Consumers' falling trust in influencers is a challenge for branded content, says Barry Wacksman of R/GA

Barry Wacksman, the Vice-Chairman and Global Chief Strategy Officer of R/GA, feels that finding the audience for a brand’s content is the biggest challenge of content marketing.

While brands are increasingly using influencers to look for the relevant TG, Wacksman cautioned that the influencers should not be projected as endorsers. “The consumers have started losing trust in influencers you bring on board. You need to utilise your influencers in the best possible way. They should not look like endorsers for your brand, but actually be shown using the brand in a much realistic manner,” Wacksman said in a conversation with BuzzInContent.com on the sidelines of Goafest.

According to Wacksman, content has a major role to play when it comes to finding marketing or business solutions for the brands. “There are a million opportunities for clients to create content and distribute them either through their own channels, social media or paid media channels. It represents the maturity of our businesses of creating content and distributing it to the target audience,” he said.

However, content cannot be the answer to every marketing or business problem of the clients, believes Wacksman. “When you have a situation like Brazilian bank Bradesco where young customers did not want to trust the bank, you can’t solve that problem with an ad. They needed to create something entirely new, which was relevant to the needs of the particular customer and that was actually done in a way by creating an entirely new business. That’s very different from just creating a piece of content,” he said.

Creative agencies are often criticised by brands and other content creators for not coming out of the advertising mindset and hence are unable to create great pieces of content. Wacksman agreed it has to change.

“The creative agencies need to stop thinking that they are creating ads. They should think of creating creative solutions for various business models. Clients hire us to help them grow. They don’t care how we do it. Content marketing can drive growth and we are seeing more and more marketing problems being solved by pieces of content,” Wacksman said.

At a time when a lot of brands are focusing on purpose-driven marketing, content has become far more important for them to communicate their purpose. Wacksman pointed out that purpose-driven content can better find the audience on social channels. “Nobody wants to watch and share an ad. Purpose-driven content makes things more sharable,” he said.

When asked if he sees purpose-led marketing yielding results, Wacksman said, “I wonder if it’s really driving business results for the clients. A few years ago, Pepsi did an ad with Kendell Jenner, which was supposed to be purpose-driven, but it turned out to be a total disaster. Pepsi wasn’t expected to be in such territory and use a celebrity like that as she wasn’t the right character for that. So, it’s important to have a strategy around and do purpose marketing in the right way. But my question remains if purpose-driven marketing can drive business.”