond the transaction. Reality must bite: digital marketing is excellent at starting relationships, but terrible at sustaining them. A banner ad can introduce you. A push notification can remind you. But neither can sit on your desk, travel in your bag, or become part of your routine. Only something tangible can do that.

This isn’t an argument against digital. That would be like rejecting UPI and going back to writing cheques out of principle. Digital remains unmatched in scale, precision, and speed. It is the engine of today’s marketing. But engines alone don’t make journeys memorable. You need something that gives the experience weight.

That weight comes from the physical… from things you can hold, use, wear, and, sometimes, show off. It’s what turns a fleeting campaign into a lasting presence. It’s what transforms a brand from a message into a memory. The smartest marketers are beginning to see this not as a trade-off, but as a combination. Digital for reach. Tangible for recall. One drives efficiency; the other builds affection.

Many campaigns still treat physical elements like decorative garnish… nice to have, easy to ignore. By the time someone suggests merchandise or experiential touchpoints, the strategy is already locked, the budgets are allocated, and the creative energy is exhausted. What emerges is predictable, forgettable, and destined for the bottom of a drawer.

It doesn’t have to be this way. When tangible experiences are designed from the beginning, they anchor the entire campaign. They give people something to keep, not just something to click. They extend the life of a brand interaction from seconds to months, sometimes years. They create stories that people carry — literally — into their everyday lives.

For India, where consumption is as much about identity as it is about utility, this matters. People don’t just buy products; they adopt symbols. And symbols, unlike impressions, tend to stick around. The marketing ecosystem tracks everything except what truly matters — whether anyone actually cares.

Optimisation has made marketing sharper, faster and more efficient. But in the process, it may have shaved off the very thing that made brands powerful in the first place: presence. At the end of the day, nobody reminisces about a well-targeted ad. But they might just hold on to a well-designed memory.


Muneer is a Fortune-500 advisor, start-up investor and co-founder of the non-profit Medici Institute for Innovation.