‘We are living a reel life more than real life’

Content creators are becoming a huge part of brand marketing in today’s world. While content earlier just used to be for television, now digital and social media have paved the way for influencers to create value for different companies. e4m Content Jam held in Mumbai on December 8^th witnessed a panel discussion between content creators and how they were redefining the customer journey.

The panel was titled ‘The roadmap to create value for brands: The power of creation, co-creation & collaboration.’ It was chaired by Makarand N, Vice President: Content+, Mindshare. Others on the panel were Abhishek Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer- Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, Amit Sethiya, Head of Marketing- SYSKA Group, Esha Nagar, Managing Director- Nepa, Naveen Murali, VP - Head of Marketing- Pepperfry and Samyukta Ganesh Iyer, Vice President and Head of Marketing- Kaya.

The discussion was about how collaborations with influencers, events and content creators were helping build brands and how marketing is moving beyond traditional media.

Amit Sethiya, Head of Marketing- SYSKA Group spoke about how they believe in where to put the money when it comes to marketing different categories. “I think the moment you hear the brand name Syska, the first thing that comes to your mind is obviously LED lights because that's what the journey started with around eight to nine years back. So, when we are talking about content creators, for us, it completely depends upon which segment you are addressing in terms of your marketing programs.

If you look at categories like led and wires and fans, I think there we are able to bring in the typical brand ambassador and put this in the entire marketing programs and serve content to the audiences. Now, when you look at the new age categories, like grooming appliances, wearables, hearables and smart home products in these categories, I think we realized that it's not really important for us to invest huge money in bringing the face to the brand because ultimately the millennials, and the Gen Zs are still discovering their passion. They're trying to identify themselves. So, I think there are different mindsets.”

Esha Nagar of Nepa explained the content creation ecosystem in the most elaborate yet brief way possible. “I think it's just that we are living in reel life than real life at the moment. If we talk about the world today, we're sitting with consumer creators at a tally of 50 billion content creators and for this planet earth with 8 billion humans, that's a big number on content creation itself. So that's happening on the creative side and creative or creator economy.

If we talk about brands, I think that it has never been a better time when brands wanted to create communities, when brands wanted to create more long-term effect of how they're engaging with the consumers, and how much they could sort of push themselves from being undifferentiated commodities to being very differentiated personas. So, there's this creation happening, there's a need for the brands and on the other side, the consumer has started believing in purpose, which is what is the brand really standing for? What are you really giving to me from a short-term or a long-term perspective? Because we are opening up to a generation of doers with Gen Z Gen Alpha coming our way. So, I think it's brands, consumers and a parallel stream of creation and it just converges like magic. There is a need, there is an offering and there is consumption. So, this is what is happening which is the complete explosion, which is giving rise to a creator economy like never before.”