Meta is focussed on getting the creator economy & brands together: Paras Sharma

Meta kicked off the 2022 edition of its ‘Creator Day’ to celebrate creators in India and recognise the way they push culture forward on Facebook and Instagram. ‘Creator Day’ is Meta’s annual flagship event to celebrate creators, as they best reflect the way its platforms are used by people to share, express themselves and be entertained.

The 2022 edition of the event is taking place across 5 cities – Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, and Delhi – and will be unique because of their scale and on-ground presence after 2 years due to the pandemic. It is also the first time, at Creator Day, that Meta provided the fans an opportunity to meet and interact with their favourite creators – a unique engagement aimed to strengthen their relationship.

In an exclusive interaction with Adgully, Paras Sharma, Director, Content and Community Partnerships, Meta, said that the year 2022 has been “wonderful, exciting, inspirational and extremely creative”.

Continuing further, he said, “One thing which is very dear to me is that when I hear about creators or small businesses achieving success through and on our platforms, that is the most fulfilling part of the job. At the same time, when you see things that are breaking out on the platform, that is extremely inspirational. For example, blockbuster Telugu movie ‘Pushpa’ becoming a nationwide phenomenon through Reels, or ‘Kacha Badam; or the memes or trends around ‘Shark Tank’ that are on a traditional platform and are taking a different shape on our platforms – they are extremely inspirational. When you see a creator from a small town and become a national rage, it’s an extremely humbling and fulfilling nature of joy.”

Sharma highlighted some of the interesting features that Meta has rolled out on Instagram Reels, including multiple audio features, the largest amount of mimicry, the largest amount of audio creation on Reels. “We have added a number of things to make the creation process far more easier and richer for creators, which is extremely gratifying. In order to bring the creators together and exponentially scale up the creativity and innovation, we have introduced the collaboration feature and we see them collaborate. Thus, it is so interesting and unique for us,” he added.

When asked about the creators’ education, Sharma explained, “Creators education is extremely dear to our heart. Whatever we do on Facebook and Instagram for the hundred millions of our fans is powered by the creators and they are the source behind it and their authenticity and their love for craft. Being the leading platform, we have always asked ourselves – Are we really building for future? Are we growing the ecosystem for creators?”

Two years back, Meta scaled its ‘Born on Instagram’ program to say how it can make the creators ambitious, who want to become a creator but they don’t have a structured way to be a creator. “On the Born on Instagram’ platform, you can learn at your own pace with multiple modules and things that can help you become a creator. The access to creator education became democratised, anyone can access and get high-quality education. We do webinars, where we call our creators, both national and international, to inspire the young and budding creators. We started in English and Hindi, now we have launched seven languages and 65 per cent of those creators are coming from smaller places. We firmly and genuinely believe in scaling the creators' education to grow the entire ecosystem of the creators,” Sharma affirmed.

On how Meta is being strengthened as a platform for advertisers, Sharma said, “We have a very strong and robust platform – Facebook. Brands come and advertise on Facebook and it continues to power. We are now an extremely strong and robust model even on Instagram. In the last couple of years, we are now focussed on how do we get the creator economy and the brands come together, how do we enable brands to cover the power of creators and we have various emergence session – we bring creators to brands, some of our creators have gone and spoken in the brand forum. We match creators to the brands and their briefs, they get economic opportunities and brands get to see the power of creators and the traction that they bring to their brands.”

Speaking about the future focus of Meta, Sharma emphasised on the commitment in the creators ecosystem, the commitment to Reels, the commitment to know and follow as a recommended content from a user point of view, the commitment to increase Meta’s investments and efforts on AI and user experience, the commitment to add new features that make the creation process even more innovative and easier for creators to do, as well as the commitment to continue creating new avenues for a sustainable and economic mall for creators.

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