Brands marrying web series: All it takes to make it work

Brands by now have accepted web series the best bet for greater engagement. But despite being a high-impact property that helps build higher recall, web series isn't always cost-effective. BuzzInContent.com finds out what could be the right time to invest in web series and how one can reap greater ROI

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Akanksha Nagar
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For quite some time, the content marketing space has been witnessing brands marrying web series.

Whether it was Pocket Aces' Operation MBBS (for Unacademy) and Firsts (Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk)Future Group’s #PujoPerfect Love Story web series for its own Instagram page or DSP’s #BreakTheBias with TVF’s Timeliners, audiences have time and again proved that brand placements do not always act as a disruption.

But is the web series format reaping results for brands or is it just another fad soon to be forgotten?

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Kunal Langer

Web series has become a great medium to reach out to today’s younger audience, which is highly fragmented and doesn’t stick to a singular form of entertainment platform, said Kunal Langer, AVP, Client Acquisition, and Growth, North, Pocket Aces.

It is the content that supersedes everything for this demographic and something that one can resonate with their lives. And brands today have found the perfect way to reach out to an extremely well-defined target audience, which helps them forge better connections; well establishing its positioning, features, user cases, etc, he said.

He said web series is comparable to a high-impact property in mainstream media, which aids in building higher recall and drives higher engagement with the audience. 

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Anuj Gosalia

Anuj Gosalia, Co-founder and CEO at Terribly Tiny Tales, believes that web series tends to be immersive because of their length.

He said, “If done well, they have better retention and also the potential to evolve into a cult. A great web show holds the promise of becoming more than just a piece of content. It becomes a part of shared language. A well-crafted web series takes the brand along with it, making the campaign live longer than any other format.”

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Pradeep Kumaar

Investing in web series can improve the brand's presence; repeated telecasts of its products or service will increase the brand's recall value among the audience significantly, said Pradeep Kumaar, CEO of Neil Patel Digital India.

Brands are adopting various strategies to engage with their target audience effectively in this digital world.

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GB Srithar

Associations and investments in web series work well for consumer outreach, particularly for the younger generation, said GB Srithar, Regional Director (India, Middle East, South Asia), Singapore Tourism Board.

He said the web series allows for a wider story arc and with the right talents, the communications messaging is clearer and enables a deeper connect with the audiences.

Singapore Tourism Board in 2019 had partnered with Tripoto to produce an informative and fun travel web series ‘Trails 2 Passion – Singapore Redefined’, embarking for the first time on a travel web series, which eventually sparked viewer interest in seeing Singapore and was well received by many in India. It had garnered over six million views with more than 500,000 engagement across social media platforms and a total reach of above 36 million.

Even the Pocket Aces team has historically seen a surge in multiple matrices for its clients in terms of search traffic, downloads, increase in brand and buying consideration and awareness for salient features, which highlights the product being associated in a web series.

Right metrics for ROI

At one level, Gosalia of TTT said the brand manager should measure ROI with views, engagement and quality of integration as a measure of success.

But really what the brand should aim for and allow for is to push the creative team to make it outlive these metrics, he said. It’s then when the brand and the show become ubiquitous.

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Rajeshree Naik

But according to Rajeshree Naik, Founder and Director, PING Digital Broadcast Network, it's difficult to always determine ROI on branded content.

The starting point to measure the ROI will always be determining what your stated objective is, she said. Every content piece, whether short form or a web series, begins in the negative. With time, as it gets consumed or watched, the ROI starts increasing and, over time, it only gets better.

“The best way to look at ROI is to see whether this content series or piece you are creating is helping you attract your audience — an opportunity to convert them to leads by engaging with them and nurturing them. Your ROI is very dependent on the objectives you set out to achieve and whether you created a piece of content that can deliver those,” she added.

But is your brand even a ‘right kind’ to explore web series?

Kumaar of Neil Patel Digital said brands catering to the online gaming segment, subscription-based mediums for entertainment or events, and daily consuming supplies can benefit from this format.

However, TTT’s Gosalia said that all consumer-facing brands that aim to reach a large audience or any brand that is looking at creating wide awareness are most suited to partner on web shows.

He said, “The right time is when the brand is looking at presence and education and not seeking an immediate impact on sales. Sales metrics may not immediately move and so a brand partnering on a web show must be prepared that the money spent has been spent on making the brand speak with a relevant, large audience with multiple moments to capture the brand in action.”

Web series is just another type or format of content.

According to Naik of PING Digital, content marketing works across categories if done well. 

She said, “I don't think it's about ‘what is the right time?’ It's more about what is the right type of content.”

The good thing with any content format is that it can be custom-made to drive a particular communication, said Langer of Pocket Aces.

People are constantly looking out for content that is entertaining and which strikes the right chord with them at a personal level.

Brands have to acknowledge this while building their communication strategy and based on their life cycle can approach web series content to generate the right kind of buzz to drive their business objectives in a neutral and organic manner, he added. 

But one cannot ignore the fact that web series is costlier compared to doing a singular piece of content.

So, how to be penny-wise, especially in the crisis?

It might be costlier but given that web series has great retention potential, Gosalia believes that the overall spend may actually be lesser and the depth and quality of engagement will be much higher.

“Overall it will turn out to be more cost-effective than stand-alone pieces of content. Even on the production front, a brand benefits from economies of scale. With the pandemic, stories may become leaner and so expenses related to travel and larger crews can be reduced if you’re telling a present-day story. From our own experience, we have been able to save on pre-production costs, and minimal crew also means those upsides will trickle over onto the brand outlay,” he said. 

Current circumstances have resulted in movie crews now coming down to a third of their original size.

The next year or so will see the need for leaner crews and smarter production, which Naik believes might help rationalise costs.

At the same time, there is also this flip side that this new normal may see more efforts being taken to make it safer for people to shoot and produce, which in itself could also make things expensive.

“I believe we are going through a phase where we have to reinvent everything. At the end of the day, in the environment that we are in, we have no option but to streamline costs and make things most cost-effective because budgets across the board will be a limiting factor. It would be foolish to refuse to innovate and find solutions if the market so demands. Everything depends on the creative vision for the content piece or web series. I believe you can make it cost-effective by looking at the cost of production,” she added.

Cost is a highly subjective and relative term in today's world. However, content marketing over the years has been proven one of the most cost-efficient ways to reach out to a border set of audience in a non-advertising way.

Looking at the way media consumption habits are changing and traditional means of advertising are losing relevance for today's generation, Langer believes that content marketing is a go-to approach for advertisers in present times and will only gain more relevance going forward.

Traditional media avenues have become blind spots for audiences, bringing down the engagement levels, increasing the spillage and wastage in terms of media budgets.

Also, a big factor that advertisers often don't take into account is the shelf life of web series.

Langer said, “Shelf life of web series is far higher than any other form of advertising, with new audiences discovering the content far beyond traditional time frames and also the consumption happens at the audience’s convenience, allowing the brand to be present in an uncluttered environment where the audience has undivided attention on the content piece.”

Web series is surely not an expensive affair provided one has a focused data analytics team in place for the product, Kumaar said.

“These analysts need to check which audience persona resonates with their brand and place their respective ads accordingly,” he said.

Srithar said that with the right partners who are aligned in terms of strategic and marketing intents, the ROI of creating content through web series or other forms of online platforms will justify the investment. Effective engagement with the target audience will allow brands to stand out and retain top-of-mind awareness in consumers, to further drive conversion and brand affinity.

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