Brands of Bharat- The key to effective content marketing strategy in 2021 (Episode 4)
Agency Reporter’s virtual panel discussion series ‘Brands of Bharat’, powered by Nukkad by STAGE, came out with its fourth episode on February 1st, 2021. The episode stirred up a conversation around the topic- The key to effective content marketing strategy in 2021.
In the new Bharat, consumer expectations are rising and brands are aiming to capture different target segments in ways like never before. Changes in purchasing patterns, media consumption, and the ever-evolving mediums, have lead homegrown brands to experiment with their marketing strategies and shift the landscape towards being vocal for local.
Runa Sinha, National Revenue Lead, Nukkad by STAGE talks about the purpose behind the series, “Brands of Bharat is a platform where marketers come together to share their knowledge, marketing campaign, experiences, and marketing strategy to tap the ever-growing market of Bharat. As a premium and sensible content company of Bharat, we stand for the Bharat audience – understand the audience and their needs and thus create thought leadership and informational content digitally consumed on the smartphones, which empowers the audience and help them in making the right choice while choosing brands for their consumption. So we wanted to create a platform where marketers may come together to discuss Bharat and Bharat audience, their behavior, need, and potential, so that Industry gets to know about the Bharatwasis better by cross-learning.“
The series has lead to three insightful discussions prior to the latest episode. Vinay Singhal, Co-founder, and CEO, Nukkad by STAGE discuss the key takeaways from the series till now, “The overall experience has been quite interesting. It almost sums up the offering Nukkad provides the brands when they want to communicate to the Bharat audience. Some key takeaways include trust, reliability, and relatability are key to the brand in its communication and content offering; usage of Humor is quite important; building the right context which ultimately helps the brand in its positioning is critical; building strature is very important.
Like Nukkad, the brand community believes that there is a Bharat that lives in India and there is an India that lives in Bharat, so Hindi content users are omnipresent, and there shouldn’t be any geographical classification. Hindi content is critical for a brand’s success and a translation of English won’t help. The Bharat audience is equal in every aspect to the English-speaking audience so underestimation will be wrong while choosing the media strategy. Brands believe that Native content in the form of series will work and customized content for different location/region/States and geo-targeting is must while tapping the Bharat audiences digitally.”
The fourth episode features industry stalwarts Suman Varma, Chief Marketing Officer, Hamdard Laboratories; Karan Rajpal, Head of Digital Marketing, Dalmia Cement; Saurabh Saini, Head of Digital Marketing & Communications, Havells India and Shradha Agarwal, COO, Grapes Digital.
This episode focuses not only on the multiple facets of developing an effective content marketing strategy this year but also sheds light on the journey of Hindi content and its rising demand.
On discussing the different strategies that marketers are focusing upon in order to create content for the Hindi belt in India, Suman Varma revealed, “We have to devise our strategies in such a way that the relatability factor comes up in a big way. So that the connection between the Bharat that we are talking about is not overtly different from the content that we would create from India. Because your brand is the same, the narratives may just change a bit. But it has to be compelling, it has to have the same kind of things about the information about our products or brand that we are aiming to disseminate in a fairly engaging manner. ”
Shradha Agarwal dissected the three things that the industry needs to work upon, “There are three kinds of content that we create today- video, static, and text. Video is taken care of as it is born out of traditional advertising so we end up thinking Hindi scripts. The challenge comes when it’s about social media statics, GIFs, or videos. That’s where we need to start thinking of Hindi instead of English. We need to segregate our content as 40% of our content going forward will be in Hindi. And the third issue is our websites where almost all our websites are created in English with the focus being on translating it into other languages eventually, without devising a strategy for a Hindi website. These are the three things that the industry needs to start adopting. “
Saurabh Saini further revealed his insights, “We need to look at things that are broader in nature as to how you want to position your brand. For our brand, we follow the Hinglish route- a combo of Hindi and English. But I feel that the challenge that now lies is how apart from the basic things, how you are thinking out of the box- to the positioning of a campaign, changing your websites, or doing something different from what content has been done in the past.”
Karan Rajpal also discusses what the industry needs to look forward to, “I think we need more marketers, more copywriters, more video creators who think in Hindi. All we have done is joining the bottom of the barrel, or we have done things which are the flavor of the second or we have just tried to recreate Gulzar and his poetry. Between these extremes is what lies day-to-day conversations that people can wind into, and bring things apart. Secondly, digital needs to go to market more often, apart from just doing static we need to look at things in a much more structured manner. We can do one TVC a year, but 5 digital campaigns a year would yield better returns and better memorability.”
Watch here-