Samridhi Katyal decodes the difference between fan & audience

The e4m Mobile Marketing Conference, 2022, witnessed a Fireside Chat between Co-Founder of Fandrum Samridhi Katyal, and Ruhail Amin, Senior Editor, exchange4media & Business World. 

Katyal was requested to share insights on how brands could leverage their fan base to build a bigger brand and how 'Fandrum' does that. “Fandrum gives an opportunity to brands, broadcasters and celebrities to identify the top 10 or 20% of their fans who are doing free marketing for them. Fans go and talk about the brand, advocate and defend brands. This is the biggest difference between fans and the audience. The brands must focus on fans and must nurture them and reward them to leverage marketing and make better content,” Samridhi said.  

Taking the discussion further, Samridhi mentioned the dichotomy between the fan and the audience and how 'Fandrum' is differentiating the fan from the audience. She tells that fans are creators, designers, and community managers. We have subscribers and followers on Instagram, but not fans. I may have liked something and become a follower, but not necessarily I am a fan. So it is a huge difference. The fundamental difference that 'Fandrum' is trying to bring is to differentiate between the audience and the fan. The people who are engaging more those people to get points and rewards and based on psychographic data, the fan is recognised. This is all about knowing your fan, leveraging them and building marketing campaigns around them.”  

Samridhi was further asked to share Fandrum's story. She said “We believe that this is exactly the right time with mobile internet exploding, data becoming cheaper and people having a voice in everything. Now we want to give them what they specifically liked. People talk about content on various platforms. They have their WhatsApp groups and communities, and online forums, but they are scattered and fragmented. Neither fans being validated for being a fan nor broadcaster marketer gets to know who is the person that they want to capture or target and identify as a fan. So in ‘Fandrum’ what we are trying to do is to make that difference, give fans their platforms to communicate, be a creator, and have their voice. Most importantly to recognise who they are and validate them to deliver content to the brands and celebrities.”  

Before closing the session, Samridhi said: “Fans and mobile go together because these days everybody carries mobiles. You can be a creator, influencer, blogger, or vlogger. Mobile has become the most important part of creation. Today fan is merely not a teenager. He is a creator, he is a designer. That skill set people have developed in the last four to five years. That needs to be validated. Brands and broadcasters must come forward and validate them for being a fan.” 

Samridhi also defined how 'Fandrum' was bridging the audience and industry and where she sees ‘Fandrum’ in a couple of years. She mentioned that the whole difference is that in the earlier days there was a system where the fan could write to broadcasters and broadcasters had to spend half an hour reading out those letters. In today’s world more communication is out and more loss to the voice of fans. So ‘Fandrum’ is trying to build the whole ecosystem where the audience can have better feedback to the broadcaster and it is the need of the hour. Less than 5% of content produced is successful because we are not hearing the voice of the fan, we are not hearing what people want to watch. So there is no feedback, this is where the whole 360% ecosystem comes together and where ‘Fandrum’ takes the lead.