You can’t always just be a creator, or influencer, you have to add value: Hitarth Dadia

Hitarth Dadia is Partner & Chief Marketing Officer at NOFILTR.Group. His role involves optimising business collaborations and creating a profitable entrepreneurial blueprint for the influencers collaborating with NOFILTR.Group. While driving profits in the company remains a mainstay, Dadia works closely with the creative departments and plays an instrumental role in charting out the detailed insights in public relations and branding for the influencers. Armed with foresight and a market-savvy streak, Dadia invests in a dint of hard work, giving NOFILTR.Group the edge it has today.

He had joined NOFILTR.Group as a Sales intern and advanced onwards into essaying the role of a business development head before taking over as the CMO.

In conversation with Adgully, Hitarth Dadia speaks about what it takes to be a great content creator, his success mantra, working on a campaign for Coca-Cola, future goals, and more.

What particular skillsets do you think you bring to the table?

This wasn’t by choice, this was just by design, I happen to speak to 5 to 8 new people every single day. And this has been happening since the past five years. So, I think it does compound heavily. And what that does is it just helps me understand people a lot better. You can read the undertone in every conversation, it just happens to save you a lot of time and effort. I think it is extremely important, specifically in this industry, where you have to deal with people. So, I think that’s an interesting skill. I have a fairly good understanding of how people function and what sort of values they have, what’s most important to them, how passion works, all of that. I think another skill would be being oddly specific about the kind of content consumed – could be music, could be books, could be movies, could be videos or any of that.

And because of that specific taste, I think I have a fairly good understanding of how content also works with a certain demographic. The content that I like, I know for whatever it is, it’s going to work with a specific genre of people and the content that I dislike. I am also aware of this other demographic that is going to go brilliantly with it; so, I think that simplifies a lot of things in my head.

How did you join your current organisation?

Before Nofiltr, I was working in a bank for a year because my parents had a very interesting perspective that if you know how a bank works, you can pretty much work on anything, or anywhere or with anyone. So, that was an interesting perspective. I joined Nofiltr three months after it was established. So, while we were forming Nofiltr, I was doing a second shift here. I used to get done with my bank job and then work on this from 8 pm to 12 am or something like that, just to understand what this industry is and how it is going to work from there.

Icons in this field whom you look up to and how they have influenced you and your work?

This industry is still fairly new and I think five years ago when the whole concept was extremely new, IV and a couple of other agencies also just started, so I don’t think there are a lot of icons in this particular space. Obviously you can pick and choose from different domains, but in this particular domain, I can’t think of anyone that I look up to. If you could look up to, there are icons like Scooter Braun, Jimmy Irving, Bob Iger, etc. But if I were to talk specifically about influencers, I don’t think I have a particular icon in mind.

Do you think a career in this field is a viable one in the long term?

I do think a career in this field is viable, but it has a few caveats. You can’t always just be a creator or just be an influencer; you have to add value after it happens organically. Whether you want to or not, sooner or later you become a brand. The way things pan out in this space, eventually you will have to venture out into things where you are not just promoting, but you are also creating things. By creating, I don’t just mean content, I mean creating anything that you want to create, I can think of a billion examples, but essentially becoming a brand eventually, that’s how you sustain in this space. Otherwise, if you are just a creator or just an influencer for the longest time, after some point, you will still be relevant, but you will get tired of doing the same thing every single day. So, just to keep it interesting you will have to venture out into thinking and functioning like a business, like a brand.

What are the five most productive things that you do in your everyday routine?

The top three things revolve around consuming content. So, I do consume a lot of content, but they’re all structured in a different way. So, I’ll read for one and a half hours every single day, then there’ll be another two hours allotted to research. And by research, I don’t mean researching on YouTube, I mean reading whitepapers, reading research documents, or any of that, not just particularly about our industry, it could be about any industry. And then there is this one to one and a half hour slot for YouTube, where I watch a lot of these interesting takes on a lot of current concepts. Also, if I’m reading something interesting, I don’t read for like five or six hours.

Another thing that really works out very well for me is having these slots in my entire day. Obviously, they are not that planned and not very structured. My days are extremely well-planned. But I make it a point to speak to a bunch of people from my team and from outside my team as well, just to get a better perspective on what’s actually happening in the industry. Because, I do realise that sooner or later, I am going to be the older generation. So, it doesn’t hurt to be aware of what’s actually happening with the younger generation and their take on a lot of current trends in the world. So, basically just information in whatever we can get, all of my productive things are designed around that.

I’m not that organised, where I can tell you that I read, I work out, I meditate; I try to do all of those things, but all of those things revolve around information – whatever I can learn from, whoever I can learn wherever. Those are the things that I do.

What would be your advice to youngsters planning to enter this industry?

My advice for youngsters would be – be extremely sure, because this industry has become a little more legitimate, well-known, and accepted by the masses.

A lot of people do enter the industry just for the money. There’s nothing bad in that. But it’s not sustainable. If you actually love creating content from the bottom of your heart, and you can do it every single day along with giving you a sense of gratification for yourself that no one else will give you, I think only and only then you should become a content creator. And if you still want to enter the space, but more on the management side or more on the advertising or marketing side of it, you also have to be equally passionate about this.

Being passionate about your work is the only way you can sustain that battle. Because what I’ve seen and what I’ve actually learned is if you are surrounded by equally passionate people and like-minded people, then there is no question about whether you will be successful or not. It’s just a matter of time. So, I think those are a couple of important things that you should be mindful of if you are entering the creator space.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

In five years' time, I'd like to be in a position where I have changed at least five lives for the better. And by doing so, they are changing millions of other lives in return. I think that’s always been the plan. Obviously, if I want to impact our culture as a whole, I would have to start with my people.

Is there any organisation that you would like to work with in the future?

I have always loved Coca-Cola as a brand. It is a very personal thing for me. We recently did a campaign with Coke. So, that was one thing on my checklist. There are a bunch of other brands as well that I would love to work with, but I will discuss them once I get done working with them. There are a couple of interesting things in the pipeline.