 The fifth panel discussion for the day on digital marketing and communication in the age of social media influencer. I'd like all of you to join me in welcoming our session chair for the session. Ms. Mamta Jhingra, founder, lateral sutra. May I welcome Ms. Jhingra on screen. Thank you. Thanks Kathy. A very warm welcome to you. I'd like you to introduce you to our panelists and take the session forward. Yeah. Thank you everyone. I am Mamta Jhingra. I head a specialist communication advisory lateral sutra. We've been in business for close to four years now and have gone strength to strength. Today I'm honored to be here sharing the space with our esteemed panelists. So can I start introducing everybody Kathy? Yes please. Yeah. I welcome and I really feel honored to be sharing this space with the esteemed guests. The first I'd like to welcome Mr. Pranav Kumar, his MD Allison partner, a global PR agency and has to his credit a huge body of work in the consumer and strategic communication. Welcome Pranav. Thank you Mamta. Very nice to be here. Thank you Kathy and the extension media team for hosting this event as always. Very nice to be here with all of you today. Yeah. Second on the panel joins Ms. Rajna Chaudhary. She's the founder and CEO of Media Value Works which is a digital marketing and a PR agency and she's an industry veteran. She possesses over 20 years of experience and has delivered many innovative solutions for large enterprises, SMEs and startups. Welcome Rajna. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you Mamta. Lovely pleasure here. Thank you Kathy and pleasure being in this panel. Thanks for hosting me. Sure. Lastly, Shruti Khanna who comes to us with the experience of 13 plus years in CRM retail communication, consumer marketing and data research and analytics. She's the Deputy Manager of Digital and Retail with Ford. Mr. Anil. Welcome Shruti. You can come back in the meantime. I just get started without taking too much of time. So jumping straight off to the topic, you know, when my four year old on a nice Sunday afternoon came and pestered me and said that mama I want to watch Ryan as an entertainment video. I was completely flummoxed and I was looking for the answers that who is this Ryan and when I looked up for Ryan on Google and I found that he's this nine year old kid influencer who's earning 29.5 million and is one of the highest paid YouTuber who's known for his toy reviews and, you know, fun videos. Now there came a turning point for me that okay the influencer and influencer marketing and how relevant it is that it is impacting and pervading all of our lives. So in 2020 more than 46% of brand mentions which are featured ads were published by Insta with mere 1k to 20k followers. I would just want to, you know, head start into the session and ask each of you. So what is influencer marketing and how is it really turning our world around? I can take a quick stab at it. I mean I think we're living in an age of influence and I think that is only amplified by, you know, the forming of a new generation of influencers. I think from a communication standpoint when we talk about engagement, you know, we've always had, you know, journalists and other stakeholders but influences, you know, certainly are a a category in themselves and now we're seeing varying degrees of specialization, you know, within influencers, micro influencers, influencers across as we mentioned, you know, kid influencers. So really, influencers play a very crucial role today in the entire consumer cycle of, you know, making exchanges decisions. But having said that, we all know because, you know, there are other tactical campaign elements that you have to introduce to be able to engage with customers. But influencers are definitely, you know, gaining more and more prominence as are, you know, the platforms that they are really thriving on. So I think from a communication standpoint, you know, we really have to be creative in how we view, how best can we leverage influencer, influencer engagement, influencer marketing. Great. So just taking off from that point, are we saying that influencers is sort of coming of age and it is a new way of celebrity endorsement? Are they the ones who are actually eating into that space then? Rasha, would you like to go for it? Any of you? No. Okay, Pranav, are you taking that? So I'll share some of my thoughts and how we've been seeing this industry changing versions and versions and versions. And I think we as communication professionals, PR industry, digital marketing, we give it a name, but we've been transforming, I think every six months to a year, there's a new definition of workflow that's been happening. And that's exactly what Mr. Kunal Kishore just concluded. And I logged in and realized that finally it is how we are staying relevant every year, every two years. And the strategies need to accordingly align into the brand that we are handling. So coming to the current stage on influencers, yes, it's as customized as the brand, it's as customized as the strategy. Are you looking to win net new customers? Are you willing to, are you looking at leering your old customers? So it's the journey that it's a cycle and accordingly you need to micro strategize who your influencers are going to be. You know, you may want to have one set of influencers for you to launch your brand, but he's not the guy who probably is having the person or the appeal to sustain you on your journey. So it's as customized and extremely difficult unless we strategize it and we keep filtering. And that's what my thoughts were that, you know, we need to do an auto filter mechanism today, much more than what we ever did in the past because they were defined boxes earlier. Right now there is no place where you know where to draw the line. Everything is blurry. So who the influencers are, how are we going to embed their influencers come in our marketing strategy is all open and to be decided by the PR and the marketing professional as per his or her understanding. Right. So what would be the ideal fitment, you know, so as I like to go back again on the previous examples is when brands used to strategize or marketing professionals used to sit and, you know, put their plans through and look at the fitment with the celebrity. There used to be certain traits that brand had which sort of resonated with the celebrity. Now influencer is a face which is not one. It could be more than one. It can be multiple. So how do you really do the matching of the points that, okay, this influencer, you know, I can pick in on this criteria. So what is the what is the way to really find the fitment for the brand? What are the matrices there? I could use, sorry. Yeah, sure. No, no, go ahead. Please go ahead. Yeah, sure. Thank you. You know, I think from a marketing perspective, we really have to understand on, you know, what is the path to influence, right? And essentially, when we look at influencer strategy, you know, what kinds of influences serve the purpose of a particular demographic that we want to go after. But, you know, these days, you know, it's very easy to go by numbers because it is all about reach and how many lights and all of those things. But I think fundamentally at the core of it, you have to have some level of a methodology on how we select those influencers. So for example, at our firm, the Allison Partners, when we look at, you know, carving out influencer strategies for the clients, we have a very defined method in which we do that. You know, we look at basically influencers as a sum total of reach, influence, you know, credibility and some amount of, you know, X factor about that influencer. So when we look at, you know, a particular influencer, he or she has to bring that all together, the authenticity, the credibility, you know, the relevance, you know, and then that's how you go and, you know, pick out, you know, specific sets of influences that you really want to go after. So it's really, you know, depends upon what the specific campaign goals are. But there's no one size, you know, fits all. Great. Well said, Pranav. Welcome back, Shruti. My question is going to straight hit you now, since you are the data and the number person, and you know, you're always crunching numbers. So what about the ROI in this whole era of AI and algorithms, where everything, you know, the followers can be bought, they can be influenced, the likes, the shares. So how does the real assessment as far as impact engagement and call to action for the brands is concerned? How do you translate that all into ROI? So, you know, Mamta, let me put it this way that if you want to go for influencers, you can't really put that into numbers play directly. It is an indirect play. If the influencer is putting your story to the audience correctly, if your influencer is being able to build the gap, bridge that gap between you and the audience, the consumer, then eventually down the line for as long as you want to do the influencer campaign. And you will see the results. So at Ford, how we do it is we don't, we don't believe in, and I'll speak for myself as we don't believe in going for the big influencers rather the smaller ones who can build the story for us. Because you want to have a longer association which can build your brand, which can build the resonance for your brand with the consumer. And, you know, it's a very interesting one that we did. In fact, in 2017, we did an EcoSport after the EcoSport launch, we did a 100 days of EcoSport campaign where we had more than about 50 influencers who took to the roads, drove the EcoSport and did an entire story telling for us. And the stories that came out of them, so each of them gave, I think, about two stories. And the stories that came out of them have been building, have been the building blocks for us even today. You know, the beauty of the vehicles, the beauty of how they've done the entire blocks and how they've built it up, we still use that content. So it's about stories, how you tell, it's about brand building and it's about how long can it continue and build that resonance for the brand. Eventually, we will end up in numbers, like we spoke earlier. You know, ROI is, you can't live without it. You can't run a business without calculating that, right? So bottom line, you will eventually get on to the ROI. But to start with, yes, you start seeing that you want to calculate an ROI only when you will start seeing the impact of your influencer story telling. So that's a very interesting point you have brought in Shruti and I'm going to take on from there, although I never thought and prepared for that. So the shelf life of a campaign, so how an influencer puts out a content can, you know, the campaign may or may not still be around. But because the impact of that content has been so far reaching that, you know, it can cut through the shelf life of the campaign. So there I would like to bring in another point, which is often how an influencer marketing, when the influencer's role or, you know, his own persona or his personality evolves into something else. So today, like we had been speaking about it, today, I could be a 25 year old, you know, young and happening person and I'm just looking at brands and creating influencing content for brands which are lifestyle or which are fashion and retail. And tomorrow I get married and I could be early in a family way and I could be a mom to be or a parent to be and I could start influencing my, you know, followers into that. And then, you know, I could the journey could be that I then get into fitness or, you know, other aspects of health and wellness. So how does it all connect with the brand really? I mean, the evolution of the influencer with the campaign or does it or does it keep changing really? Any of you please. So I think it has to be the influencer that you select who sticks with the brand values and the message that you're wanting to deliver. If you select someone who is a small influencer, a small influencer will stick with you. You will have an opportunity to deliver a message for a longer period of time and sustainance with it. And which could mean inclusion of your brand if it fits in with the different phases of that particular influencer, right? It's a personal take or and it has to fit with your marketing strategies very clearly because as an auto brand or let's say as a, you know, if you're a if you're an F and B brand, if you're an F and B brand, you would not go with someone who is purely into fitness fitness because that will go completely against your brand perspective that you want to outlay, right? You want people to buy, not to get completely into fitness zones and not, you know, buy the product. So similarly, it has to fit in. And if that fits in with someone who's moving up a curve, I think it is beneficial because you see the journey and the growth within. So it's important. Yeah. And that's a good point. If I can just say it very quickly, also influences are also evolving themselves, right? You know, they're adapting to newer content formats. You know, they have, you know, multiple interest areas. You know, I think it's actually doing lockdown, for example, I think brands are using influence more because they also got increasingly creative of what they can do to adapt. That it's, you know, it's an English or, you know, it's in multiple languages. You know, they just need, you know, they are coming up with some creative ideas which really allow brands to, you know, story there in a very different way, right? So certainly influencers are also like, you know, phone brands, for example, today are not just engaging with, you know, consumer tech influencers, but in a lifestyle, fashion and so many other categories, there's just so many ways that influencer allow, you know, the brand story to be told in a very creative way. So I think that's very interesting from a brand perspective. Excellent. I think that's well said. My next point would be about the brand. So does influencer marketing really work for a particular brand or target of audience? Does it always work only for the millennials? Does it always work for the brands which are into lifestyle health, fitness, or how does this entire, you know, mechanism really work? Or is it is it only the global brands or is it only the local brands? So how does it really everything falls in place? I think I'll want to hear Rachna Ji on that. Yeah, because, you know, she's been doing this for a very, very long time and I like to really hear in terms of brands that she's handled and led. What's that experience been so far and how do they take it? Thanks. I'll just try to reflect back on the experiences. Largely, we must, you know, we have this B2B and a B2C as one blanket sanction to understand that influencer marketing or any strategy for a B2B works very different. B2C would work very different. For B2B, the kind of brands we've been handling and, you know, a lot of ERP business and a lot of CRM business or BFSI focused or auto focused manufacturing focused, the influencer remains an influencer, but he's actually the most important influencer in the buying decision of the sales cycle. And he is actually in this business of B2B marketing that we handle. He is the CIO and the CTO of the organization. He clearly gets categorized as the key influencer. But that time the guy's influencer is the decision maker of the process of that entire business. That's the other side of the story, but we have to still work towards how do we influence him and he's the CTO or the CIO, you know, whereas in a B2C we have seen influencing is towards consumers or how do you influence a consumer. Now in this day and age, we have the experience, the customer experience of CX and the experience of UX, which is the user experience, the user interface. In the digital arena, the interface today is the window, the app, the screen that the consumer is watching and he discovers his entire brand. The discovery cycle of he trying to make a decision is quite a lot now influenced by the user experience of the app or the interface he has. And at that point in time, the influencer whom we use in the marketing strategy may or may not have any relevance while he's doing the, while he's trying to log in and view and make a decision about which kind of retail, which kind of t-shirt or what kind of stuff is he going in for. You know, so as marketeers, we need to be very clear about where we want to spend our dollars that we need not then get into the traditional mindset or we need an influencer who's going to influence my consumer, whereas today the consumer is actually largely influenced by a very smart app. You know, so we should rather decide on spending in the UX of the web interface and rather not spend money there. So it's for us to decide and we need to filter this out in our mechanism because the brand's success is finally what we are accountable to deliver in our ROI campaigns. And you know, that's finally we cannot go back and reflect back and figure out who actually that influencer didn't work actually my app really functioned well. So the number of downloads, et cetera becomes a huge thing today. And how you kickstart the downloads and how you kickstart a digital campaign may or may not always be driven by the influencer. So there is a little changing phase there in the CX and the UX is where the influencer market is getting slightly diluted or taking away the largely large brands, you know, big brands, you know, Marcus Nike, the big guys, maybe some big celebrity influencer can still be there because that placement is a different placement in the brand journey in the brand identification. But smaller brands who are quick and digitally launched just 48, you know, I think 24 months and the brand has become like it's like overshot the numbers. He is playing a different game. He is not playing the traditional strategy game. So we need to gauge from there what to propose as our strategy. I'm going to do a question on, you know, for who does these influencer campaigns work for, right? I think by and large what we've seen is that, you know, there are probably four industries sets which are more have more propensity for influencer marketing campaigns. And those are consumer electronics, you know, travel, you know, food and beverage, lifestyle, and also increasingly now, you know, for national services. I think those categories are seeing a surge in, you know, influencer brand and brand marketing. Of course, Shruti will also agree that, you know, what is also a user of influencer marketing. And then in terms of, you know, who is really consuming that content from, you know, all of the influencers they follow. Obviously, you know, the Gen Z and all of those types of demographic audiences are, you know, more likely to, you know, go by a influencers recommendations or inputs. But I think having said that brands are also sort of spreading the wings to even, you know, all sorts of age groups and demographics, right? You know, you have influencers that are, you know, targeting, you know, 50 plus 60 plus age group, you know, they're doing some great content. So I think it really depends on, you know, what do you want from, you know, your campaign. But we're seeing some very interesting examples come up as well. Yeah. So that just brings me to another point on the data and the numbers, which is, so if you really look at the sky sort of a situation, so in marketing mix, are you seeing influencers increasingly eating into the share of other marketing functions or other marketing tools? And if yes, then what would be the immediate? Is it eating into PR? Is it eating into convention advertising? Is it eating into our door? So where do you think the, you know, the shift is really happening? Any of you please? I think Shruti's best place to answer that. So, so let me put it this way that it is and the last numbers that I read, I think were almost about 40% of marketing budgets for some brands are going into influencer marketing. And this is during COVID, COVID and post COVID situation. But as for as a brand, if I talk, we strongly believe that our owners are real influencers. And if you will see how we sort of do influencer marketing, it's more of owner based marketing or storytelling formats through the smaller influencers. That works very well for us because if as an auto brand, if my owner believes in my brand, that's the key that I need for the people for the rest of the people to believe the best form of marketing has always been word of mouth. And we still remain to, you know, we still stick by it. And if an owner believes that, you know, the Ford, any, any vehicle or for any car or Ford is, is good and is uploading pictures is uploading content. We actually develop that content and almost about nine to 10 stories in 15 days, in about 15 days times are of our owner stories. So if I if I'm getting owners who are actually sharing their own content, they are my biggest spokesperson, right? So they act as the influencer for us. So if you talk to me about as Ford, is it eating into our marketing budget? I would say no, because we've always sustained on the fact that our owners are our biggest influencers. And we use smaller influencers. We use the smaller influencers to do storytelling for us, which connect more with the audiences with the right segments. And we do a lot of it through drive thruers through giving them the vehicles to drive around and build the stories and content around it. So to answer your question in short, for us, not as of now. Interesting point you raised, because we've actually done a report to understand influence across Asia Pacific. And in that, when we surveyed, you know, audiences, we found there was a category of consumers who we described as engaged enthusiasts, right? So these exactly are your customers. And the typical behavior we see of is that, you know, these folks, you know, spend about three to four hours, you know, online every day, you know, they are more likely to make recommendations, you know, following the queue of other influencers within their personal networks also. So these really are sort of your super influencers who have the ability to harness tremendous influence for your brand, right? So I think just as your, your customers go for your Ford cars, you know, it's the same thing. So we're definitely seeing, you know, pockets of influence emerge within those categories also. So as I see, then it's the specialist influencer, it's the micro influencer, and now it's the nano influencer too. So yeah. So so in that sense, we it's very right to say that consumer can be your influencer too. For sure. Yeah. So my last question would be on the rise of social commerce. And maybe Rasha, you would like to address this that how it is meeting the way I mean, you correctly said it with your, you know, analogy on UX and the user interface and the consumer interface. So what does this search of platforms like Nisho, SimSim, Bulbul, how do you see digital marketing coming off age and the role of influencer changing there? I think you're on mute. Great. Sorry. Thanks, Anta. So on this social commerce, which is really kicking on now is eating into the industry because when you actually are doing, you know, when you are in journey or shopping or logging in, you will see immediately, you know, they start giving you points for referrals. And there's so many, you know, weekly incentives coming in, referral incentives coming in, it is motivating you to add 10 more friends and you get bonus and you get this. So all this is only just going viral. And you are creating your influencer cycle right over there in your own friend list and forwarding. Again, the other guy does it. So it's a chain which is building on and it is catching on, which may eventually it will add to being a little dent into the mainstream marketing budget that was done because through influencer through chain, chain, chain, chain, they are capturing a larger market share. So every time you buy a small little thing on Nisho, you add five more friends and five more friends, add five more friends and they are getting referrals and they are getting margins on sales and they're getting weekly bonuses. So why not housewives are doing it, young students are doing it? So I think it is so easy now. So we need to recognize this and realize and accordingly adapt to our strategies, you know. Yeah. So with the crash of TikTok that happened recently, my only question is that how many such platforms and for how long? So is there is there any kind of a sustained model that you can look at or is influencer marketing really here to stay or if yes, would it be always platform driven? So any of you could take that on a closing note? Well, I think in the modern hyper connected era, I think influencer marketing is here to stay. And so are social platforms. And as we discussed earlier on our chat today, that platforms will come and go and social media networks obviously do a great job of really coalescing cultural insights, what is the pulse on consumers on here at the particular given point of time. So TikTok was emblematic of the short form video, which has become so popular. So we'll see more and more platforms emerge over time. Like we talked about Clubhouse is emerging in the US, which is audio only platform. And very soon you'll have super influences on if I already have influences like Elon Musk on Clubhouse. So this is going to be continuing for the foreseeable future. As long as we're online and hyper connected, there will always be influence, there will always be platforms and marketers have to become increasingly more and more creative to be able to gain their interest. So yeah, I mean, sort of long answer, but yeah, then he'll stay. Anything on the parting note, Rajna, Shruti? I think influencers are here to stay. We need to very carefully define our marketing strategies, whether we want to market using an influencer as the core or using him as part of your strategy. As part of a strategy, I feel is more beneficial because it's longer stay, it's sustainable, and it remains in the mind rather than using it one time and letting it go off. So as a brand, you have to be very cautious to decide how you want to deliver your message in the longer run, not short sighted. And Rajna, how would you like to continue? So influencer is here to stay. We need to only identify who is the influencer for me at this point in time and who is going to be the influencer for me in future. So maybe his role, the role of influencing will always be a part of something will be a part of content will be a part of our industry. And we are at an edge here because if we adapt to the digital strategy, then we have a super edge over other only digital guys, you know, because in PR, in communications, if our skill is content creation storytelling, we are the masters on it. Then what we need to acquire is the digital skillset. And then we top it up. So that's absolutely. And it would be, you know, all of us need to go through the journey on learning and adding digital, complete digital ecosystem should be embedded into the PR industry. And then we roll it over there. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. I would just like to conclude by saying that with the shrinking size of the new the newsrooms is a huge opportunity. And who knows tomorrow on your screen pops up a journalist delivering music in a more entertaining way. And it could be your personal journalists reporting to you. So the only constant as it is in every phase is change. So I think we as marketers are always get to that. And we got to keep boarding our buses sooner than later. Thank you that we come to the end of the session. Thanks. Thank you everyone.