Brand imperatives now extend beyond the 30-second creative: Shekhar Banerjee

New Delhi: When cooking up a campaign, every brand comes up with a 30-second-long creative. But according to Shekhar Banerjee, Chief Client Officer & Office Head—Wavemaker India, “the era of 30 seconds is almost over.” Speaking to BuzzInContent.com, Banerjee pointed to the art of storytelling presiding over all brand campaigns going forward. 

Branded content is evolving with each passing second. Brands no longer sit with agencies to create a 30-second promo but rather a content story for their brand messaging. Content comes into play when brands start finding ways to bring life to their campaign, making it more compelling and engaging, Banerjee said. 

“Consumers are less receptive to traditional advertising. Most brands are pivoting from storytelling to ‘story doing.’ Every brand creates a 30-second creative piece. But how do you bring that alive? How do you tell your story more compellingly and engagingly? That's where content comes in, and there is a lot of work involved,” Banerjee told BuzzInContent.com.

What Banerjee implied was that with consumers having too much content to scramble, a single master creative for an entire year is no longer viable. Brands are now seeking to create engaging experiences and build meaningful connections with audiences. This shift necessitates a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour and the development of innovative content strategies.

Banerjee also highlighted the importance of building content IPs for brands. The way content flows into the market has changed, Banerjee said. Rather than tapping into ad films, brands have lately been focusing on various other ways to reach consumers or stakeholders. 

Substantiating with an example, Banerjee said, “For Pernod Ricard, we have a music fest IP called BoomBox, which is targeting multiple markets at once. It is an IP that Wavemaker built along with Pernod. And the reason why I say it is a content IP is because it is also generating revenue.” 

He also mentioned the recent campaign that featured Cadbury 5 Star and Squid Games. “In a way, it is a promo, but it is not a promo. It is actually a content story,” Banerjee told BestMediaInfo.com. 

It is crucial to create avenues of multiple touchpoints between brands, stakeholders, and consumers, the agency leader pointed out. In this direction, Banerjee elaborated on building the Indian Hairdresser Awards for L’Oreal. Banerjee pinpointed that the Indian Hairdresser Awards, along with other stakeholders and consumers, primarily focused on the hairdressing community, which has a strong influence on the business of the professional division.