 it is time to move to the moment we've been all waiting for which is the unveiling of the E4M inca influencer marketing report for this may I now welcome on the stage and screen Ashmin Padmanabhan president of partnership and trading group M to unveil the E4M inca influencer marketing report but with this I'd really like to welcome him on the screen thank you so much Ashmin for joining us the stage and screen is all yours. Thanks Bhavna and thanks now for a fantastic introduction to what we've tried to create together here everyone I hope you're all doing well and I'm actually delighted to be with you for the launch of the E4M inca India influencer marketing report 2021 not just here in India but across our regional offices in Singapore who have worked tirelessly to kind of put this industry report this has never been tried or done earlier and it required a huge amount of effort to pull this off so thank you so much for putting this together and making this happen we all know that over the last few years influencer marketing has become an industry now it's not something which people try and do for hobby it's become an industry and it's grown exponentially in fact influencer marketing has become an important part of our media group M's media recommendations to brands that's how important it's become a part of the marketing mix and authenticity and trust I feel these are the two things that embody the relationship between the influencer and the audiences and we've got brands who are seeking influencers and working with them to basically replicate the same trust with the audiences and we're happy to see that more and more brands are recognizing this part of influencer marketing and making it an important pillar of their brand strategy we all have seen the pandemic you know kind of accelerated digital adoption in the country we already had more than 400 million people who had access to social media before the pandemic and sadly we've seen close to $1 billion plus of investments to build apps and other infrastructure to create and engage more audiences so clearly this number has got a huge philip now but beyond numbers I feel the significant shift in consumer behavior is a real fuel for growth and we've seen it across spectrums whether it's direct to consumer businesses or more traditional sectors everybody's understood the power of digital in making the life of consumers simpler and and a better access to those consumers while influencer marketing is still nascent and we believe we just discovered the tip of the iceberg as the as the influencer industry continues to evolve we felt it was there was a strong need to quantify define and organize the space and thus the India influencer marketing report was born where we try to highlight some interesting findings on the growth of influencer marketing in India and he tries to follow the unique advantage of digital is its duality you know in other words it can act as an independent medium it can also become a measurement tool for traditional mediums as well and and with that let me quickly take you through what we believe are few trends that will shape influencer marketing this decade and one of them which we've seen evolve over the past 18 months in a big way I think is the rise and rise of the debt to consumer brands in fact in fact as by vendors capital India's already got about 600 plus D2C brands and almost all of these brands have worked with influencers to not just drive awareness but consideration and in some cases even purchase so influencer marketing in fact will be at the core of any D2C brands marketing strategy and I see extremely interesting collaborations evolving between influencers and these brands the other piece which will define the way influencer marketing grows in the coming years will be measurement and accountability and I feel as measurement and accountability comes in influencer marketing will become mainstream metrics like cost per engagement cost per sales return on ad spend all of these will start becoming important and we will have tools to measure them we already have those tools in fact as we speak and this will give that much needed credibility to influencer marketing the third piece which we feel will change and we'll see more and more off will be the influencer commerce will become an integral part of a brand sales channel mix and I think this is especially true of the D2C brands with specialist platforms like trail for example or e-commerce platforms like our own client Mintha and the social platforms like Instagram which have taken a lead in this area while most have stayed in the space of demand generation or are taking but I think we could see a full funnel experience for consumers very soon and I see new business models emerging here the other interesting bit is that the influencer universe that the ecosystem of influences itself will expand both in depth and bit and this has been driven by the rise of Indian short video platforms like the carton Josh repose so much as well as vernacular social and content platforms like share chat and alien we observing an explosion in the talent as well as the audiences that are coming up with these platforms so clearly we're going to see a explosion in the influencer universe as well and and finally there's going to be an interesting play between influencers and their audiences our tools are going to become more sophisticated in understanding the audiences that the influencers have campaign planning will become more data driven and and we will get some precious insights which will be invaluable for a marketer just a small example in Incar we've seen things like for example nano influencers drive a 10x engagement to a macro influencer or even a celebrity but on the flip side a macro influencer drives 15x views to a piece of content versus a micro influencer so clearly the choice of the the campaign objectives will define how you know which influencer type to use whom do you work with and a lot of this will come through data and analytics and these are some of the trends I wanted to touch upon and you will get a very detailed overview of some of these trends in the report itself and in the following sessions and give some interesting panels ahead influencer marketing is clearly here to stay and will keep growing this report is going to be free to download and please do use it and take tips from it and like Novel said right up front give us feedback and as we evolve a lot more to this report thank you take care and hope you all stay safe and healthy I would like to call upon my colleague Kunal Savant the business head for Incar India to now take you through the eForum Incar India influencer marketing report over to you Kunal thanks thanks thanks Ashwin good afternoon everyone what I'm going to do is as follows one is we're going to showcase the kind of work that we've done in the last year or so the video will also probably capture the capabilities of the tool was that we've kept one very interesting interactive session what I would request is please keep your phones ready you'll have to scan a QR code and it's a very simple poll followed by I will take you through some key highlights of the report okay I'm going to share my screen and play one AV the kind of capability is the audience which matters to them as well as content guidelines format guidelines doing competition analysis and so on so forth what I'm going to now request each one of you is is to take out your phones you need to scan the QR code which is right in front of you you're going to do a small poll the objective of this poll is is to drive to hypothesis probably we are able to arrive that so please take out your smartphones scan the QR code and wait for my instructions I'm going to just toggle the screen now okay once again either either you log in through through your web browser you need slido.com and the hashtag and and the password which is hashtag 371879 or you can scan the QR code which is right in front of you I'll wait for a for a for half a minute and maybe then we can start to pull these are all all run-of-the-mill questions nobody's checking your intelligence here these are very very simple questions I'm going to start with the poll right away okay the first question for you is have you indulged in cooking referring to a cooking video online in the last 18 months once again the QR code is still there in front of you for people who want to start now they can also do it let's wait for a minute currently almost 85% of the audience which is taking part in this particular poll have at least preferred ones online looking for a cooking video indulged in cooking in the last last 18 or months it's 90% by now okay I'm moving to the next question thanks for everyone who's participating who's the second biggest male influencer by follower count on instagram you might know the first one uh let's see how many of us know who's the second largest male influencer by follower count Salman Khan by default it becomes Narendra PM Narendra Modi okay Salman is very close we'll wait for for another few seconds and then then just carry on okay so there is a tough between PM Narendra Modi and Salman Khan the correct answer is PM Narendra Modi it's not a Bollywood celeb the first one by the way is Virat Kuli who's got 153 million have you consumed any audio content online online in the last 18 months 80% so 80% of us have consumed some content online in the last 18 months that clearly says the rise in spike in audio consumption 83% now I'm going to the next question how many followers does Virat Kuli have on Instagram more than the population of Australia more than circulation of largest print daily more than the daily reach of the number one GC more than the weekly reach of the largest radio station or all of the above I think this is pretty simple straightforward more than the population of Australia okay 83% feel that he's he's more than everything else that's probably the right answer Australia's population is two and a half crore he's got 12 and a half crores in his followers I'm going to the next question uh who do you think is the largest female influencer on Instagram from below not overall but out of the four mentioned below who do you think is the largest female influencer Komal Pandey 75% of us feel Komal Pandey not Kusha Kapila not Dolly Singh not Anum Anum Darbar but Komal Pandey is by far the largest one okay to surprise everyone the correct answer is Anum Darbar and not Kusha Kapila the next one is clean is who is the largest youtuber amongst them in India out of the four mentioned below is it total gaming uh round to hell Nisha Madhulika or BBK Vines BBK Vines uh sorry it's moving now let's wait definitely BBK Vines uh again to your surprise it is not BBK Vines it is total gaming have you ever purchased a product or brand only because someone else referred it to you have you ever done that have you changed your person's decision or or bought it just because somebody else told 83% of us feel that we've purchased a product or brand only because someone else referred to us it's become 85 uh let's let the counter be at 30 and then 80 79% of us feel that we've bought a product just because somebody else referred to us excellent uh who do you think has the highest engagement rate on instagram engagement rate is nothing else a cumulation of all the interactions that you get divided by the number of followers Virat Kuli, Hardik Pandya, nobody for such an editor or Rohit Sharma we all feel that Virat Kuli currently has the highest engagement rate on instagram 23 respondents we'll wait for 30 and then move on such an editor is the least as per the poll right now uh again to to your surprise Rohit Sharma is the correct answer and not Virat Kuli uh have you looked for online reviews coupon codes before making a purchase decision have you ever done that there are people who never done it okay excellent super so 82% of us did look for for some kind of reviewer coupon code the last question on your screen is who do you think has the largest female follower base amongst the one mentioned below Shah Rukh Khan, Ankit Bhatla, Roshni Walia or Nisha Madhulika who amongst them has the highest or the largest female follower base Nisha Madhulika is that 33 Shah Rukh Khan is that 58 okay Shah Rukh Khan by far 67% followed by Nisha Madhulika then Ankit and then Roshni Walia sorry to disappoint you but Ankit Bhatla has the highest follower base when it comes to female highest base of female followers and not Shah Rukh Khan when we started to poll uh so the poll ends here thank you so much for everyone who's participated uh when we started to poll we said we will we will try uh you know come to hypothesis right the two hypotheses are one uh we all have been exposed to or have been consuming influencer content in some form or the other the second is uh there is definitely a need for database planning at times our intuition our gut feeling might not be correct and we need a solid AI driven platform to help us make the right to the selection thank you so much i hope you've enjoyed this poll uh what i'm gonna now do is i'm gonna talk about few key highlights of of the report uh while i will also uh put up a qr code here and you have an option to just scan the qr code and download the entire code i'm gonna quickly please through few key highlights we put them in three broad sections what's in the future okay as soon as already spoken about a few trends that we see post pandemic okay we will touch upon that what do marketers actually feel what are their pain points what are their challenges and what is the current state of industry there are the three sections that i will cover in the next 10 minutes uh let's look at what's there in the future this this uh section sorry i'm just quickly doing a audio check am i am i audible to all can can anyone of you know excellent thank you thank you so much so trends that will shape the industry ashwin has briefly already spoken about it in fact so i'm not going to spend too much time here direct to consumer definitely a big big area as ashwin already said there are almost 600 plus plus brands major ability and accountability is is not only one of the biggest challenges for marketers but that's actually the elephant in the room probably creators and the platforms both will come together and come at a unified currency later influencer commerce definitely one one big area and you will also talk about it at a later point influencer universe will expand both in depth and with as well as they'll be heightened need for for scientific creator selection which also talks to the right audience let's move on to the new formats while there are there are several traditional formats which are already available there are four key formats which we've kind of identified and you would like to talk about it now one is the audio format let's go back to the poll a small poll that we did five minutes back most of us in the last 18 months have have already consumed some amount of audio what audio does is is basically it allows you to do do multitasking at the same time right plus it gives you a captive audience with short form video formats i think even novel spoke at the beginning of the of the conference is well right where there are a number of platforms which have already opened up in the best way to engage with with the millennials and the gentry is to create a short snackable engaging content that's what what they want and the platform really really fulfills their demand in a very large way live streaming again most of us would have exposed to a live streaming either looking for for some of our favorite celebrities perform live right or you would have taken a masterclass with a popular chef or you would have done shopping looking at looking at our popular creators right social commerce again this trend is is pretty much already there in china and korea okay almost almost 16 percent of the total retail sales today is online social today if you look at social universe out of the 600 million people who are on digital almost 400 of them are already on social media so high social media audience plus growth of e-commerce only one of fuel social commerce in a very very large way next i move to to the aski guidelines self regulation will drive transparency what we actually mean here is one looking at the kind of investments that that brands are today doing on influencer marketing there was anyways a need for some amount of regulation in this industry and the new aski guidelines are definitely a welcome move which will bring in not only some of the regulation but it will also build in transparency transparency and accountability both from a platform perspective as well as as a creative perspective as well there are various disclosure labels the report uh dutch does talk about them in detail hence i am not uh covering this here but yes there is definitely a need to reinforce and educate all these guidelines time and again although we also have an elaborate panel session on aski guidelines later in the day next i will i will now talk about what does our market is also saying okay what we've done is a small survey uh with with couple of our brands okay and what uh and i'm going to now talk about certain findings which also talk about problem statements and as well as why do actually brands invest in marketing primarily okay so one is is is driving concentration while popular misconception would be that influencer marketing at this top of the funnel and and probably awareness is the only objective that we can actually fulfill uh i'm happy to share that most of the marketers uh today invest on influencer marketing to drive consideration which is again a very very big plus point okay the other two aspects which have come out in a very very big way is is virality of content so most of the times you would have realized that a content created by a creator will have much more probability of going viral as compared to a brand name i'm not saying it might not go it might as go as well but the probability of going viral for for a creator content is far far higher second is engagement uh while uh engagement is one of the most common matrix for all the branch major success of influencer marketing campaign it definitely drives business growth as well if you look at several reports okay so while i've given some numbers like 400 million are already on social media 67 percent of them already follow one or two followers it also collaborates with what the poll that we did at the beginning right plus 41 percent of the respondents have said that they bought the product because somebody has has influenced them in buying that again a very very big plus for influencer marketing as an industry i keep reminding there is a qr code on the right uh you can scan the qr code and you can download the entire report please share your feedback eager to hear you next is trust credibility which actually drives customer acquisition so if you look at influencer marketing the two biggest pillars why do brands partner with uh with uh content creators is to write on trust and credibility business creators any which you enjoy with their niche audience and that's why brand wants to partner with them so trust and credibility not just drives customer acquisition but those are the true big pillars of influencer marketing the report then also talks about uh 10 key benefits of influencer marketing okay right from uh increasing brand recall high-quality content so and so forth it largely covers everything that you can think of of why brands today are investing on influencer marketing the next aspect is e-commerce i've spoken uh about it briefly at the beginning also even ashwin test test base but that's a trend that we are we are foreseeing that in the next six to twelve months social commerce or e-commerce will become a very very large category on influencer marketing uh let's let's also talk about certain challenges which the marketers are facing and this is also come out of our brand survey okay the one of the key challenges with brands have identified is keeping up with trends and how to understand the different content but uh while this industry is is extremely volatile evolving by the day there are new there are new uh platforms getting launched there are new format getting launched long format platforms are launching shorter format options while the shorter format options are also exploring to you know gear up for longer format content all of them today are also gearing up for the social commerce boom of course it's it's an ever-evolving uh scenario and you need the right partners who understand the ecosystem very well okay choosing the right creator has been one of the biggest pain points uh and uh and maybe the poll will give you some glimpse of what i'm trying to say at times we we go by names or by gut feeling but what we require is is a data bag scientific way of choosing the influences and not just by intuition and this is where platforms like Inca come into the picture which which make your decisions far more data driven rather than intuition based okay measuring the campaign ROI we've kind of spoken about it already multiple times we also have a detailed panel discussion chaired by maps you want to do that uh later in the day okay another two aspects which is brand safety and authenticity so broad stroke fake followers is one of the pain points of this industry they eat almost 15 percent of the total budgets so so that's that's that's a sizable amount how can uh platforms which are AI and ML driven help verify authenticity credibility and suitability for a particular brand that's also a big challenge which can be resolved through a tech enabled platform uh i'm going to now quickly speak about certain industry landscape uh happy to share the estimated size of influencer marketing is is close to 900 crores exit 2021 uh growing at an at at the cjr of almost 25 percent exit 2025 this is going to be a 2200 crore industry so by no means uh it's a small industry uh if you if you speak to brands there are separate budgets now earmarked only for influencer marketing earlier it might be camouflage between either digital budgets or let's say uh content budgets but most of the marketers today have separate budgets for influencer marketing uh most of them what they said this or in fact more than 50 percent of the respondents have indicated that they're going to increase their influencer marketing spend for almost 25 to 30 percent extremely strong growth potential for this industry uh which are the top categories so we've kind of well into uh looked at uh the in-car tech tool and kind of well in terms of which are the top categories which which advertise on influencer marketing uh so if you look at the top three which is personal care food and beverage and fashion these three dominate almost 55 percent of the volumes on influencer marketing followed by mobile auto telecom bfsso and so forth but but the three categories large categories of personal care food and beverage and fashion i am moving to the to the last slide uh the qr code on the right uh takes you to the entire report you can scan it download the entire report okay so while 900 crores is defined as the size of the industry how much do influencers contribute how much do celebrities contribute okay we've also defined on the right you would see defined different types of creators or nano creators someone who's got 10,000 and less followers a micro creator will have 10,000 to a lack creator a macro creator has has more than a lack but less than a million mega is more than a million and celebrities are are those who got alternate careers either a sports person or or maybe a bollywood celebrity okay influencers today dominate 73 percent of the spends as compared to celebrities which which dominate 27 percent of the spends if you look at different companies your campaign objectives in fact the creator selection is largely defined by the camp by the campaign objective so let's say if the campaign objective is to drive awareness okay then reach becomes the kpi and hence the creator selection likewise if let's say consideration driving consideration is the campaign objective then maybe engagement becomes the kpi and hence the creator selection each campaign that you've seen is is very very customized so there is nothing called as one size fits all here with that i i come to an end to this presentation the qr code here takes you to the entire can helps you download the entire report uh thank you very much for listening i hope this was insightful please share your feedback on the report you're going to hear you thank you so much