 on decoding the secrets of great influencer marketing and a discussion we've, I'm sure all been waiting for. Please welcome our panelists, some of India's most loved influencers and leaders. We're now gonna be joined by Sanjay Mehta, joint CEO of Miram India, Nikunj Lotea Biyu, Nick, content creator, influencer. We've got Dhruv Chitko Pekar, the co-founder and CEO of Big Bang Social and co-founder, Collective Artist Network. We've got Sejal Kumar, who's a content creator, Saranj Goyalaj, chef influencer. We've got Arthur Altonian, senior client development director, A.Pak Inka. And lastly our session chair, Ajay Gupta, CEO wave maker. So ladies and gentlemen, with this I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today and taking out your valuable time, great smiles. We've always seen you on the other side, creating content and this is the time when you'll be speaking about the same. So we're looking forward to that. Ajay, it's gonna be a great conversation ahead. I'd love you to take forth the live beta now to take it with your panel. Over to you, Ajay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Pavna. Good evening to the panelists. Hi, how are you? I hope you're all well. Yeah, hi. Yeah, hi. Hi. Hi, hi. Good evening, everyone. I hope you're all having a very good Friday evening and a warm welcome to you all to our panel discussion where we'll find out more about the secrets behind great influencer marketing. Globally influencer marketing is a $14 billion industry growing at more than 31% per annum. In India too, we are already a 900 crore rupee industry and growing at more than 25% annually. With more than 40 crore Indians on social media and each one following at least one influencer. We know that the influencer-influencer marketing is only going to grow. We have with us on the panel today experts who represent various parts of this growing industry who are in a great position to help us unravel the ingredients of a successful marketing campaign in the influencer space. So welcome, everyone. And I'd like to get into it right away. My first question goes to Nikunj. Nick, with your BU, Nick, which has what? A million, seven million followers? Across all platforms, there are around 10 million followers. Gosh, seven million followers and I believe two billion video views. Yeah. I'm still surprised. Yeah, so you got here with seven million followers and these number of video views. It would have been a real long journey and there would have been a lot of learning and a lot of things that you would have built along the way. Tell us a little bit about how you came to where you are today and a little bit about how the journey was. I mean, BU, Nick, the entire crew, we just turned seven this month or last month on August 26th, we just turned seven. And it has been an amazing journey because I remember back when we started those seven years ago. And it's actually 10 years ago because I had a channel before this called Not So Funny and it turned out to be exactly how the name was. Not at all funny. So yeah, it's been almost about 10 years journey and we started creating videos on YouTube first and we started creating videos on YouTube then. The only thing on YouTube was probably like a trailer or like a movie song or something like that. So we didn't realize that it's gonna be this big and yeah, it's been amazing now. Now I see a lot of people doing it. Back then we didn't realize that we can make career out of it. I still remember we were the first ones. YouTube used to send us to this such panels with brands and we used to, it used to be called as speed dating with brands where we used to make the brands understand that how you should get on digital and we don't used to make them understand why you should work with me. We used to try to get them on digital by comparing the amount of money that they are spending say on a college fest to the amount of people who are coming on a college fest to the amount of people who are watching our videos. It's been a beautiful journey. We've worked with like probably hundreds of brands by now and it's fun and I'm still exploring. I'm still, we recently did a web series with a brand called Upgrad and yeah, I mean, it's fun. Enjoying every bit of it. Super, I mean, you've been part of it right from the beginning I guess then. Yeah. Getting things together and I think where we are today the efforts that you guys have put in right in the beginning have gone a long way in bringing us here. Lovely, Nick. Sage, I'd like to come to you next. You are a really successful fashion and lifestyle influencer and again, a massive number of followers. I believe there are a million plus followers in the lifestyle and passion space who follow you and have again, what 200 million odd videos of yours. So how has it been for you? How has the journey been for you? It's been really great. Nick and I pretty much started at the same time. We used to be part of this event on YouTube next up where we learned how to produce videos together and we were on the same team and learning how to edit and just storyboard and stuff like that. And I've also gone through pretty much every phase of like pitching, doing like a brand deck for brands to sort of like put money in my videos to being in a space where it's great to have the freedom to say no to certain projects and say yes to the ones that truly excite me, which is amazing. I love the fact that as I've grown, I've sort of expanded from doing really low budget fashion styling videos to now getting into other things that are my passions which are acting. I just, the second season of my web series just came out on Z5 and also music been producing my own songs as well. I love the autonomy that comes with the internet and it's awesome to be an artist along with producer and obviously business person as well. And it's great, I love it. It's great to sort of like build this universe around you which you can do whatever you want with it. So it's awesome. I'm having a really good time. Awesome. That really sounds fun. And I completely understand when you say, the freedom to do what you want and the ability to play by your rules, that must be really, really liberating, wonderful, wonderful. And great to see where you are today in the position that you are and creating so much influence around you. Fantastic. Thank you. Our next panelist is Saransh. Saransh, you are a celebrity chef, an influencer chef and you have a butter chicken, I believe, that is named after you. I mean, what more? This is like, this is state of, this is what legend is made of, you know, to have a butter chicken actually to be named after you, incredible. You've also been on the master chef Australia as a guest judge. That's an incredible journey. Tell us a little bit about how it has been. I think, first of all, it's very kind of you, because butter chicken is, I think, India's sort of, one of our national dishes. So I think to even have a small part of it connected to me makes me really, really proud and happy, of course. I think a lot of this actually is courtesy social media and the digital platform that exists. The brand that I run is called Goyla Butter Chicken and Goyla is my last name and that's how Butter Chicken is connected to me, but it was a hashtag on Twitter and on Instagram and on Facebook actually. At that time, Instagram was still like, before Instagram was like the cool spot to be, I think that's the hashtag was on before that and it's that hashtag that really blew up for me and I realized that Bombay didn't have a great butter chicken like Delhi and I think found some great friends and people who supported my style of cooking and food. But I think what has been really interesting for me as a chef is that there is a whole world of creation that exists for food creators online and I think that's the route that I chose to grow as a chef and it's been very interesting to be able to blend our offline business with an online community and I've been able to learn a lot in the last six, seven years guys like Nikunj and Sejal, I have been following them for as many years probably as they have been running their channel as well and there is a lot to learn from each creator's universe which means that whatever applies to fashion can also probably apply to food. And we use those tools and we use that universe of creation to promote our restaurants, to promote recipes, to build myself as a chef and I think to say that chefs only belong in the kitchen now would be a lie. I think they truly are artists online and offline. Yeah, absolutely and I think this whole pandemic has made all of us into aspiring chefs. I'm very home now, yeah, lots of competition. So they're like that. And you know, everyone has a good camera and a good video and everyone is going for it. It is quite amazing but I tell you butter chicken to me is really legend stuff, yeah, incredible. We will make sure you try the butter chicken. Look forward, look forward, great. I now move to Sanjay, Sanjay since you're in the space of working with influencers and working with brands trying to make influencers helping influencers deliver the best for brands and helping brands maximize the benefit that they can derive using influencers. Now, it's a different world. I mean, that's true and like Sejal was talking about autonomy and how they like to work on their own and brands have the other side of it where there are a lot of rules and a lot of things to be followed. It must be challenging to bring the two together. How do you manage it and how do you bring the two worlds together to deliver maximum impact to the brands? Yeah, thanks. So I think it's been an interesting journey for us as an agency also working on the influencer marketing segment because it's been a learning for everyone. I think the space has evolved from the time when influencers were used from a very pure technical purpose, you want to get a hashtag trending on a day or something of that kind. So from those very, very small trivial goals to what today looked trivial to reaching a point where a specific influencer campaign can actually make a huge impact for the brand in terms of either launching a product or creating sales or opportunities, et cetera. So it's been a fascinating journey and it started out of course by educating brands about what was an influencer engagement like. The closest that they could connect was the brand ambassador space and which was similar but yet very different because it's kind of engaged celebrity of a different level. And maybe there was limited engagement number of hours or days in a year or something like that was an influencer engagement which had a different structure to the engagement itself. So going starting from there and engaging both sides, even from an influencer side, some like some of them on this panel were obviously very mature and very successful here but over time we've worked with various levels of influencers and to also have them appreciate that when putting out content on behalf of a brand there is so much of a brand equity associated with anything that we do. And if a brand requires certain do's and don'ts they need to be appreciated because there is so much riding on that brand. So finding that right balance explaining the concept of working with influencers to the brand at the same time engaging with the influencers to appreciate why a brand will have some restrictions, some constraints considering where they come from. A lot of them are MNCs and have a whole lot of constraints that brands with regulatory issues whether it's in BFSI or in healthcare. For various reasons there are constraints which are applicable and one needs to find the right balance and it's been an interesting journey. I think today if we see, it's evolved a lot. I think both sides, the brand managers as well as influencers have a much better understanding it's got easier over time because both have understood where this needs to go. But it's been an interesting journey pretty much like not as exciting as the journey of these influencers but also for us equally exciting journey for learning and getting brands and influencers working together on very interesting projects. Yeah, and I think in the last one year COVID has really, like there is a silver lining for every cloud, the influencer space has, marketers have really learned the benefits of getting into the space and have managed to work a lot better and it made the effort to understand what are the nuances and how do we make this work because it isn't as straightforward as creating a campaign where everything is under your control. And like you said, it's not only the lead influencers like these three stars we have here but it's a long tail which follows and to understand that things will be a little bit off I think is another great adjustment that it's been made and bringing it together is quite a task. Nick, you have any good stories of how things came together extremely well or any brand? You're on mute, Nick. Nick, you're on mute or something wrong with me. I'm sorry, yeah. I'm still getting used to this now, I'm sorry. We also like you guys man, like if you think that we know everything but like this is me. Yeah, this has to happen once in every thing or every call. I mean I still love when these panels used to be live because then I can complain saying that I come from Dumbubili that's why I'm late, I can't do this anymore. I mean yeah, there are quite a lot of stories there are quite a lot of brands that be, back in the day we used to promote this brand called Beoto which was very relatively very new brand when it came out and I was very new too. Like I remember I hardly had like not even like a 100,000 followers back then and then it's fun that I saw them grew and they saw me grew and we kind of did it together and it turned out to be like really well for them. I know the owners personally and they've moved out now obviously they've got cast in and like they've left and I always like, I feel proud about getting the whole beard culture in India back then when though you know it was not a thing, growing a beard was not a thing. So I kind of, you can say I kind of 5% impacted the whole culture of getting beard in India because that brand was paying me well and off lately we're doing this web series with Updread which is going like really well and I've spoken about this to Guru that I, you know generally I was not into bigger content because I feel that it's easier for me to make short content, make it today, get my money and then leave but I thought that making bigger content is takes a lot of time. I've asked a lot of people around, I've lost a lot of users around that you know they say that it takes probably around six months to write, four months to produce and then when I wanted to do it, when I got into it, when I got into the roots of it that's when I realized that we've been doing all this for so long that we forgot that we are we are asking someone who's doing it differently like we are asking someone from a film background but I realized the first season of this series that we wrote from ideation to filming to the first episode to come out, it took us like nine days. So now I'm so much involved into making bigger content and it's been amazing to like, we are still new over the last episode of the season I'm super excited about it. It's been fun, I love creating branded content if you watch my videos closely and you will understand like eight out of my 10 videos, eight out of 10 of my videos are branded because I have this theory when I write is that if I write, I write on my stuff so if I write a video for a brand what I do is I write a video for a brand then I take out the brand from the video and I look at the script and I ask myself would I post this video without the brand involved in it? The answer is yes only then I add the brand in it and that's why it looks very authentic it looks very unique and that's why I don't get a lot of comments saying that the way I've sold out that you're only doing branded stuff I totally enjoy the process. I think that's an amazing way to look at it really and no wonder brands are enjoying working along with you because a force fit in my mind is actually as negative as possibly not using and not doing the kind of work that we want to do. So that's absolutely great there. Dhruv, you are on the panel, on the ASCII panel and the last discussion was all about how the ASCII guidelines have been. I know that there was a lot of flutter when the guidelines came into place and when people were concerned of how things would get impacted but I think things are settling down now. From your perspective, tell us a little bit more about what the guidelines are like and how it's going to impact and what is the big picture in terms of how we see benefit from it coming through? First of all, thanks Ajay. Great to be here and great to be with everybody on this panel. I feel a bit burdened that we're going away from Nick and Sarah and Shazel's beautiful fun content stories to something as unsexy as unregulation and terms and things we have to do on ASCII but the truth is Ajay that I got into the ASCII board and I was very honest on the task force, I should say and I was very honest with the entire task force team that I'm only coming because I'm very honestly coming in as a spy. I wanted to ensure that someone, I've been in the business of talent for pretty much my entire adult life. I spent 15 years working with the best of talent and now some of them are here on the screen which is an incredible opportunity and my biggest learning on talent is that you gotta let them fly and you have to keep them unencumbered and the truth is that having said that on ASCII specifically, and I'll keep it really brief because I think people are aware of the guidelines, people are aware of the benefits but I think fundamentally and the most exciting aspect of it is that any industry which reaches a certain size and scale requires a certain level of frameworks, requires a certain level of sort of guardrails simply because the scale of the opportunity and simply because the scale of the reach that it has needs to ensure that everyone who's entering in new into the industry knows that it's formalized, know that it's organized and brands, publishers, media, senior folks who are on this panel and of course the creators themselves have some sort of framework with which to interact with one another and the first step to that was being completely transparent about disclosure because that's the one space which is the starting point of any engagement with an influencer, right? Do you know what you're getting into? And that's where it's at, I think that and I got about five minutes of the previous panel and Manisha myself, we spent about six months with a pretty large group putting it together. It's really just phase one. I think the future is going to mean a lot more tools, a lot more insights, a lot more, I would also say protection, right? Because our background and my background is that I've worked with celebrities, traditional celebrities, so to speak and the new way it's celebrity is what you're seeing on the screen with you right now. So a lot of that entire consumer protection code, celebrity protection code, all of that is going to come into the content ecosystem as we see it. And that's really where it's at. And I think like you rightly said it's early days, it's starting to the initial stress I think on influences is starting to flutter down. Brands are starting to understand their guardrails and it's just now about more and more execution adoption. And what we have in mind, and I'll just share this is that we're going to make this something that the industry is going to want to celebrate just like you have the Kans, just like you have the Emmys, just like you have the FE's where you celebrate great advertising and great content. We're going to put ourselves in a position where we're going to celebrate great branded content. Nick gave a couple of examples of the stuff that he's done, it's why he's so loved. The other content creators here are very similarly so. So I think once we start creating industry-wide benchmarks about it and celebrating it and acknowledging it, I think there will be a pursuit from both brands and content creators to want to collaborate in that fashion. And that's where we're going. So you're so right, it's now a 900 pro industry like just said, supposed to go to 2,200 pros in the next couple of years. We're not talking small numbers anymore. And I think the only way to make sure that it goes well is to set up the frameworks today and ensure that there is a sanity to how things are moving. Sanjay, just on this a quick one. How have brands been reacting to the guidelines in general from your perspective? So in our case, at least most of the brands that we work with are reasonably large corporates and they have had, from regulatory point of view, they have been transparent when they have been using influencer marketing. So even before the guidelines came, there was a certain sort of voluntary disclosure of sorts when they were working with influencers, it was not portrayed as being own content. So I think those have been easy transitions thereafter. I think for at least the kind of brands that we work with, we didn't see any challenge in getting them to agree to now specific standards which have now come in place. Okay, that's great. Sajal, just from your perspective as an influencer, I know these are early days, but how have you seen these guidelines coming to play for you guys and how have you been able to adapt to it? Any insight for the rest of us? Well, to be honest, I'm still... Sorry, yes, I'm not. I'm always cooking what I want in my kitchen. It's good. To be honest, I'm still yet to work in a situation where I'm asked to abide to these guidelines specifically, so I don't think I have a specific answer to that, but I'm very happy that things like this are coming into play because through upset is very important and I've been working in this space for six years now and I've been in a space where I've had to... Where I've been scared that I won't get paid even till today, there's some opportunities that come and go and the payments come in very late and that's something that as a working professional I shouldn't be scared of, but I'm happy that stuff like this is coming into play that that's not a dictating factor on how I should be working. That should just be a given, right? Basic conduct, basic professionalism and I think you guys are right, as the industry grows, there's no space to have those kind of situations where people are just taken advantage of in a way. It gets better as you grow because you have a certain set of people around you who can help you get a better bargaining power, but I'm happy, it's transparent for our audience as well and also for us, so I'm hoping that the issues get solved as we go ahead. Great, great, no. I'm so glad, I completely understand the uncertainties involved and just getting some frameworks in place really help everyone and if you're going through this, I can well imagine what's happening to the long tail. Yeah, actually, sorry, there's another thing I feel is important to add a lot of people in the industry who are entering now are also very young. I started out when I was 19 and as a 19 year old, luckily I studied economics, so I was pretty straight with how I would like to get paid and not settle, but a lot of people that I've seen are just kids who just want to make it big, so they need a specific protection from anything that can go wrong. Great, great, fascinating that you guys jumped in to this at such a young age and have made it a success, really had so much of it. Arthur, finally coming to you, you are the hero behind the scenes of Inka, which is the hero of the day today, with all the information that has come in and been put together, I think, being speaking. It's great that we have this forum, it's great that we're putting information together. I think a lot of marketers that I work with, I know are very, very, are looking forward to this space, very keenly, like I said, even the last one year, this space has seen the kind of traction that I guess wasn't seen over the last five, 10 years and this really has received a massive impetus and marketers are really looking forward to this kind of information. So thanks for that, and... Well, all the credit, I have to say, goes to our marketing teams and the Inka India teams who have been the key persons making this happen. So not so many from a regional perspective, a very little contribution, but all the credit goes to the marketing and Inka India team. Arthur, as a part of the APEC community, you've got a lot of experience across markets. In your mind, what are the right ingredients that need to go in to make influencer marketing really work for brands? I think I've heard so many things today that resonate with all the clients that we work with across the region in APEC, but which is my remit today, but I also came from Western Europe where we're talking about regulation, we're talking about some of the challenge that Sejal just raised about the uncertainty. All that is pretty much similar everywhere, and regulation is definitely something that are expected by brands, are expected by creators. And as you said earlier, as the industry grows, we need to make sure that someone is looking after everyone and those regulation evolved. And often when we work with regional or global brands activating in multiple markets, they need some consistency across all markets, and that's definitely something that we'll look at. To answer your question about how we can make campaign successful, there is a bespoke recipe for India where obviously the way you guys engage, the type of content you create, and I've had the fortunate to look at a bit of what Nick was creating, Saransh was creating in Sejal as well. And it's very passionate and it's very authentic the way you guys engage. And I'm quite lucky to have been exposed to so many great content as well across the region. And so the recipe of course is to work with creators who have the passion and who have the authenticity, the way they work and the way they create content. And of course, this industry is growing. There are millions and millions of creators available and every day you have new creators. And one of the main requests from the brands is help us to find the right ones. And right might mean many things. For some of them it will be, I need reach, but often what we hear is I need someone who will be able to deliver the reach, but most importantly, I need the authenticity and the expertise. So when we wanna talk and deliver an advocacy, for example, we look at expertise. And what I mean by expertise is not someone who has just received the product, has read the manual and hey, he's creating a product. Is someone who has been over time built an audience about that specific category, about that specific services. And that's something that is definitely a key ingredient for success. So when we work on identifying the right influences, the first thing we do is, let's not just look at the face value of the influences. Let's go deep into the data about who are the followers, where are they based, what's the level of engagement. And when I talk about level of engagement is, we look at engagement rate and those vanity metrics that we can easily find on platforms, but also we go through pieces of content. Is the influencers taking time to engage and answers the question, engaging with their consumers? So that's definitely something. Is the influencers talking about the product or the service from a personal way? And I think Nick was talking about that example he gave about, he will take the name of the brand out and he will say, is this really me or is it something that you can just put any of the brands and it could work? So brands wants to work with influences that are real, authentic and not mercenaries who will take any brands and any collaboration. And I think Sejal, you were saying that you have now the luxury of saying no to some project if you don't feel that it's not you. And I think that's what brands need. And more and more, that's what consumers as well are looking for. This industry is growing. It's no longer something silo. It's no longer something that people are just easily influenced. The regulation are coming in to make sure that no one is deceived in this space. And what people will value is the expertise and the authenticity. There are a couple of brands that I've seen which resonate to people about, how they're talking about in a fun environment or entertaining environment. And we've seen that a lot over the last two years where people were stuck at home. They needed something to escape and we have so many great examples. But another thing that a very successful campaign that I've seen was when we talk about pharmaceuticals, often you would say, well, it's not a sexy product. I'm talking about the specific medicine or drugs. But however, that brand managed to work with some niche influences who were specialized in sports. I'm into rock climbing. So I was kind of like following those influences. And that specific influences not only was talking about the passion, which was the rock climbing, but she was also talking about the birth control. So basically she was collaborating with that pharmaceutical company about how this company was providing guidance, providing information. And so it was done in a very subtle way as opposed to a very hard sell way. And I think for a successful campaign, why people and consumers are moving away from traditional display and video ads that we will see everywhere. And we know that the engagement, the clicks is very low to content created by the influencers is mainly because they are looking for something very authentic. And the influencers, I'm confident more and more will replace the standard brand assets that we see. I'm not saying that the creative agencies have no future. They definitely have, but in a different aspect. And more and more brands are using the content created by the influencers not only on social media, but are using them on their own social channels, on their own website. And we've seen that out of home. We've seen on connected TVs. They're using the content and the creativity that the influencers are using. And I think to summarize, if we can stick to the passion, the authenticity and being real, I think those are definitely a success for any brands regardless of the verticals. Great, I think that's so valuable, really. And looking at Saran's schedule and Nick, we know that we can see that what they're trying to do is stick to the whole thing of being original and being real to their cause and they're both working a lot better with brands. Great, thanks, thanks. Dhruv, you work with a whole lot of influencers, right? How do you make sure that you are able to select the right kind of, bring the right kind of influence and brand together? And also, do you need to actually support the long tail of influencers, the relatively newer ones of not very large size who were still getting there? And how do you support them? And how do you make sure that you have the right fit between the influencer and the brand? Well, that's the secret sauce. But in a nutshell, right, I think that I'll start with just saying that the biggest danger to the industry, Ajay, is the commoditization of this incredible talent, right? Because it is talent that is available to interact with at scale, the reason why we started Big Bang Social out of our traditional celebrity representation business was that we very strongly believe that the journey, the grooming, the opportunity for them should be not unlike anybody who is, well, to put it very simply, operating at a different scale. The fact is talent is talent, it's just the way they're consumed is at different operating scales, right? So I'll start by saying that the most important thing is, and I think Arthur spoke about it quite well, is to find and is to really understand content creators for who they are as personalities, right? Really understand who they are as people and not reduce them to commoditizations like numbers and reach and engagement and likes and followers and bookmarks and Falana Dhamkana, whatever, you know, the algorithms will get thrown at us because they're not commodities, they're human beings who have tremendous talent and are building media assets that are larger than most media assets in the world today. So, and they're doing it alone. Some of them, like the people on this call are privileged and have grown to a point where they have teams around them, but they all started when they were individuals, you know, working two jobs and I know a bunch of their background, so I won't get into the details, but you know, they were hustling three jobs the same time and finding a way to make this happen. So they've grown to a point with the scale of their operation requires teams, but first and foremost, they were human beings with great stories to tell. So I think that fundamentally should not change when we at Big Bang Social approach, content creators and look for collaborations. I think the idea is how do you get to the depth of what that individual is about and how do you then find a way to marry that with what brands acquire? Now, whilst that's the great philosophical thought, it doesn't always execute because influencer marketing and KOL marketing and whatever the terms are is a very high-speed, high-volume kind of engagement currently. What's going to happen, which I think is gonna marry very beautifully to what's already happening at the parts of the world is that for a certain section of the content creators, the levels of engagement are gonna go deeper. You're going to find that content creators will work with a smaller group of brands, but will have longer engagements with them because the brands will understand that this is not a one-off, but this will become more of an ambassadorial, co-creation, co-development kind of association. It's what if you speak to Sejal and you speak to Saransh now, you speak to Nick, these guys are actually starting their own businesses. I can't let the cat out of the bag, but they're entrepreneurs as well, starting their own businesses or already have businesses. So you're gonna find many of those journeys also taking place. Your answer on the long tail, I think the role that organizations like mine have to play is to one, help them truly understand what their individual journeys could be. There is a danger and I think Sejal put it very beautifully that there are very young people who are hitting big-time revenue and big-time monies before they've completed education. And the fact is whilst they may deserve it, there is a certain level of maturity that comes with having that kind of revenue income coming into your pockets without having the people around you to advise you appropriately. So I think that there is a psychological, financial sort of grooming and mentoring that organizations like mine have to play with their ecosystems to make sure that they have that in place. And while I said right in the start, you have to let their talent flow, right? And I think that's the balance really that is very, very critical. I don't wanna sound like a pundit, I am not. This space is moving so fast. We are seeing new things every day. So I'm really just enjoying the ride, telling my team to keep their eyes and ears open. And I think the most important thing is that all of us have to keep our ears very close to the ground. If I don't speak to Nick once a week, every week, I know that I'm missing out on the real action of what's happening in this country. And I'm on the wrong side of the age factor there, right? So it's just very important to keep that knowledge with yourself and keep that humility. And I think it'll work very synergistically. This is so exciting actually, because you've got young talent really showcasing what they can do. The level of maturity is astounding really to understand that I have this talent, I can monetize it, I can create value from it and to actually put it down and make it happen. At the young age, say that you said you were 19 when you started it. I don't think I thought about anything in college at that point of time. But it's inspiring really, really inspiring to think that you guys started off so early and have made so much out of it. And you're saying there are people who are younger. It's an incredible, incredible story. I think we're coming to our end. I have one last question for everyone around the table. I would like to know about the campaign or the piece of work that you believe really is gold standard and that you have been part of or you've seen and you wish you were part of. So Saraj, I'd start with you. What do you see as a piece of work that really affects it? Okay, so I would really say it because recently it's been on the top of my mind. I think there's money-highest campaign that Netflix did recently. It happens to, my girlfriend happens to have curated that campaign and there's a direct connection that I have with it. But I think it's a beautiful, beautiful way of promoting something so organically and something that everybody wants to be a part of. In fact, today I uploaded a recipe cooking in a money-highest jumpsuit. So a Spanish recipe just to, because I felt so connected to the show and do that campaign. So I think it was very, very beautifully done. On a personal front, I had worked with Agoda this year and again they fit in so beautifully into my travel and food journey as a brand who told me that go and eat your heart out and call Katta and just show us the city from your lens and the fact that they gave me creative control and narrative over showing people call Katta from my eyes as a chef. Really, really. I think it's the best travel piece I've ever created in my life and I could not believe that it was sponsored. So I've always thought that, you know what, I will save some money, travel, take a videographer with me and make this beautiful looking video that I won't do. I was amazed that a brand believed in that. So very, very excited as to how the brands are now opening to creating authentic content or content that syncs with you on a personal level. So very interesting. The fact that my mom messaged me saying that I want to go to call Katta the next time you go, I was like, hey, mom also watches. So that was fun. Amazing. I could feel the passion and the love you had for the brand when you worked on it. I think that came from the freedom that you were given. It made a massive difference and really something for all of us to learn. Nick, tell us about your favorite campaign. Personally, for me, it's the one that I'm making right now. Upgrad is trending all over India. We've done like, it's like a lot of hard work went behind it. Like the team of 100 people who were working, we shot the whole series in three days and we invested in it. That's a firstly, it's the same. And this is the last season also won a YouTube work. So we wanted this one to be bigger or to be honest, I've made like zero money out of it. I've just put everything in it so that it comes out really well. And apart from that, I really like the recent Shah Rukh Khan hotstar collaboration ads probably Tanmay Tanmay's company is doing, I guess. I really like those ads. I think it's quite creative. I really admire Tanmay on a lot of his work with credit too. And like I aspire to do something like this. Nice, nice, nice. Sejal, you? Well, I follow a lot of artists and one artist. This is not a brand campaign, but I love how she's done her overall album. Olivia Rodrigo, her new album really inspired me. Like Saran said, it doesn't have to be anything that's related to our specific fields. But since I'm getting into music as well and working on my own original music, that was a huge source of inspiration for me to see from the visuals to they all being connected to a very specific storyline going through all of it. And I think that's a great place to start because our storyline is so strong. That was really interesting and very inspiring for me personally. The piece of work that I've done, that was very cool. I considered it a very cool brand collaboration was, I did a video with Bumble a while ago and they asked me to take someone on a date. And I thought, why not just recreate a date that I've been on personally. And I just, we just acted out. We just show the whole scenario acted out and like showed like a story. And actually Ranveer Alabadia played my humblest hit on that video, which is really fun to do. We acted together. And the impact of that is people keep guessing who that person is still now. Obviously I will never say because it's such a personal story. But for the brand recall, it's really fun because all my comments are full with, oh, is this the Bumble guy? And till today and that video is what a year old. So I keep whenever I meet someone from Bumble, I make sure to tell them that people are still asking about the Bumble guy. And that's amazing. Wonderful, wonderful. It's so gratifying, right? When you hit a sweet spot and it just works. Yeah. And then people talk about it. I'm sure it must be really giving you a wonderful high. Great. Arthur, Arthur, across APEC, one campaign that you really think ticked all the boxes. Oh, well, across APEC. I wouldn't say any of the KOLs that we have here just to make sure that, you know, I'm not doing any advertising for any of them, but there are a lot of great content that you guys are doing that will tick all those boxes. You know, it will be hard to say this campaign is ticking all the boxes, because it's kind of like have this subjective approach about, you know, it could be very successful for you and it might be okay or average for someone else. But I think, you know, it's down to, I follow a couple of sports people and or, you know, sports and as I said, I'm into rock climbing and it was the Olympics, not so long ago in Tokyo. And of course, it was the first time the Olympics and rock climbing was on the Olympics. So I kind of like follow all the key medalists or the participant on that. And so, you know, the story, you know, you have these emotions and these connections already with the individuals, but also about the brands that they work with. And then, of course, what they achieve during the, during the event. And one of the, one of the guy who did quite well during the Olympics and then he was doing a collaboration with some streetwear, you know, some clothing brands. And, you know, I knew about the brands because I was following them. And I knew that they were doing some sustainable activities as well. So, you know, if you buy a couple of shirts, then they will plant a tree somewhere. So, you know, there is this connection that resonate with people. And I think that's also something that more and more people wants to see is just like the contribution of those brands to the society, to the community. And of course, to the cause marketing, I think it might be a topic for another call or another chat, but you know, cause marketing resonate a lot. And then he was promoting one of the t-shirts. And the way he was moving and the way he was using it, I had that connection. And I bought it straight away. And when I received it, my wife was like, you have so many t-shirts. Why did you buy this one on top of it? And I was kind of like, I felt connected when I saw the content and I felt connected. I needed to buy, I needed to contribute. So you see, it wasn't a great campaign for my wife, because she wouldn't understand my perception. But for me it was, they connected all the thinkers. It was someone you feel related. There was the passion. And there is also this cause marketing on top of the creativity about how to talk about a t-shirt, for example. So for me, that will be, that will be the one that I would say, one of the latest one. Super. Super Sanjay, yours? Yeah. Actually, I need to do some justice to the agency head that I were to give a little bit of a strategic approach to a campaign and what goes behind it. So I mean, before I come to the campaign that I want to talk to you, I think one part, how does influencer marketing compare with more traditional marketing stuff, right? So for the marketers who might be listening here, I think one interesting way to understand this is that traditionally when we would be doing marketing, and let's say do a big bank campaign, you do a big television or print or those kind of campaign, reach a very wide funnel. Let's say you're doing a launch of a new car. So hit the maximum people and then slowly the funnel bears down from those who are interested. Some of them call the dealership, some of them walk into, take a test drive. Finally, there are those who start conversing with, you know, and pricing and everything else and then some buy, right? So it's like a proper top to bottom funnel. When you do influencer marketing, actually we do the reverse funnel, right? We start with the fewest number of people just to happen that they are the influencers and start from a small batch and then it's kind of keep spreading out because of their reach and their engagement. So it's in, and you know, in the spends also, you know, you do spray and pray on the top side of the funnel put a lot of money and then you keep still spending money to keep driving them down the funnel, including at the last, you know, bottom funnel where you want to convince them to buy. Here it's a reverse. You start with few people compared to television, et cetera, perhaps spend less, a lot lesser, but then have the impact and it will reach the people who are the most likely buyers because it won't, in the first case, there's a lot of waste and a lot of spread. Here it's going to only go up to the interested buyers and you know, finally you end up achieving more or less similar goals that, you know, that you achieve with television probably better and definitely more efficient. So in that context, we had this interesting and this is an old, really old campaign, one of our early influence of work, but I still am fascinated by, you know, by that and so I want to talk about it. So this was for actually tourism Victoria, which was to promote Melbourne as a travel destination for Indians to go. And again, I mean, like I said, I need to give a little strategic buildup. So when somebody is looking for travel destinations, you know, there is a chance of first doing your own shortlist based on whatever other inputs you've got and then supposing you zero down on a location, then you'll start figuring what else is there to see in that location. So okay, I'm going to Europe. So then maybe I'll figure, okay, which countries and what destinations, et cetera. And in that kind of shortlisting, Melbourne often was not even getting into that consideration set because there's such so much in the world to go from India. So on the other hand, Melbourne has some fabulous places to visit and see. Now, how does one get people to experience Melbourne even when, you know, even when they are not, you know, shortlisting continent. So you bring it into the consideration set for doing so we actually had a good start. I mean, with the client, we got a couple of Indians standups. In fact, Tanmay was just mentioned before Tanmay and Rohan, much before they were as spicy as they are today. So we got lucky, we got them early days and they spent about 10 days in Melbourne or so and went to all the interesting places and created video content there and in their own funny style, including, you know, talking to a Michelin-fi chef or going to the Melbourne Cricket Ground and doing, you know, searching, searching, you know, on an empty ground, you know, those kinds of things and in their own style and those videos, those are funny videos, those got to get seen because of the fun and the humor in it and as a consequence, Melbourne got discovered and the end goal, I mean, you know, like, like I said, you know, finally we are agency, so we need to see what happened. So we draw up the traffic to the Melbourne website by about three X on an average when the campaign was running for about six weeks and then it settled down at two X. So, you know, you literally, it's got sustainable benefit. It's not just that the benefit is happening during the period when the campaign is on. If it was X in the peak, it went to three X and it settled down at two X. So which was really amazing from the brand's point of view. This remains one of my favorites in spite of so many years having gone by. Yeah. No, I completely get what they're saying because even, you know, as a consumer when I'm planning a holiday somewhere, I'm looking for video content and sometimes I'm looking at really old, created video content. So the shelf life is not just when it is created but it lasts for extremely long time. Dhruv, your last question, your favorite campaign. Oh, God, what a privilege to be living in a world where there's stuff like what gets created every little half an hour by creators but I'll be honest, my favorite campaign of all time actually dates back to almost a decade ago. It was for me the first confluence of sort of branded content means influencer marketing. There's a company in the US, I think they're present globally as well. It's called Chipotle and CA marketing. CA is one of the world leaders in sort of entertainment, pop culture management. They came up with a campaign which still sort of gives me goosebumps called Back to the Start and they had a simple, one line problem which was that they were a fast food company and their biggest USP was that they were going straight to the source to get ingredients. They were the original farm to table fast food company but nobody gave them the respect or the acknowledgement for being that kind of company. They were doing advertising, they were doing traditional storytelling but it just wasn't working and I'm super simplifying it but they did an incredible campaign where they actually created a sort of an animated plus offline game where every time you bought a Chipotle product you'd get a piece of this game, you bought five or six products in a row, you could put it together and the game would actually help you navigate the journey of a farmer and his entire journey of how he was sourcing the products to how they were actually coming onto your table and if you did the game end to end you got further sort of benefits with the product, you'd get more discounts and so on. That was great and that happened and it created some buzz but what was really exciting is they got, for those that understand, they got Willie Nelson who's the ultimate country singer of the US, he's the hardcore godfather of country music. He got Willie Nelson to do a cover of Coldplay's Take It Back to the Start and that song actually went to number one on iTunes. It was a revelation. It was part of their brand campaign and then Coldplay actually went live with them at Grammys with the entire Chipotle campaign running in the background as a campaign that went live and it was, I mean, it was so incredible, the number of comments, the number of engagements, I'm talking 10 years ago, so this was well before social media, et cetera, was where it was at, right? And it was an incredible, of course it was at a certain scale and what I haven't mentioned is that in parallel to this entire activity, there were six parallel food appreciation and sort of food festivals where the only people who could showcase the food were local farmers. So you could walk into that particular city and you would have local farmers coming and actually showcasing their produce and showcasing their home cooked meals just to celebrate the fact that the real best food in the country comes from Strait Farm to Table, right? And it just changed Chipotle's entire narrative in the country and they continue to ride on that wave as a slightly separated food brand in the US, right? That sparked for me, this was 10 years ago, it just sparked for me the early stages of what we are in the privilege of being in right now, right? Brilliant storytelling, non-traditional advertising, disruptive ways of getting to consumer and allowing people to do what they do best, which is people like to hear stories, they don't like to be advertised to. And I think if you get that right, then you're going to do well. So yeah. Thanks a lot, Bruce. And thank you, everyone. For a wonderful chat, I had a lot of fun. And I can imagine how exciting it is to be part of something which is growing, which is growing so fast and being part of a journey, seeing something developing to an industry within across the world. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to have spoken to all of you and I wish you all the best and have a wonderful Friday. Thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks, Sai. Just before you log out, apologies on that. There's a young fan of yours, Pratna Bhattra, who runs her own YouTube channel and she's an influencer author, as I may say. How are you, Pratna? How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you for that introduction. So my question is for Sajal because I've been watching you for like five years now. So I just wanted to ask you, if a movie was to be made on your name, what do you think the name would like, the title of the movie would be? Just random question, but I'd just like to know. Firstly, hi. It's so nice to meet you. I'm so excited. When Harry met Sajal. Already. So then you need a Harry for that. There are many Harrys I can choose from. Many. Good. Yeah. And also just one last question. I mean, if you could choose one artist dead or alive to have dinner with and like ask questions, who would it be? Omi. Yeah. Billie Eilish. Oh, good answer. I would also like to be invited to that dinner. Yeah, come along. Yeah, those are the only questions I wanted to ask because I know we're running out of time, but thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for those really cool questions. And I would love to interview you for my own YouTube channel. I love that. These are the skills I wish I had. But great. Really nice to meet you. And best of luck with your career. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining. And you know, this is what we love, you know, the youngsters come in, they make it more cool. And, you know, they ask the questions. You know, it'll appeal to the youngsters. Firstly, thank you all to all our influencers and content creators and all our brand investors because, you know, as I told you, we've all been seeing you on, you know, our mobiles, iPads and laptops. And today everyone's seeing you in a very different perspective. So thank you so much for your valuable time. Thank you. Thank you for joining us as well. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Bye.