 Good to have you here Kaushik. Thank you for being here and thanks to people who have stayed back It's been a long day of you know back-to-back sessions as I mentioned at the start This is an initiative. We started last year the influencer marketing initiative and we launched a Report in the influencer marketing space which maps what's happening In the ecosystem the size of the ecosystem in fact the report that we've released today along with Inka Which is a group M unit says that influencer marketing is likely to touch two thousand five crores in the next few years And this is not as we have reiterated many times This does not include spends that go on influencer the buying of media through influencer marketing This is money that is being spent by brands like sugar cosmetic on you know hiring influencers using them across various Media verticals, so thank you for doing this Kaushik. Thanks for being here Kaushik as you all know is the co-founder of India's one of the hottest sort of we can call it startups So and and as we know it's a company that is widely followed on social media And while I was going through the report that we've curated with group M. It also says that you know a Cosmetics in beauty is a category that lends itself naturally to use of you know influencer marketing In fact, it is one of the categories that is the highest in terms of use of influencer marketing And you guys have been you know experts at it So tell us Kaushik what are the things you know a few things that sugar cosmetics has done, right? That has made it one of the most followed sort of you know brand companies on on social media Like building a brand that are always starting troubles, but we will switch tracks and grab someone else's mic if need be and channel If need be but novel. Thank you so much for having us here. I know she mentioned that this is a very Much-awaited session. I hope it's not because it's the last session, but I'm here to share whatever I can be very candid about it Novel you mentioned how sugar has been scaling and we're being seen as experts of this I want to add a caveat to that. I think we've been at it for a very long while We've been very long-term believers So okay, then I key at some point in time you run out of mistakes to make and things start working I think we've seen that happen and That has compounded over a period of time, but to your question I think when we started building sugar a lot of our investors the markets at the look guys can care is a much larger Category why you trying to build cosmetics? It's it's growing, but it's also smaller base Now we observe something very interesting back then because consumption of content was happening on personal devices It was easier to get traction on an engagement on honor color like honor category like cosmetics because see today I mean, it's beautiful. I was taking notes from Shivani your session about how skincare brands have You know work social media so beautifully these days But back then we used to feel that at the end of the day skincare dissolves in your skin So it would be very hard to Engage the audience and it had to be more nuanced for us You unpack a box of lipstick and you swatch it and you see color and you see the audience react So back then when people are just figuring out What to make up the content? It was a very very hungry online population that wanted to learn what to do with makeup how to use makeup So it wasn't it was a mix of education and also entertainment Edutainment if you will a much abused word these days, but I think that having done it consistently over the period of time Helped us because and I want to reiterate this we can't always over-index on Engagement because I was just having a conversation yesterday. Where in I sort of banned my LinkedIn My my my colleague my dear colleague who leads that saying that they are It up all you got and they're like engagement. I'm like I'm like you can do polls, but then unless you opine on the result of the poll you're not building thought leadership So what is this poll? I'm boosting my engagement numbers That's cheating. So I think we've got to be true to what we stand for similar to Running an Instagram page. I mean there are incredibly high engagement accounts and pages That are a meme factory. There's nothing wrong with being a meme factory But then as a brand do I want to be a meme factory? I can't be at best I can do one out of maybe I don't know 20 30 posts So some of these guardrails as we scale some of what you measure the difference between primary and secondary KPIs We've been sort of sharpening our stance and tell us very interesting that you make these points and in fact I think a lot of Lot of brands and you know agencies were sitting here today have been kind of struggling with this Entire thing in terms of what KPIs to said and Shivani also made a very important reference to that and there are You know dozens of You know views out there in the market. There are brands who revel and doing memes online Some want to continue to do polls some despite the view some of us hold want to drive sales as the KPI What is a good mix and balance to have four five KPIs which you can measure say over a period of time and also link back To the influencers you are using to judge whether you know what you've been working on worked or not So I'm I'll say this knowing that there are many agencies in this room It is very very dangerous to go down the line of promising sales. I hope my team is not listening to me, but it is Because see at the end of the day No matter how and where you market ultimately balls down to the funnel awareness interest, you know desire and action So in India, you can't force somebody to buy your product They will buy your product when they want to buy your product So your only option is to be in that consideration set at the time when they need that casual or when they need the vitamin C serum So Zavarta said that you can't make someone buy it. So then what are we solving for you can pump in coupons tweak discounts? It's not gonna build sales. So if the conversation is around sales I know sometimes to meet sales numbers you have to promise sales but I think it's not a very honest conversation and So I actively discourage such conversations and say that okay It's not that we will not measure anything But I will hold you accountable to reach I will hold you accountable to engagement Impressions sales. I'm okay to let it go because you know as long as I'm in the consideration set and people are in the funnel Then the product team has to work on how my product used to say at the cart percentage increases How my ad to cart to check out percentage increases your job is to get the person to walk to my store That's it because I think baby as a new brand people don't even care about you So you're not in anybody's consideration set. I think content marketing is a lot about featuring in people's consideration set Anything above that is not being honest. I think You know this takes me back to the old days of you know start of television in India where people were just doing Advertising on cricket or other programs just to be in the consideration set when you were coming up with you know Brands owned by behemoths like levers and you know proctors and proctor of gamble proctor and gambles of the world And you just wanted people to be able to sample your product look at your product I think content marketing and all of these new age digital platforms are in many ways reinventing all of that learning again in There I say, you know far more complex manner Tell us now moving on to you know Cauchy the sort of the entire gamut of Influencer marketing one aspect and the perhaps the most Important aspect here is the use of influencer itself, right? And this is kind of you know an evolution of how brands came to use a use brand ambassadors, right companies have been using brand ambassadors for as long as advertising has existed and Today that use of influencers has got very complex. There are you know a-listers and there are macro influencers Micro influencers nano influencers when you keep going down the funnel look at, you know Smaller influencers who might have deep penetration, but not as wide in terms of following What is your view in terms of how do you look at this entire piece? And how do you use each category of influencer and for what kind of activity that you're looking to do? fabulous question. I think See historically the best part of the last decade is that has democratized Influence on purchasing thanks to a rise of digital influences now Everything is clubbed under that your micro nano micro nano and your celebrities as the as the three pies that was put up I think what we do is we ask ourselves What's the desired? Why are we thinking of engaging with someone and I think that has very clear distinct answers We are either engaging with an influencer for content Or we are engaging for media or we are engaging for just trust and I'll just Add a new install of that. See initially when we used to do influencer marketing earlier, we said, okay Wow, this is really expensive, but then she's got Crazy following. So let's just you know Dilpe Patarache, you know Push our content and we used to wait that okay I'm gonna be featured in this celebrities post and when we were featured we were aghast And I'll tell you why we were aghast because firstly our story appeared sandwich between 12 stories, okay? Cut cut cut cut. I'm like, okay, you know, I didn't even feature and even the post It's like a very see it's important to understand a Struggler influencer is gonna take your content You know by paraphernalia about it around it and make a post which is sometimes outstanding They're gonna spend six hours for a look now up a Let's say a macro influencer He or she doesn't need to take so much effort to earn the five lakhs She will out of making a post so why will they take that effort? So we are very clear that if there is a campaign that needs to be amplified using media That's when we really hit the Celeb accounts and that's when we really you know invest money in the macro accounts, but on a daily basis You know, we have a you know, we have a small team in us that where there's somebody who we internally jokingly call it the casting vector Okay, it's her job to uncover people who are under 5k Influencers and you know, we have done this before wherein we have spotted someone who had Exceptional talent and we restart and said that you know what we have a 2 million plus account on Instagram We love your work. What do you want? Take any product you want? We want to feature your work and for them they want recognition earlier recognition was still Not very tightly coupled because you had to tag them now with collaboration posts It's become even easier to give credit and they see a huge follower boost. So they take the effort to create outstanding content So whenever we want great quality content, we do that whenever we want media. We do macro Influencers the only catch with the first one is it's like an escalator. You catch them and I'll give an example I saw one of the slides This really talented creator Nagma We used to work with Nagma Ventures sub 10k and you know and many others like her so they start up there It's like an escalator you go go go rise and then suddenly you realize There's they're spiraling out of control 100k 200k and obviously at one point and they stop working with you because they are not the young the early So then we shift them to the media category and say, okay, we'll now work with you only maybe one supporter So it's a never-ending It's a little bit of hard work discovering the new talent But there are so many people who are hungry for that opportunity that so far it's been scaling Yeah, I mean very relevant and and interesting the points you make, you know one of the charts in the report I noticed kind of reflects what you're saying is that the use of celebrity or you know the types of influencers 68% of the influencers used by brands are in the category of macro and micro the least used are celebrity and mega naturally because of cost considerations and the very relevant and important point you just made about the effort they are putting in Nothing against them. That's right. Absolutely. Just the fan following, you know the following on social media brings the traction that you're looking for But this is the sweet spot as we are talking about micro influencers Constitute almost half of the entire, you know influencer marketing pie and these are this is where the sweet spot You know lies for brands. Obviously you want to be judicious in terms of which ones are using One of the things that people keep talking about, you know again the report mentions that Which is that when you work with influencers, one of the important aspects is bringing trust to the table, you know people follow what they say More than what you know A-Lister would say in an in a regular ad, right? But it's a very thin line, right? The trust that followers have on the influencer as well as the trust that the brand is trying to create in the consumer's mind What is your view on this Cauchic in terms of you know when you go looking hiring, you know influencer There is obviously a temptation to hire the best possible person who can deliver the reach and engagement metrics that you are You know looking to deliver on the other hand There is also a very important aspect of creating trust with the consumer and the trust that the influencer has with the consumer So how do you marry these two? They're not contradictory sort of objectives In many ways, but how do you get the best possible outcome on these two objectives? So I think our team makes a clear distinction between whether it's a campaign say it's a valentine's day campaign or a women's day campaign or if it's a New launch outreach because in a campaign a campaign can have a brief Because that's the nature of a campaign that this is the message you want to drive You can't control the message if you're sending products for review because then you're being again dishonest and that You could still get away with trying to control the narrative maybe three years back today You can't because see because if you're sending that to say maybe 50 influencers One of them will be smart enough to know that if I do a contrary and take up this and saying that oh look This brand is trying to control what I want to say they're going to get even more engagement out of the campaign So I think those days are gone. We you know we every brand has to be okay with an honest Review of their product and we are fine with that. So there are many many PR outreaches which Actually, we have very few You know Associations where we have a coupon code. I mean we've often talked about how brands like let's say DV Daniel valentine They've really scaled using coupon codes. We've never been able to figure that out probably because our current crop of influencers They are more used to the cadence of receiving products and reviewing it and we sometimes get mixed reviews Sometimes because you are being honest with the influencers if there is something really off like there was one time When we had sent a product with a mono carton the outside carton It was not pasted as well as it should have they actually didn't put up the post and send the product back to us Completely appreciate that because it saved us some embarrassment on social media I I think that happens because we have that equity with them. Otherwise, they would have posted it Let me come to you know the other side the sort of mirror side of influencer marketing Which is the platforms that you work on and you know the Exit of tiktok from India has opened a whole host of possibilities when it comes to short video platforms You anyway, we've been working with the likes of you know, Instagram and some of the other platform How do you sort of look at the entire mix of platforms when you? Do influencer marketing because each platform comes with its own set of strengths Also lends itself to certain type of content curation Storytelling some influencers might be strong on you know, Instagram while others might be strong on you know short video for example and it's a You know, it's it's not a very simple matrix. So to say while you're choosing Platform influencer that matches that platform and the content that you want to create So how do you handle that matrix in terms of matrix in terms of how do you how do you create your campaigns? So I think we are a little paranoid about this because in our early days I remember Facebook used to be a big deal and one of my really close friends used to run this Blog back then called makeupandbeauty.com. They had a million followers on Facebook and insane traction and The way their traction is dipped as engagement has been throttled on the platform today When I look at people saying that you know, it looks like Instagram is also throttling The engagement should we invest in it? So today in India I mean today on Instagram. We are the amongst Indian consumer brands There is no brand which has a higher following count than us 2.4 million teams very happy I'm telling that in the look 20 30. We have no guarantee whether Instagram will be relevant or not So we can celebrate today, but what are the niches that are you know emerging out of that? Like if you look at Instagram three years back, it was mostly fashion. It was mostly beauty Instagram has become big for Finance, I mean there's there are people like there was finance with Sharon There was there's Nihar They have massive following right so what if tomorrow that becomes mainstream and there's a finance specific social media platform The rises how does a brand like sugar even make a play over there? I don't know today One of the stories I read recently on an international publication is about in America How tiktok is becoming the primary source of you know Niche topic specific education for people. Yes, right. I mean who would have thought about that So which is what scares me because if I look at the pilot switch Instagram is running on other Geographies, they're moving towards live commerce now. I agree life commerce is going to be huge in India But that means they are moving towards the bottom of the funnel, which means you can't focus on top and bottom both Right, which means it leaves the top of the funnel for brands like us Open again and we have to scramble to see which is the next big platform like one of the campaigns We did with March we were insanely surprised because here We're talking about you know impressions in you know hundreds of millions and there in two weeks We are like okay billion plus views How is this happening and then we realize that you know we sugar cosmetics is operating in a bubble We don't know what's happening outside in the new platform Then then now there are guardrails that you know you have to spend so much of influence on marketing on new platform You decide Josh Moj you decide but you have to because otherwise we just want to be left behind I mean absolutely experimentation like you started by saying unless you make mistakes you won't you know get it Right, that's why experimentation is very important for brands as long as it is done with you know the basics in place Tell me you've spoken about you know having Or not having sales as the main KPI What are the other mistakes you you you have made or you've seen other brands make on influencer marketing which you think are you know avoidable and with the changing face of this entire you know influencer marketing piece and the continuous growth of social media platforms Will become even more important as we move along so Don't know about other brands. I have a laundry list of mistakes which we've made. I think Hard sell number one mistake earlier. We used to before we were a bit more nuanced We thought influencers were a sales channel big mistake. I mean firstly nobody likes They're there to create content and receive the love of their fans nobody's there being a salesman for you, right? So early days 20, you know 18 and all that we changed our view on that now Second thing is a bit more nuanced. I see a lot of brands pushing their sales and discounted offers as posts Now here's where I think about a you know couple of years back We took a call and said that look if we want to push a sale I will push it on stories, but I will not push it on my feed and I'll tell you why see Feed make out that they followed me. Hence. I'm in your feed So if I push sales content at some level I'm abusing your trust because in that feed I'm trying to push my sales viewed. I mean, they're just unfollow, right? Nobody wants to follow if you continue to push sales But if I push it in my stories see stories are not intruding upon your feed You are opting to check my stories by tapping on the circle So if you're opting to check my stories, then you see my see my story then take it next time You will not tap my stories, but at least you will not unfollow me and we've had Like every year is different some years you double in revenue some years you scrambled to hit 70% 60% So the many times with different SBUs within the company Will come and say, you know, can you direct some traffic to this platform and we've said that, you know happy to do that But not on feed it has to be on our stories because once a customer actually unfollows you I have never unfollowed a brand and followed the brand back. I don't know so So I think that's a mistake. We also make that yes, you want to amplify that offers and promotions But we're in a hamster wheel cycle, right? I mean, there's some one thing ends like black Friday So I want to go to work now. There's extended black fray in the sale season ever ends Globally now not just in India last one. I I can see the buzzer. We are over time already You know the one of the other fundamental piece the third piece of this entire influencer marketing thing is the content You know with the influencer and then put it on the platform and content perhaps is the most important piece So to say because that requires a lot of creativity that requires a lot of thought that requires marrying One the you know the strength of the platform the following and strength of the influencer While you have a brand philosophy, you know, you know What are the ethos of the brand? Curating that content puzzle is you know the difficult piece so to say because you've come a long way from the 32nd era Right and each platform requires very sort of different custom made approach So what is what how do how do you approach it when you when you look at curating content with such a long list of Influences across multiple platform platforms And present a kind of unified message So earlier we used to make the mistake of You know pushing different adapts of the same content on different platforms big I mean that doesn't help any anyone It's it's not what the platform is built for but I think the the content itself has changed if you remember when Instagram is becoming popular Flatly used to be very popular people used to arrange this take a photo from the top great. It's gone It's dead now right so Now it's people are not people don't care about the product people care about what you do with the product It's more like a not you won't show the iPhone. You're so short on an iPhone. What are you creating with the product? So for a brand beauty brand especially it's incredible how much engagement you can make with the what you can create the looks That's why I think time back to your first question What you create with that is very important and the challenge that I see is that earlier in YouTube? You had six to seven minutes to explain your point and you know show how the look has been paid that got crunched to Maybe 30 second real right now. So the attention span is going to continue to decrease So that what do we talk about that look? This is what we stand for doesn't really change over a period of time But the medium changes and the time span you have of the of your consumer that changes So the brief to the team is very simple even if Instagram allows you 15 seconds of a real Please create it and nine because there is no guarantee that somebody's gonna watch you for 15 Eight second always remember that and eight second is also eight seconds too long perhaps. Thank you with that Cautious. Thank you so much for spending time with us if there are any questions from the audience We'll be happy to take that time permitting maybe two three questions Sam you have something to ask. Can we get a mic to mr. Balsara? Cautious first congratulations on creating a super brand like sugar You know, obviously sugar is a new age Brand and I'm very curious to know, you know, if you're not if this information is shareable What kind of a promotion mix do you follow today? So if you if you're totally spending say a hundred rupees on advertising and promotion and everything I mean how much of it is? Say television how much is influence how much is on paid campaigns Would you like to give us an idea of what a new age brand how it looks at it in your current stage of evolution? Sure, sure, so with one caveat, sir The only caveat is that we are now unfortunately beginning to represent less of a new age brand And now we are like making spend on television which sometimes give me sleepless nights But so I will tell you what our percentage wise current mix is so currently out of our year spend we spend about 30 to 35 percent on television, which Is not what sugar had spent anywhere close to when we were actually growing and we hit the Say 200 crore mark earlier last year. So apart from that, there's about 10 to 15 percent of pure content marketing and influencer marketing There is of course another 10 to 15 percent of actually more 20 percent of performance marketing Which goes into our campaigns with drive the top of the funnel for our website and our apps because that's also a significant part of our Part of our overall sales the remaining portion is the visibility we commit to our channel partners So which is the glow sign boards? The standees the lollipops and the sometimes billboards on months which we do it So that's how the mix is right now, which means almost I mean 40 percent or slightly more of that Advertising spend if you leave out the channel partner is still on TV. I mean, that's a significant number It's TV for this year and as so we are now just beginning to make our annual operating plan for next f5 So we are questioning everything that okay. We did this we finally bid the bullet So what do we do? So there was a brand track again brand track. We never did earlier Now there are people who have come in from larger FMCG companies to accompany So now we are all understanding the importance of it. So we did a band track in say August We're gonna do that again in Jan and if the numbers move then we'll continue. Otherwise, we'll probably roll back a bit of that Very interesting because if there are any TV advertising executives in the room Here's an opportunity for you to sort of tap into a brand that has you know increased pens on TV And is now looking at how did that deliver and whether you want to keep it same or perhaps even increase it further depending upon Right and you know for all of you or you know those of you who who think that the era of television advertising is behind us There is still a lot of juice left in you know TV while you know digital grows and delivers a lot of performance As Kaushik mentioned TV still helps, you know companies like sugar cosmetic scale up build their brand Any other questions? Yes, there's one Dharmin. Thank you I'm Seeing things happen, which just seemed like fiction. I don't even deliberately go to check out the fashion industry or go to say Nica men or any other specialized Say beauty of beauty portals. It just lands up on my Facebook wall or my Instagram wall Every day I see something new Mmm, I don't know what's happened or how technologies evolved But it looks like the plenty of people who are entering the market the beauty market They just have this they just think of a brand They probably just open a dictionary and pull out a name and everything else Appears to be outsourced because how can everybody get into manufacturing? So it's an absolutely crazy situation at an industry level if you are a serious player. How do you? face this virtually a new competitor every day and Specifically, how do you handle the influencers because then they'll be paid by those guys at a higher rate and Those guys may lose money, but then it hurts you too. So both industry level question generally and Influencer level question So you're absolutely correct I keep telling my people that you can wake up book and Ola go to Asangow back with your name printed on a nail Nail paint bottle and that will be a brand you've created ready for us. It's actually become like that I've just made a small joke. This is 10 second joke. Can I tell you I say please I tell my friends It seems to be evolving so much that tomorrow you will have one hand cream for your thumb and one for index finger And it that that's a ridiculous. There's a bum cream now available on Nica for for men I think there are enough women using beauty products now people like you and me are the next order And why is it coming and why is it coming on my wall? We are the next set of customers So so here I have slightly old old school thought here I think the easier it gets to create products the harder it gets to create brands and which is why I Drive the point home with my team that please choose when you want where you want to compete and where you don't want to Compete like the classic blue ocean red ocean like last year. There was a Friend slash competitor of ours that raised all the money. I think that was available in the market Raised the ground with all kinds of ads and free products and television. I'm like You know, it's a complete career. Why are you competing with up? Just sit back relax. Enjoy the flight Let the bank balance come down a bit and then we will compete again because See the graveyard is littered with brands that could have been but discounted themselves till people didn't want them anymore Because in India you again you can't force people to buy if they have to want to buy it. So it's a want category It's not a need category. So preserving a brand. I'm playing the long-term game is what I tell for that Of course, you need money in the bank to play the long term game, which is all that I think I personally try to optimize that Just don't go crazy because the competitor is going crazy with the discounts with the promotions and stick to your long-term plan Fantastic. Thank you so much. Kaushik With that it's a wrap for the thank you Thank you