In conversation with Manan Kapur, YAAP

Manan Kapur is a Partner at YAAP, a new-age, specialized content company, and has more than 12 years of experience in building, scaling, and driving digital businesses. As an online digital marketing & business development manager, Manan provides support for multiple concurrent priorities in order to establish, maintain and develop effective working relationships with service users, operational teams, resource allocation delivery partners, and colleagues.

Agency Reporter- What is the thought process behind the three pillars on which YAAP stands- Design, Discovery, Distribution?

Design begins right from research, strategy, ideation to execution, it is the entire packaging of an idea/content process. Discovery kick-starts and dispenses the packaged idea through channels such as Influencer Marketing. Distribution amplifies and optimises the content via publishing partnerships, etc. So we believe that any piece of branded content must go through this process.

AR – With new-age content firms coming up every other day, how has YAAP managed to set itself apart over the last 4 years?

While there have been many factors behind this, a major reason is we go beyond the traditional social media management that most companies provide and leverage our many services to address the true pain point for any client: creating valuable content. And by solely managing the entire process of branding to content development to marketing to media buying, we ensure that the core message is never diluted, while maximizing utility and reach of that content.

AR – For a young firm, having a presence spread across 3 countries is a big achievement. Could you please shed some light on your journey that helped you in achieving the same?

It might sound ambitious but right from the start we believed in scale. In terms of a full-stack team, all-round service, the exponential and optimised reach we achieve via our partner model, allowing each and every partner to have an independent P&L for business growth, client acquisition and team development. This allows us to operate independently on our respective verticals, while also work together to ensure all our client’s marketing requirements are met.

AR – What was the strategy behind the influencer engagement program executed by YAAP for ITC hotels?

The thought behind the program was to create a community of people who are keen to contribute to the society, to the planet and to the ecosystem and while making the online audience understand the thought and ideology that ITC Hotels inculcates behind each element of Responsible Luxury.

We identified select influencers’ pan-India across different sectors. Influencers were selected basis their social media ranking, engagement on their social channels and interest.

The experiences captured were shared and amplified on ITC Hotels’ social channels for 6 months and gained huge engagement from online audience and created a positive surround sound around #ResponsibleLuxury ecosystem and ITC hotels.

AR – The area of digital content and marketing is ever-evolving. What are some key qualities that you think are crucial for YAAP to maintain in order to grow further?

What we’ve observed in the past few years is that more traditional brands are re-evaluating how they’ve been going about digital and content marketing. Now more than ever, content and technology are leading the way as a result of content consumption and engagement being higher than ever. This has resulted in brands being braver and exploring territories they wouldn’t have traditionally explored. YAAP as an organization has not just embraced this evolution but has also grown with it. We continue to focus on breaking new ground with a content-first, platform-specific approach to deliver some really great creative solutions.