ad:tech New Delhi: Marketers on how brands can leverage content

The sixth edition of ad:tech New Delhi, the digital marketing and advertising conference, kickstarted at The Leela, Gurgaon on March 3. The opening day saw insightful panel sessions on consumer engagement, data management, media measurement in the digital era, and the use of technology for in-the-moment marketing.

One of the sessions was purely focussed on content and how brands can best utilise it for constant consumer engagement. The panel comprised of senior marketers across industries such as banking, insurance, online music streaming and handset makers. Moderated by Kartik Sathuragiri, director - inside sales and emerging business, Asia Pacific & Japan, Akamai Technologies, the panel discussed 'Content meets Commerce - new rules of content monetisation?'. Citing experiences from their respective fields, the panelists described what content means to them and how they leverage it effectively in order to reach and engage their consumers.

Edited Excerpts.

Nikhil Rastogi, head - marketing and digital business, Citibank

We have identified three consumer passion points - travel, dining, and shopping. We are either creating or crowd sourcing such content. The objective is to move away from the entire business of content creation to actually plug ourselves where consumers are already having conversations around these passion points. For example, Citibank currently, has close to 3,000 dining partners in India. Our research shows that customers tend to visit sites such as Zomato, and hence, their dining journey begins with reading about food on blogs or sites. We, therefore, decided to remain active and connect with them on these platforms. We work with influencers and food enthusiasts on Zomato to create user-generated content. We are trying to bridge the gap between content and commerce by providing special offers and discounts on platforms such as Zomato.

Bedraj Tripathy, associate vice-president - marketing, Godrej Interio

A large part of our research in digital is around content. I believe this medium allows brands to unicast at a high premium. When you buy furniture you buy space, be it a bedroom or drawing room. We are in the process of developing a content platform where a user can develop an entire home in a 3D format. The user has two options on our website - canned content (free of charge) and designer content (paid). At the brand level, we may not be doing something unique, but we constantly want to engage with our consumers. Content capture, I believe, is based on individual need. Hence, publishers must focus on personalised content in order to monetise it.

Rachna Lather, marketing head, Motorola India

Brands must invest in constant consumer engagement. It can't just be at the time of a new launch. Hence, as a company we invest in engagement which will reap long-term benefits. We have a two-pronged approach to content - one with content publishers (partnered with The Quint to cover Bihar elections last year on Motorola smartphones), and the other is in-house content production.

Our vision is to have a platform called Motonation where we will create and crowd source content and get consumers to explore their passion points. We have identified passion points such as movies, music, sports, technology, and fashion. This content will educate, entertain and empower the users. Our on-ground experiential campaign Moto Spotlight had us take a Moto bus to 11 cities in 60 days. We converted the bus into a travelling stage where performances were held. Our approach to content is fun, and entertaining, which empowers users. Our content educates users on how to use technology and mobile better.

Anika Agarwal, head - marketing, Max Bupa

In this era of free content which is readily available, it is crucial to ensure that a brand's content is credible and relevant to a user at that time. Health insurance is a serious topic and users tend to generally search the internet for information. But, since there is an immense amount of content available over the internet, its credibility needs to be ascertained. For us, content is not just about acquiring new customers, but it is about credibility, context, (making the relevant content available at the right time) and personalisation. We struggle in India to attract content creators to provide niche content. Therefore, we borrow a lot of content from our global counterpart because there is content marketplace outside India which we are trying to develop in the country.

Mahesh Narayanan, global chief operating officer, Saavn

Increasingly, the content consumption in music is moving away from Bollywood to regional, and 92 per cent of our consumption is on mobile. We have reworked our advertising model where our advertisers can buy users' time. We observed that when a user is consuming an audio content his/her phone's screen is dark, hence, display advertising does not work. We've made our ad model native to user experience where a user is exposed to a 15-second audio spot ad combined with a display ad which interested users may click.