 Welcome to this special webinar brought to you by Exchange for Media. The webinar today will discuss a very important topic that of influencer marketing. We all know about how important role they play in our marketing efforts. So we have a panel that's going to precisely discuss at the top today is prioritizing influencer marketing for brand building. It is presented by Mad Influence in association with Exchange for Media and I have with me my panelist, I want to introduce them, with me is Khushbu Benani, Content Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy Head, Diageo India. Welcome, Ms. Benani. I have Somashree Bose-Avasthi, Head of Marketing, Home Care, Personal Wash, and Air Care Goatridge Consumer Products Limited. I have Shivani Kapila, Influencer and Storyteller, Vinit Sharma, Director of Marketing, Juices, PepsiCo, India. Hi everyone. Gautam Badawan, CEO of Mad Influence and we are going to discuss a whole range of issues. I want to first begin with you, Mr. Sharma. Tell me, we are in an era where we have explored all kinds of marketing channels and suddenly this influencer marketing bit that was catching up, got a little bit of a certain kind of, I won't use the word backlash but it was having a different conversation. Tell me, how has that shaped the conversation in the influencer space as far as brands are concerned? No, I think, thank you, Rohail. I think it's a great question. So whenever we want to communicate anything from the brand, so I think the world has changed from what it was earlier. Earlier it was more around a broadcast medium to say, okay, I will say something through a TV medium or something else and we don't expect anyone to sort of react to it. But increasingly it's now with the digital world, with everything being digital forward. The process of engagement is always two ways where we will talk about something and we can always expect that there will be a reaction from the consumer etc. But therefore I think what is important, what we've been doing is it's very important as brands we speak, we also get a sense of social listening to say what is the sentiment on the ground and therefore how do we pick up something which is topical and leverage influencers which have a high credibility and build a very proprietary brand point of view on that. Again, what is very critical is to be organic and not forced and therefore, for example, we picked up an occasion, I'll give you an example of a slice of pettie idea that we did in summers this year. So in summers what we realized was there was a lot of craving for mango and people were really looking forward to getting the petties of mango or the boxes of mangoes that they had and we actually did a campaign which was on social media. We started off with Katrina actually sending a slice of pettie to Arjun and then we actually did a lot of influencers who got those petties and how they said they were looking for craving for mango and here's something which sort of satisfies that craving for mango. So it didn't have a very overt so as to say this is what slice is, the tonality in the TV medium was that slice is very thick etc. But it does more in terms of context of occasion building and was a more seamless fit. So as long as the fit which we get with the topical occasion is organic, I don't think there's an issue. Having said that, even as we put campaigns on air, we track that very closely and ensure that we respond appropriately depending on how the consumer sentiment is. Right. I want to come to you, Ms. Binani. My question to you is that how do you see influencer marketing vis-a-vis the brand recall and how much of a belief do you have as a brand in this marketing approach? So Royal considering I had influencer marketing, I definitely have a lot of confidence on what it does for the business and the brand. I think that just building on to what couples say, there is a point of view that brand needs to own which is like a proprietary point of view. Now, how do you build that point of view through different 360 touch points is where the influencers come and play a big role. So while you know, if you're doing your television comms or your digital comms, you might be talking about your liquid, your product, your packaging, but when you work with influencers, the angle of like building aspirations through like affiliation, who they are, what their personalities are, how you are authentically integrating your brand, you know, with their personality so that, you know, the audience that the influencer talks to starts developing a connect with the brand because ultimately like, you know, people trust people, people don't trust brands as much they would trust other people. So how do you leverage, you know, the connect that the influencers have with their audiences? If you know, the brands can find that sweet spot where it's not overtly branded, but you're not losing saliency as a brand by, you know, dialing into influencers authentic narrative is how you actually leverage influencers in the best possible way. Right. Right. Right. Perfect. Same question to you, Ms. Ovasthi. I just want to understand from you. How do you see influencer marketing added value to brand recall, connecting brands with consumers? What is your perspective on that? Okay. The question is that how much of belief do brands have in influencer marketing and how does your brand look at it? Going two years back, I started, I was on the other side of the table working associated with Google as HR. And today it's a turning point in my life where I am an influencer talking about brands in this session. I think it's very important as correctly mentioned by Winnie and Khushboot is very important for an influencer to connect with to his or her audience and create that niche where the community that we are adhering to believe in us, trust in us. And that's where the influencer marketing has stepped into the picture. And to be very honest, this is a new genre that I'm exploring and it is very exciting and demands a humongous motivation, encouragement and bucketful of ideas to build into this space. Right. Right. Right. See, I'm sorry I'm joining in from a smaller screen so I couldn't see that so much is not there. So I mean multi-screen world today at the smallest screen turn. But thanks for your comment. I want to come to you, Gautam. Of course, you are the man who understands and believes in this. How have brands readjusted or realigned themselves to this marketing approach over the years, if I may say over the last two years? Yes, I think over the last two, two and a half years, like first of all, hi everyone. I think I'm audible, right? Yes. So yes. So over the last two years, there was no concept of like the boom of influencer marketing, I think came in 2019 to be really honest. And in 2019, it was all about bloggers first. Then concept of Instagram and YouTube was like enough where it was a large association. Earlier, with 20,000, 50,000 views are a very big thing. Today, no plan starts with a 10 million, like, you know, 10 million is like, okay, that's billion plan. That is so, so normal these days. So having said that from a shift from a 10,000 view or 50,000 view plan to a 10 million. And now we have like, you know, with the rise of social media and all thanks to Gio Baba, we have like, you know, we have the scalability of content to the right masses because now the users have also increased. So definitely, the mass reach through influencer marketing has diverse, it has diversified and it has massified. That's even a word, right? So having said that influencer marketing has definitely taken a hit and it has created new areas for different people. From people like Shivani, it has created an entire, she was with Google before and now she's left that beautiful space and come to a new space which is now about creating content and planning thinking for new ideas, creating new plans for the social media and now sending out and people liking, engaging and, you know, spreading hate sometimes, you know, but people are still engaging at the end of time. People like us, it has created where we are like, you know, trying to curate influencers. We are trying to curate brands and sort of bridge their experiences between influencers and brands and people like beneath and they've like, you know, I'm sure a Kuzhu must have not done influencer marketing 10 years back, right? She must have been in the marketing space doing so many great things, but influencer marketing has definitely added on to the space that is more valuable and yet less cost effective. Like it is, it is yet being cost effective at the end of the day cost matters. So having said that, like, of course, we have the great planners sitting here. So I'll, they will agree to me on this that whatever end of the day cost matters and the impact matters, right? So it both is both positive and I think India is yet, India is yet to burst that bubble and it is yet to reach that like the all time high is not yet reached for the Indian market, at least for influencer marketing. I think it's just going to grow and grow and grow and grow. Sorry, Rohan, I was just saying that just to add to something that Gautam mentioned, I think what happened initially was when influencer marketing started, it was like, you know, almost like, you know, talking only to the metro audience, to the tier one audience or what you would, you know, classify as the SCCA audience. And then the phenomenon of geo happened and tick tock happened, which is where suddenly influencer master marketing started talking to the Bharat, you know, the tier two towns. And I think that's one of the big shifts that have happened, which because of which numbers that we talk on influencer marketing today are significantly different to what we used to talk like, say five years back. Right, right. Mr. Sharma, my question to you is that the way it is inspired from what Mr. Madhavan said, when we look at the use of influencer marketing vis-a-vis to our global counterparts brands, how mature are we in its use? And second, have we narrowed down influencer, the term to cricketers and volume of stars only? Or are we also looking from the brand perspective on a more wide based, you know, broad based kind of influencers in the definition? So your audience is muted, sir. I think the internet has been a big leveler. So it doesn't matter whether you are in New York or in Baramanki now, pretty much you have access to same kind of information. So I think the pace and the point which Gautam said or Kushpo said, I think the pace at which we are moving to come at par with the global counterparts is amazing in terms of in terms of access, in terms of in terms of the kind of content that we watch. So that's become a huge leveler. On the second part of the question, which you had to say, how is it that the role of celebs versus I would say influencers, if I get it correct, to say what is the role of celebs and is it only about ticket stars or whatever personalities or is it about influencers? I think each of them has a very important role to play. And for example, when you, I'll take the, again, I'll take the example of slicing, we've got Katrina as a brand ambassador. And therefore she's synonymous with slice in terms of, in terms of whatever, whatever she does. So when we did the slice, we started off with Katrina actually posting it because they also give you a reach, which is far higher in terms of, in terms of getting that key message which goes across. But at the same time, when you want to build affinity with a smaller segment, so we actually, it's not enough to just post one thing with Katrina and then leave it at there just to ensure that idea has reach and longevity. Then actually we got this whole slice-lippity idea where actually a lot of influencers, and then that was a lot of category influencers first posted the same idea. Then also a lot of micro-influences also posted the same idea. So the idea is with this, you can have an idea which keeps you engaged for a much longer period of time and with content which can be very topical. I think that's what influencer marketing does that allows us to really be, allows us to do, which a typical traditional approach of saying one post a year or, or let's say one TBC a year, it doesn't allow you to engage consistently leveraging topical content is what I would say. Right. Ms. Binani, I want to ask you, since you have bring in a lot of insights from the influencer marketing side, how mature is the use of this channel in India compared as the same question, the global counter-passing, what is there to improve other areas which can be improved and what are those areas in your observation? So Ruhayla, I honestly think that influencers started across the world at the same time. There might be like a year and there where some markets would be slightly more mature than India, but I don't think from where we are at the content development stage or a reach stage with influencers, we are behind any of the markets globally. In fact, compared to a lot of markets, we are ahead of the curve. This is not like television or cable TV, which came like in the western world much ahead of how it came in India. So we're pretty at par to where globally the trends are on influencer marketing. What is interesting is that now influencer marketing is starting to break out into different platform-led content strategies. So you would have influencers or YouTubers and what we consider creators and then you go to Instagram and you would have the lifestyle influencers and then you would have a certain bunch which we used to qualify them as TikTokers. So I mean, now they've started from a trend perspective, they've started now it's become that big that it has started breaking down into its own specific niches or where the brands have started choices saying that if I have a partner point I want to play on or I have like a occasion context that I want to play in, then I can actually work with a very specific set of influencers who carry appeal within that subset. So I think that's the next way that's coming within influencer marketing. Right. Ms. Kapil, I have to ask you what are the areas we improve and as far as influencer marketing is concerned from the content creator sites as well? What is your observation? What are the areas that can be improved to make it more effective? I am a mid-era creator. So when this content creation and influential world came in India, I was not a creator then but I jumped in. So I have seen creation being derived from inspirational creators to now becoming trendsetter creators. I've seen that shift where I've seen getting inspired from a video and now I have the capacity of building into an own zone and that has come through the time, through the development in our own influencer world. I personally am a person who was a 9 to 5 job kind of person who actually studied for 7 years and worked out for 5 years to get into Google's office for interview and today I'm an entrepreneur. Today I'm a businesswoman who creates content on through influencing, brand influencing that has come through my way and I remember starting up as a barter creator to somebody who was who was just doing it by because there's a brand there involved and today I have another set of commitments and delivery deliverables turnaround times to accomplish. So I have grown with due course of time as a creator and I'm sure the entire society has seen the shift or the drift that has brought in and I'm really happy that we have mentors like you guys here, everybody who's sitting here, Gautam is here. So we are able to do this because everybody is believing in innovation, that's what I believe. A new set that everybody is ready to experiment. Right. Mr. Madhupan, my question to you is slightly different from a different perspective. Of late, I won't name that person, but there was a certain kind of people started looking at, re-looking at influencers, the definition because of maybe it can be interfered, the number of lights is not the only measure and number of views is not on the measure. Are there more, are brands become, have brands become more demanding as far as the impact of influencers is concerned? Is the metric right, whatever it was so far, is there any improvement in the metric that is there? See, I'll, to be honest, I'll not call the current, like of course, the major brands that are investing in influencer marketing, I don't see their metric being captured as wrong. I'll not term it wrong, but I'll say definitely that that is not the only metric to see us. Right. But, and I'm sure I'm, we have seen that shift as Krish, who was also mentioning a little while before, like a little back that no, now it is not about how many views and how many comments are there. It's also about how organically and how subtly you promote. Right. It's not that you have a big logo back there inside the video and the next day you're sold out. Right. It's not going to happen. Right. Now, all the, like, earlier there was a concept that you have to integrate our brand for 25 seconds, at least in a five minute video. Right. Now it is not like that. Like, now I'm seeing that 25 seconds being distributed in the first five seconds, then the middle five seconds, the last five seconds. It's like, now it's not like a direct, like an integration where you have to do this, this is the script. Now brands are being more open. Like, you know, in terms of they're letting, they're setting the theme and now they're letting the influencers think of the script. But of course, one big advice to the brands, SMEs and all the entrepreneurs and marketers, planners are there that we should actually let you, like, you know, you take any influencer agency, influencer agency's job is not to create content. Right. It is the influencer's job to create content. So when we talk about let we, they know their audience better than me and better than you. Right. So when we actually go there and create, like, you know, have a theme set for the campaign, it might be a revival campaign, it might be a launch campaign, it might be a sustenance campaign. But having said that whatever campaign it might be, it is very important for the brand to understand that they don't know their audience. They don't know the influencers audience as much as the influencer knows their brand and knows their audience. So having said that views numbers do matter. But I think Instagram has given a big hit for all the planners out there, because now there is no views that you can see apart from, like, you know, there are hardly any accounts left with your viewerships, even that is going out. So now the concept of views is also changing. Right. So the first it happened in Australia, now it started happening in India. So the concept of viewership, that FOMO, right, the fear of missing out is now gone. Yeah, it can be used, right. Now only way you can see it is that okay, what is the engagement by the comments and comments also, there are three types of comments on this positive, neutral and negative positive being amazing, which is logical to the, to the content that is imposed. For example, if it is sliced, wow, amazing campaign, amazing packaging, amazing, like, you know, whatever, whatever the messaging if they connect to it. But if the same person is if another person is messaging, wow, so hot, wow, so beautiful, like, you know, it is not, not at all connecting to a brand like slice, right. But it is not negative also, right. The third one is like, yeah, I don't like this influencer, you're so bad, I don't like you, the face is not good. Like, no, that those kind of comments that neither promotes, neither says anything good about it. So it's always negative. So that's the, so the only way to judge to a good to engagement is now one of the main raises comments to analyze the comments and understand what their audience typo is. But yeah, I hope I answered that question again. To our audience, I would just say that this webinar is brought together by so mad influence and exchange for media and we will be taking some questions towards the end, you can post your question on social media and send us on Zoom. So I want to come to you, Mr. Sharma that so we talk about influencers and all, but what goes into choosing the right influencer? What are the factors that you look at while choosing the influencer that represents your brand? So I think it starts from the objective to say what is the objective of the brand in terms of this example. So it's if I have an objective of saying, I want to make more people connect with a particular attribute of a product. So then I might pick up depending on the attributes, pick up the product, I'll give you an example. So for example on Tropicana, when we said we wanted to pick up something which builds authenticity of the brand. Therefore, we picked up the influencers by default is a great way because you will pick up someone who's authentic and the messaging was to say eventually it was about Ashley versus Hava Bazi and therefore the messaging has to be someone who can pull that off to say someone who can almost have a spoof of saying two different kinds of people is authentic. So you will, first of all, you will look at the people who can actually the second will obviously also be the question of each. There will be a factor of saying how many people do you read? So you might have someone who's a great connect. But for example, let's say I want to talk to you. Let's say on Quaker, I want to talk to a new Krishna's mother. So but that person who I pick up should be someone who has a great reach. So you can pick up someone who's probably who's fitting in that role, but also has a great reach. And the third is also I think in terms of content saying, for example, I want to put up something which is funny and engaging and therefore you will look at the people who've done that well extremely well in the past and therefore you will find out people who can really draw people in with the kind of emotions. For example, when we thought this idea of authentic versus real, we thought by picking up comedy as the genre, we can really bring it alive and we can connect with audiences very strongly. So therefore we picked up who are the biggest influencers that genre who can bring alive this thought in a very contextual way. So if I have to summarize, it would start from the objective and then I would say what is the context that you want to establish and therefore who are the people who can do that best with a significant reach. Right. Miss Benani, same questions about the factors that brands look at. How do you approach narrowing down on the right influencers that represent your brand? So Ruhay, it's about, you know, just building on to what Vinit said. It's about what your objective as a brand are. So sometimes, you know, for example, I have like a portfolio of brands that I play with. So if I'm working on a brand which sits absolutely at the top end of the luxury quotient, something like a tanking career, then my job is not to go wide with the reach because I don't want to talk to everybody. I want to talk to I want to talk through an influencer who drives, you know, certain affinity among the luxury consumers. So I would pick influencers who have follow-up ways which is more luxury oriented and the content is usually sitting in that queue versus like say for example right now because of lockdown and COVID, we wanted to encourage people to try drinks at home, you know, like make cocktails at home. Now that is almost like creating a new behavior. So when you're looking at creating a new behavior, then you want to go with influencers which are like almost what would qualify as celebs because that's where it's easiest to, you know, start creating like, you know, different behaviors, start influencing people to change behaviors. So it goes back to what the objective is at the brand level and then kind of like, you know, find the right influencer set, you know, which can give you the best engagement. So personally, I don't believe in the matrix of use and reach as far as influencers are concerned. It's about engagement. I rather, you know, treat engagement like that 10-15% engagement that comes from influencers versus like if I had the same money was spent on digital comms, I mean, my highest benchmark would possibly be two or three percent engagement. So if you know that lens, how do I evaluate influencers and you know, to meet my objectives is the framework that we would look at while using influencers. Right. Ms. Kapila here, you would bring a different perspective, you know, from the other side. Tell me what has been your, you know, observation about how brands choose influencers? Do you think there are certain things they could relook at? Are they doing it in the right way? Do you think there is a shift happening? What has been your take on it? Well, the first thing that I would like to, you know, join Gotham with is it is very important for brands to let content creators have that flexibility where they can create content for the brand where Gotham correctly said that an agency cannot write the content style. It's very difficult. And when we, you know, join into that content creation for the brand, I as the presenting, I think a couple of influencers here, influencers. So I personally feel that if we get that choice of, you know, driving the content, we have the basic guideline and driving the content will be really interesting. When it comes to, you know, expect experiencing brands and, you know, content creation. Yes, there has been shipped. Yes, there has been, you know, development, a new content coming in for the brands, for the influencers. And when it comes to brand picking of influencers, I always thought that it's always about the kind of engagement, the type of content and the fan base that you have, what kind of people like looking your content for me. It's more of a family audience that I am at. So I purposely do that on and off because that is the audience that I always want to have across my content. So that the brands that are easily located to lifestyle can come to me. So that's one of the reason that I drive that content. So coming back from influencers, I think we also drive in pitch in to our fan base, why? Because we want brands to get associated with us. Right. Thank you. At this stage, I want to welcome Miss Somashree Bose-Avasthi, head marketing, home-shared, personal wash and aircare, Godrej, consumer products limited. Welcome back to this discussion. We have been into a few questions, but we still have a long way to go. So I want to ask you, I want to begin asking you my first question is what is your belief as far as influencer marketing as effective, you know, connect with consumers is concerned. How much of a belief is there for your brand? See, the way I look at it is it first of all, the brand has to be extremely judicious while choosing an influencer, you know, because more often than not, the choice always typically, how do you assess an influencer is by their reach numbers, by their follow numbers and, you know, how much engagement they are creating, etc. But very often, these top influencers also are the most exposed ones. For example, they're usually always visible and they seem to be endorsing everything that is coming along, right? So it's a bit of a catch-22 situation, while it can give you that visibility, whether consumers are really believing it or not, is then the question. So then it really depends on what is the brand looking out for? Is brand just being over there, you know, wanting this influencer to just create that buzzer on the brand? Or is Riley right, you know, sort of trying to create a credible messaging around it? That really depends. For example, very honestly, if it's something around health and fitness, possibly some of the famous celebrities, I mean, I wouldn't like to name them, but then, you know, sometimes you might go for a famous celebrity, but a lot of times it creates that disbelief that their lives is not equal to our lives over here as a consumer that we are seeing it. At that point of time, you might want to go for micro influencers who are closer to your kind of reality of life. And you want to believe, you know, what they are saying, because then you say that, yes, whatever this guy is saying, or this guy's a reality, I can, it sort of relates to me. I can relate to it. So it really depends on what is the brand's objective when they are selecting the influencer. It's a very tricky kind of thing, depends on every brief. I just want to ask you a quick question, which I had asked them earlier also, like, what factors do you look at when you choose influencer for your brand? Maybe a quick, you know, some points you can tell us about it. Typically, the factors always depend on, you know, who is my target consumer and within that target consumer, what is the kind of reach this person has and what is the kind of engagement. Typically, I also look at what is the kind of engagement because it's not just about creating the content, but also creating a content where the people are also responding to you. They're also sort of liking it, commenting on it. That's very, very important. So that's my major criteria, the reach, the followership and then the engagement. Great. Mr. Markman, tell me, what would you suggest? What would you tell brands, being an expert, how can they improve while they're filtering and choosing the right faces for their brands? Is there anything they can improve, relook at? So I think influencer marketing is now, at least for us, it is data driven marketing when it comes to influencers. So it is everything is like, you know, with back data, right? And as Sumashri and everybody in this, you know, as they've actually covered all the points from the reach to the target audience, the content specificity. But to be honest, what, for example, what one influencer might work for a brand might not be the same with other influencers, even though they fall in the same reach segment, even if they fall in the same target audience, even if they're like, you know, it's, it's from person to person, because for example, one person has a million followers and the second person has a million followers. And both of their engagement rate is say 10%. Right. So probably you're going to get a lack of people being engaged on that particular space. But end of the day, how many people are coming back and actually remembering that concept and actually connecting with the brand is probably a influencer being a thousand and the B influencer being 10,000. So, and you're being equally the same amount of money to each one of them, right? But as a marketer, as a planner, you get to understand that through data, right? So the next campaign or the probably the third campaign, you'll not want to a influencer in your campaign because he has not or she has not provided that value to that particular brand. But that does not mean the influencer is bad. That just means that influencer is not fit for that brand. The audience is not matured or not logical enough for this particular brand. So probably the B influencer is now more connecting to that particular brand. And you through data analytics, I think it is much more easier, which we try to do in every campaign, saying that how can we do differently, get remain the same with the previous campaign. So I think that is an add on to what all of us right now, you're rightly said, in terms of reach, engagement, target audience, etc. I have this round of questions. Then I go to the audience question which I'm pouring in. I want to come to you, Mr. Sharma, that influencers are also high risk. It's also like one single tweet can sometimes create a certain kind of challenge for the brand. Do you first believe one question, is it a high risk marketing approach? Number two, what are the broad trends that you think would define influencer marketing in the near future? First of all, I think it's a question of saying, as brands, do you have an option to use only broadcast or do you have an option of a two-way communication? So I don't think as brands, we have an option of using broadcast any longer. And we have to accept that as brands, we want to have a two-way conversation. We want to listen to our consumers. And brands, in fact, share a point of view, but also reflect the popular sentiment which is there in the culture. So I don't think we can get away by saying we can shut somebody up or we'll just say, so that's the first part. I think we as brands have to acknowledge and reflect, as I said, a popular consumer sentiment. So there's no way of going away from it. It's only going to be increasing further. I think the second part of the question, how is it, how I believe it will change in the future, I think eventually with so much media, so much proliferation which is happening, we've already seen that the entire, that one homogeneous mass is getting split into various different, I would say, what we call as addressable audiences with preferences, with choices, with different passion points. And I believe that will continue further with more and more choices. We'll have groups of people or as we sometimes say, tribes of people who are passionate about a particular this thing, there'll be brands who would want to talk to those passion, to those tribe of passionate people. And they will continue to leverage influencers who possibly hold the most respect and I would say, respect, authority and connect with those passion areas. So I think this is only going to go further where the passion points are going to increase, they connect with passion points that are going to increase, and the need to have conversations will continue to increase. Right. Ms. Avasti, I want to come to you with the same question. What are the broad trends that would define influencer marketing and also, is it a high risk investment? Sometimes we're forced to ban brands to kind of sometimes pause and think as we have seen it. Do you think that's the case? I mean, I think recently we have seen quite a few examples of that happening and have had to handle some of those. See, it's not just the risk with any influencer. It's always a risk whenever you are taking any brand ambassador on a brand for that matter. So I would say the way you deal with brand ambassadors where you have a much broader sort of association and risk associated in this case, I think consumers are also possibly matured enough to segregate the brands from the celebrities. But yeah, a lot of times there are backlashes that first thing they would see is let's say somebody associated, somebody from somewhere says ban this brand or boycott this brand, etc. But having said that, the best way to handle that typically especially in an influencer campaign is you simply ignore it and it dies its own death. Typically with every Twitter or tweet any such controversy, you actually wait for it to die its own death, which is where I mean, we also feel safer when we are working with micro influencers where the credit, you know, a lot of times they make a more credible statement and also the risk associated in that case is much lesser. But yeah, having said that typically when you choose a macro influencer, normally a set of influencer, typically you definitely choose somebody who has least amount of, you know, such baggages, I would say. So I think yeah, yeah, yeah. So typically, please, please go on, please go on. No, no, that's that's Okay, Ms. Birani, same question. Trends and is it, is it so fragile sometimes that brands have to, you know, I mean, also something very new for the brands, they are like torn between taking the stand and just letting it go. I don't think it's a risk only link to influencers. I mean, we've all seen what happened with the Danish cat recently. So, you know, even brand communication, which is limited and tested can be fragile in today's time. So I think it's a risk with a marketing team, you know, so I honestly think it's about a marketing team or a brand's decision to say that they want to chart a course and then be authentic about it. And like when he said it needs to be a two way communication in today's time. I mean, if you're just talking one way to your audience, it's almost like if you know, we sit in this conversation in this panel, and we don't interact at any point with the audiences through a Q&A, then it's a one sided conversation versus, you know, at some point as coming back and saying that we want to answer the questions that the audiences are throwing in. So anytime like, you know, you sign up for a two way communication, there are going to be a risk attached. But I think it's about the brand's willingness to, you know, say true to the path that they have, you know, decided to go on and be absolutely not doing it from a tokenism perspective, but having a very genuine intent to be authentic about their intent and, you know, acting through, like, you know, to the end, seeing what they have decided to go to, I mean, you take a brand like Nike today. I mean, if you remember the campaign that happened last year, people won the shoes. But the amount of respect that the brand has gained has been amazing. So I don't think the risk is sitting only with influencers. It's sitting everywhere whenever the brand wants to have a two way communication. From a trends perspective, like, I think there are different things happening. I mean, influencer marketing is not new. I mean, 10 years back, I used to work with diesel. And Salman Khan used to wear diesel denim jackets in movies and people used to come to our stores saying that you know, I mean, it's just that the phenomenon of influencer marketing has moved to digital today. And hence, because it's moved to digital today, you can see it classified between, like, you know, your tears of celebrities, micro influencers, nano influencers, and everybody is now trying to create a space for themselves in with their content strategy. I think the more disruptive influencers are with what they are trying to do, the more they are going to stand out. And I think that disruption is what's going to create trends of the future. Right. Ms. Kapila, for you, a different question that when brands, for example, choose an influencer and there's a certain kind of, you know, maybe a controversy happens, is it difficult for the influencer to disassociate? I mean, is there always a concern for influencers that, you know, I may be responsible for, you know, putting the brand into a challenging spot. Does that thought kind of trouble the influencer at times? Do you think that is, because of whatever has happened, do you think those are possibilities that could that trouble the influencer at times? Well, I personally enjoy the fact that content creation is a shared responsibility between the content creator and the audience that is there. Second, it is very important for a content creator to be analytical and to aware its own audience to as to what is happening and what is the perception behind the content that is there. I keep on talking about the content style that I drive with my audience and I keep having that interaction where I can understand and tell them that it's a shared responsibility. So that brings in the question that prevention is better than cure. That's what I believe in. It's very important to make sure that our content remains clean. Our content is oriented towards building inspiration and motivation to the crowd that we are adhering to. And that would not eliminate the risk, but that would always make a content creator be more, you know, cautious towards the job that we have. We have a very uncertain job. I don't know how many brand endorsement will I have next month. It's uncertain. I don't have a number. Again, I as an influencer do not have to have an age bar or a qualification bar to jump into this field. So, you know, having that conversation communication and being aware is very, very important. Right. Great. Mr. Madhavan, quickly, what are your predictions as far as the upcoming trends of influencer marketing, you know, of using influencers marketing is concerned? I think the concept of celebrity marketing has now the new space is influencer marketing because the main reason is celebrities like no, no offense to anyone. And then them creating content on the platform, right? Because they're mostly seen on big screens and big television screens, et cetera, et cetera. But on the influencer side, the new trends, I think that the day like, you know, right now it is more of in every plan that is macro influencers being a part of every campaign. But I think the future is going to be micro and nano influencers. Having said that, because when I say influencers, I don't really call them influencers. I'll call them content creators. And these are the space. These are the people who will actually go out and spread the news because for the biggest, the biggest brands, mostly their target audience is always not tier one. It's always tier two, tier three, and tier four. And to have a content that is already existing too much of polished content going in the tier four space, they're not ready to accept it. But in the moving future, there will be a change and there will be a change with the concept of people looking at influencers as only the top guys can influence my brand. The change is happening already, but I think the acceptance will happen in the course of time, where people will accept that, okay, not only the macro and the super macro, the celebrities can sort of understand our brand. So for example, like we need so said that, you know, even in our slice campaign, like it starts off with Katrina cash, where it goes down bottom, right? It does not just stop with Katrina. It starts from Katrina, but it goes to the bottom of the bottom of the pyramid. And all good brands are already adhering to it. There are a few new companies that are coming in when like, you know, the acceptance takes time, the acceptance takes time. I think eventually that will be the new future for influencer marketing. So that basically means new jobs. To be honest, that basically means more spending in the economy and more income for the people who are entering into this space. So a person who decided to have a 20,000, 25,000 job to probably get on to a more quantification. So yeah, and at the end of the year, Frank. Great. So I think we have 10 minutes and there are a lot of question answers. So I want to come to it. So I sorry, I had to get into my phone to get these questions. So my first question is to Mr. Sharma. There's a question the name is not given. How do you differentiate your approach between an EVC, which is a scripted ad and an influencer message, which is more impromptu? Do you choose both or you select one of it? I think it has to be a combination of it. It is a combination of both. So in TVC, while you it's also to say that it can only be one message, then that message has to be delivered in 30 seconds or 45 seconds. That's about it. So you will try and find the way to do it, deliver it most effectively. But as I said, you will, well, in a TVC, you'll still try and find an insight, which is sort of, which spans across, let's say six, the entire population. But eventually, there are segments of that population, each of those segments behave differently. And to connect most strongly with those individual segments, you will pick up influencers and pick up passion points, which are big for your brand, where you feel you can have a strong connect with the brand. And therefore, you will try and develop a connect using influencers, leveraging those passion points. So it has to be a combination of both. Great. Ms. Benani, for you, the question is, how can brands measure ROI for influencer marketing spreads? Most of the number times the numbers can support the top part of the funnel. But how can brands impact the lower end of the funnel? Like, you know, I mean, that's a question basically. For me, the best ROI to look at for influencer marketing is engagement. You know, how much are people actually sharing your content? You know, what's the comments they are leaving on your content, you know, on your influencer content? I think culmination of that is, you know, what works because if somebody is bothered to take a content you've created with the influencers and shared with their set of friends, the engagement that they've given you would be possibly like, you know, far more, you know, superior to like somebody just having had a passive view of the same influencer content. So I personally believe that the ROIs on influencer marketing should be, you know, knitted out against the engagement that you get with the influencers. Great. Great. Ms. Avasti, for you, the question is, do you think influencers can help you leverage already loyal audience audiences to grow your business? Is this the strategy brands work on? See, it really sort of, if the audience is already loyal, possibly I don't need to don't need more influencers to reach out to them because loyalty is finally the ultimate dream that any brand would have. Influencer strategy for me, I think it's more like building a frequency over there and especially getting to the consideration set of the people who are possibly more like the fansitters and trying to make a choice among the brands. And I would say that is the kind of audience that we are trying to reach out to. So I wouldn't say that we are trying to reach out. I mean, at least I don't have that objective on my brands where I'm trying to, you're the already loyal consumers. It's more to reach out to the newer consumers or those fansitters in the TG that are there that I'm trying to consider in this case. Also, I just thought I would try to answer the question that was given to Ms. Binani. What, you know, how you can measure is, of course, the engagement levels, the second pieces for the brands which already have their own direct to consumer kind of website. That actually also can be another source of knowing whether direct sales is happening or not. You know, depending on where the campaign is and because of that is there a blip in the sales. So it's a little easier for the brands which are also having their own sale from their own website to measure. Otherwise, typically engagement is the main measure where you know whether the campaign is working or not or the influencer is working or not. Right. Ms. Kapila, for you the question is, these are anonymous questions. Is there a formula? Is there a playbook for creating sticky content, content that is engaging? Yes, there is a formula. There's a secret that I want to reveal. The formula is consistency, relativity and again, talking back to your people and understanding what did they like, what do they want to do, want to see and having that frequent connect. I see that people connect but the frequency, the consistency sometimes slips and slipping it for one hour. Please think that there are 10,000 other people who are ready to make the same content and get that visibility. So it's you or it's somebody else. So this is the secret formula. Right. For you, Mr. Madhavan, how do you ensure that influencer marketing meets the brand marketing objectives effectively and affordably? How much is it shown in the actual business? The question is that does the brand, how do you make brands effectively choose influencers? What is the way to do it? Beautiful question. I think it's an extended question to the ROI question. Having said that, how do we initially choose the right influencers first understanding the brand's brief? If the brand says it's a launch campaign, I want to reach out to a massive audience, say Pan India audience, but for a brand like for Binani, Ms. Binani, it will be more like a very niche audience, not like a Pan India audience. But for a person who's heading Northridge or say Pepsi, for them when they launch something, it is massive. They want every person to know in the world that this is launch and go by it tomorrow. Same with an application or same with somebody else. First is to understand the brief of the brand. And second is to understand not only the brief, but also what are the type of people. For example, if the brand is not connecting to somebody in the sports category or somebody in the comedy category, it is more like a CJ's brand. So we need to understand the genre of content creators that we really want to be a part of. So for example Quaker Oats, I cannot put a comedy funny person in the platform and it is not a logical choice. But of course, if I put a mommy blogger or a fitness person or a chef, it is more like a logical influencer without any second thoughts. Having said that, moving on to the third space is of course, then the basic reach and the engagement rate and the, you know, the follower base, etc., etc., is the third segment of choosing the right influencer. Now one influencer is chosen and there's a list of influencers. It is mostly when it comes to influencer marketing, it is not one influencer part of a campaign. It is always a set of few influencers or part of a campaign for each platform. So Instagram set of five or six influencers and can go up to like 1500 influencers. And then you have a YouTube strategy, then you have a Twitter strategy, then you have a TikTok, or for now, MX Takar Takar, share chat, watch, or Twitter kind of a platforms. Those like every platform has different set of influencers that have engagement and loyalty through audiences. And once a campaign is executed, now the question is how do we really measure and how do we say that this is successful, right? So for brands whose objective is only branding, of course, it is very easily calculated that it is you, your success is on the basis of how many views have been generated, how many comments and how many shares have been generated. So the branding space is much more easier. Then the second phase which many agencies struggle and sort of not in the agencies but also brands struggle to find that is the performance driven marketing through influencers, like how many sales are actually happening, how many installs are actually happening to one influencer and how much I'm actually spending. So what is my cost per install, what is my cost per click, what is my cost per sale or what is my cost per lead? Because they're at a space where they don't need any more branding. Their brand is already like everybody knows about that brand. What they care about is the sales, the ROI from the influencer. And for that we use our own internal tool which we share with the brand only, which is an internal tool that tracks not only the sales, the clicks, but also helps to retarget the influencers, the audiences. So which is where we call this as a mad recall value. You have to have that recall with the audience unless and until there's a recall and you spend money once and then you think that you've done a great campaign. But unless and until there's a recall in that campaign after a period, it is not a successful campaign. So for that you need really strong tools. So that is how we try to maintain that balance in terms of the tool that we provide to our internal clients and so that they are happy and then it sticks to their back end and whatever is happening, it happens in real time at their dashboard. It's a very major thing. So everything happens in real time, whatever happens, they see it. So that's why in the beginning, also if you remember, I've said that we believe in data-driven influencer marketing. So data-driven influencer marketing is the future, not selecting influencers, just giving them money and expecting this. Yeah, so thank you so much. I mean, you're just out of time, but I want to thank all the panelists for sharing the thoughts and especially presenting part of Matt's improvements for putting this together. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much. I think thank you so much, everyone. It was a great connecting. We connect offline also. We'll shoot you a mail and I'll probably bring you myself. Thanks. It was a great learning from you all. We need thanks. Thanks so much, Shree. Thanks. Yeah, absolutely. I think you also enjoyed and I think there are more questions flowing in. I think, yeah, I think it was a good maybe get your own time and cross. Yeah, thank you. Have a great day, guys. Bye-bye.