Is the era of specialized influencers here?

The 6^th edition of DIGIXX Summit & Awards 2022, the flagship event of Adgully for the Digital industry, turned the focus on ‘Is the era of specialized influencers here?’ The panel discussion was moderated by Rubeena Singh, Country Manager, Josh, and the panelists included:

Mansi Zaveri, Founder and CEO of Kidsstoppress.com

Enaakshi Kotwal, Choreographer, Influencer & Media Professional

Ishan Jindal, Founder, Wobb

Resha Jain, VP-Content Marketing, SUGAR Cosmetics

Rubeena Singh started the discussions by stating, “India, as we all know, is a mobile-first ad economy because that has only accelerated the use of social media platforms, with an increasing number of people watching, engaging with it and sharing content that they like and this exponential rise in the use of social media has further given rise to this whole influencer lead communities around common themes, interest, creativity and given the large population that we have of about 1.3 billion realizing the potential of these communities, for which engagement and conversion is extremely compelling for marketers in this new world.”

Speaking about the journey of Kidsstoppress, Mansi Zaveri said, “Being from a marketing and communications background of almost 12 years before I started kidsstoppress.com, it was a marketer's mind thinking that increasing 60% of your waking up is going to be in front of a device, why are we not communicating to the parents in that space and the second one was that there is going to be an upsurge in millennials where you are going to be rooted in your background, but there is also this conversation that's parallely happening on Google.”

Enaakshi Kotwal spoke about her journey as an influencer and said, “I come from a mass communication background and I was working in the media sector. I worked with various channels and radio stations.Besides that I had a dance side to me where I was a performer. I was teaching and others performed and I was performing on stage as well. I had this huge thing of expressing myself, so I found social media as a way to do so, and when I started influencer marketing 3-4 years back. Influencer marketing was coming up and I started, since I am a content person I said that this is a huge platform to express myself on a weekly basis or daily basis, and so it initially started with dance, and then I realized that I enjoyed other stuff also like, for example, fashion and there was another side of me, which was entertainment. Interviewing people and Bollywood celebrities.”

Ishan Jindal added here, “It has become like a serious business for a lot of people. I think, two years ago, it was very different from Now. So this is something clearly that has happened in the last two years. I feel like that it can kind of be boiled down to creation of an opportunity which wasn't there two years ago, when I say that today. The time spent by people of all ages on social media has increased significantly, so people actually present on behind those screens, a lot more and of all age groups. If people are present there, why not hit them then. Second after the Covid, a lot of movement stopped. You can't put banner ads anymore. While you look at the opportunity was created long back of what the base started to happen long long ago with. Internet penetration of the Jio, smartphone penetration channel, these were very essential criteria necessary that kind of led you to not just fully go digitally and connect with your Customers but those bases set up at the right time, Covid came at the right time, and eventually this became very serious. Covid did two things, one,  brands finally understood that you have to go digital because that's where the audiences are and there's a lot of digital creators. A lot of people sitting at home started creating content following their passion, so now a myriad of creators are present.”

Sharing her views on influencer marketing and how it works for brands, Resha Jain said, “We at Sugar are still at the growth stage brand but it's growing at a very crazy pace. We knew that we needed to get out there in front of people and we needed to do it in a very authentic manner in all honesty right in the middle, middle of 2019. We were doing a few campaigns here and there, we started a very, very proper program which is probably one of the first one might recognize programme, and a lot of the influencer marketing platforms, that will be sort of conservative because we were trying to get somebody to help us because we're trying to scale it very quickly. Because, ultimately, there are three types of the three types of people out there who can influence decisions, so there are celebrities which are at the top of the pyramid, then there are categ. Influncers. This is a very small article and Wednesday next word is way, and then, of course, like you know micro macro influencers so. We really wanted destructive things. A lot of products will be really useful to people who want to create content and. You know that's like the first line me forget that they will influence when we want them to have a product, so you know, because we think we give away or at once, you see, and use, you will love us so that we really wanted to get out there. Secondly, they knew at that point in time still not the big businesses today in the last two years, what has it suddenly become this huge.”

These are edited excerpts. For the compete discussion, please watch below: