Influencer Marketing Unplugged: From experimenting to mainstream
Influencer marketing came under focus on Day 1 of DIGIXX Summit & Awards 2022, the flagship event of Adgully for the Digital industry, held on April 6, 2022. The panel discussion on ‘Influencer Marketing Unplugged’ tracked the journey of influencer marketing from the testing of waters by marketers to becoming mainstream and an integral part of brands’ marketing strategies. The panel was moderated by Vaibhav Odhekar, Managing Director, Anymind Group, and the panelists included:
Kapil Ohri, Deputy General Manager & Head Digital Marketing, Dabur
Rahul Regulapati, Founder, galleri5
Maanvi, Editorial Lead, Vitamin Stree
Vaibhav Odhekar laid the foundation for the discussion by stating, “Most of us come from a core digital marketing background and we have seen the days, where spends and overall, digital was something where it was being said, take some money and let’s try and experiment. But I think even for influencer marketing that stage is long gone and now you know that this serious interest across the influencer base has grown significantly. Where users are, where brands, agencies and platforms are, eventually the marketing dollars flow.”
Agreeing with Odhekar, Kapil Ohri said, “Influencer marketing is mainstream now and mostly every brand that’s there on digital is now doing influencer marketing. In fact, some of the brands are now being built only by influencers, so the situation has completely changed now.”
At the same time he said, “I won’t say it will replace paid advertising on digital, but it will continue its own journey. Let’s say the bigger the video platforms that we look into such as YouTube or Facebook, Instagram, the bigger the reach builders. They will continue because they have other capabilities of sharp targeting which we definitely want, but when it comes to doing mass marketing or having mass reach via influencer marketing, I think both are achievable depending how or what tactics you use. The most critical part I think is the brand task in hand and where the brand is in terms of its journey, if it is an established brand.”
Commenting on his experience with influencer marketing as an e-commerce channel, Rahul Regulapati said, “It depends on even if it’s an e commerce platform or a D2C brand. Usually when they are starting a campaign, they have some goals, but sometimes it is not very explicit. When we work with brands, we are trying to essentially figure out what is the primary goal of that particular campaign, or that project or whatever the budget that has been assigned today. I think the first important thing is to understand what the objective is – are they trying to drive awareness, are they trying to drive sales, are they trying to drive engagement or are they trying to just maybe build a community around a particular message? I think therein lie some of the answers, whether they want to go with some kind of mass media, TV, print, Facebook ads, etc., or do they want to look at influencer marketing out there.”
Speaking on where the creativity aspect lies and whether it is tilted towards influencer or how brands regulate something in the middle, Vitamin Stree’s Maanvi said, “In our experience, we have seen brands going for influencer marketing. Very clearly, they want to build brand awareness or reach an audience that they wouldn’t usually get in, maybe have much more original, much older ways of putting the word out there and it’s also, in fact, really useful for brands that are just building their awareness or who are just entering the market. If you already have a category, then you might be coming to influencer marketing for various reasons, but if you want to create a category itself or at least speak to that very niche and specific kind of an audience, then influencer marketing is a good option.”
Adding to that, she remarked, “As for the creativity aspect of it, I think, in our experience when we have worked with brands, as long as we know exactly what it is that they want to do, we have sort of the editorial creative freedom to come up with ways in which we want to put forth that message, because at the end of the day, if you are approaching influencers, they know their audience the best.”
These are edited excerpts. For the complete discussion, please watch below:
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