Lava’s recipe for branded content shifting from selling phones to telling stories

New Delhi: Branded content speaks beyond the product line. In today’s day and age, branded content helps a brand connect with its consumers on a deeper level. Lava Mobile is planning its market strategies on the same line of action. 

In a conversation with BuzzInContent.com, Puravansh Maitreya, head of marketing, Lava Mobile, shared how the brand wants to shift its content from being product-centric and rational to philosophical and meaningful.

Breaking away from ‘just products’ 

“For the last couple of years, our entire focus was on bringing out the products and telling people about the features, services, and technology. Going forward, we will try telling people about what Lava is and what it stands for as a brand,” Maitreya said. 

He mentioned, “We strongly believe that we have a great story to tell. Many people do not know how this brand has sustained over the years. So, we definitely want to highlight that in our upcoming campaigns.” Maitreya and his team want to convey the philosophy of the brand. “We will introduce our thought process, our philosophy into our content and show it to people,” he commented. 

Lava’s tripod for content

According to Maitreya, all of Lava’s content and communication stand on three pillars - visibility, credibility, and pride. 

“The visibility pillar carries the idea that Lava is making great smartphones. The second pillar highlights our reliability factor - door-to-door services, free replacements etc. The third pillar that carries our content is pride. It showcases that you can proudly carry a Lava smartphone,” Maitreya explained. 

User-centric approach

Taking the conversation further, Maitreya added that Lava is not marketed on glorification of the product, but is more centred around the user-benefit standpoint. “This is the reason we want to work with faces that have an honest and straightforward image in the eyes of the consumers,” he noted. 

Lava’s communication has had various faces, including Gautam Gambhir, Kartik Aaryan, and Sourav Joshi. 

Lava is “creating tons of content” that is user-generated. “We have a large network of people who are associated with us. We give them the devices to experience for free. They generate a ton of content for Lava mobiles,” Lava’s marketing honcho shared. 

“User-generated content is something that we really believe in,” added Maitreya

Substantiating Lava’s user-generated content strategy, Maitreya shared how Lava’s Instagram page, recently, featured a photograph clicked by a small-time photographer using a Lava phone. 

“We do these sorts of things with all of our people. We interact and collaborate with early adopters and early users, too,” he said. 

Supporting influencers and long-term collabs

Offering a unique approach to influencer marketing, Lava, rather than collaborating with big-time influencers, supports nano and micro-influencers who propagate their product. “

We provide devices to anyone who is just starting out and has followers as low as 2000. A lot of them are not able to buy phones, while some of them have very low follower count. They are up and coming. We support many such influencers and give them our devices to use,” Maitreya stated. 

Lava recently announced Sourav Joshi, a YouTube vlogger, as their brand ambassador. 

Maitreya told BuzzInContent.com that such influencer marketing moves will be more frequently played by the brand in the near future. 

Rather than following suit and doing short-term collaborations with influencers, Lava is inclined towards long-term collaborations.