Leveraging the power of content in the digital landscape

Over the years, video content has become a powerful tool for marketers across categories as it can capture attention, convey information in an engaging way, and build emotional connections with the audience.

At the seventh edition of vdonxt asia Conference hosted by afaqs!, a panel of experts delved deep into the theme ‘brands and the dilemma of content creation and how are brands effectively utilising video content.

The discussion was moderated by Sreekant Khandekar, co-founder, afaqs! The panellists were Akshay Gurnani, co-founder and CEO, Schbang, Anuj Gosalia, co-founder and CEO, Terribly Tiny Tales, Richa Singh, MD, India and The Middle East, Natural Diamond Council and Shekhar Banerjee, chief client officer and west head, Wavemaker India.

In his opening remarks, Gurnani of Schbang said that one needs to keep in mind whether the brand is a category leader, what is the current stage of the brand in its life cycle.

“Brands like Amul and Fevicol do not necessarily need to create content on why they are important, rather they can just pick up on moments and create content to be top of the mind,” Gurnani mentioned.

Singh of Natural Diamond Council, explained the relevance of different kinds of content in marketing a brand.

She said, “The smaller pieces of content do not necessarily replace one grandiose ad film. However, brands cannot survive by just doing big ad films and they need to look out for smaller key moments. And this is a combination of the life-stage of the brand, its audience, and the category.”

According to Banerjee of Wavemaker, while the 30-seconders and video content work, it is also one of the laziest ways of building one’s brand in today’s time.

“This is because, over the years, the ROI for standard or top funnel advertising has come down. This is where content steps in and helps to get better buck of the spends that brands do,” he stated.

Is the content game becoming extremely ROI driven?

Gurnani believes that brands need to spend five times the money they spend on content creation on promoting the content because of the complex algorithms of digital platforms. 

However, Singh is of the opinion that for Natural Diamond Council, the idea is to enable category creation and if there is no traction on a particular content piece post spending a certain amount then the brand stops. 

One of the challenges, that Terribly Tiny Tales has been able to address, as per its co-founder and CEO Anuj Gosalia, with video content and ROI is that if brands try to approach content by creating stories/IPs, then it leads to great organic engagement. 

Watch the full video here: