Does your brand have a branded content plan in place for the festive period?

The festive season is the ripest time for advertisers to engage with consumers. Brands across categories leave no stone unturned during this period because the consumers are already willing to shell out money for shopping. The brands just have to ensure that they are picked over their competitors. While everyone does direct advertising, the ones which succeed are those which think out of the box and don’t try to sell the products upfront, but through good storytelling, creativity and trendy marketing tactics make a mark in the consumers’ mind.

Therefore, taking one of the important spots in the marketing playbook of brands during the festive season is branded content. Increasingly, it is being seen that brands up their ante on the branded content front during the festive period.

Shruti Kapoor

Shruti Kapoor, Senior Marketing Manager, Soothe Healthcare, the parent company of Paree Sanitary Pads, said, “The content marketing initiatives gain more momentum around the festive season with the brands going aggressive to cash in on the festive fervour.”

Dhruv Sachdeva

Dhruv Sachdeva, Founder, Humour Me, seconded that every brand aims to bring their A+ game in trying to differentiate themselves during this time. “When everyone is competing for the same audience’s mindshare during this highly cluttered period, it is all the more imperative to differentiate yourself from the type of communication you choose to deploy. Therefore, branded content is very important during this period because it moves away from the traditional lens and leans towards entertaining, informing or engaging people through differentiated formats.” 

This time around, the festive period is all the more important because it is happening after two years of Covid-induced lockdowns and the markets opening up completely without social distancing norms. Therefore, even the brands for which branded content isn’t an integral part of their marketing playbook are going to make a go for it. 

Kapoor commented, “The festive season will definitely bring up an increased focus on branded content, especially after the muted celebrations in the last 2 years, the audience is excited and looking forward to the festivities this year.

Karthik Nagarajan

Talking about the importance of branded content during the festive period, Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker India, said that branded content is more integral to festival plans for brands more than ever before. As the shareability of content increases during this period in closed and open communities, branded content becomes a critical tool to increase affinity and relatability during festivals.

He said, “The festival period is generally one where emotions are on a high, in a positive way. Families and friends come together and these moments are cherished by audiences even more so post the pandemic. Sharing of content on social networks and watching content as a family are all audience behaviours that make content a wonderful tool for brands to connect with customers.”

The D2C category literally boomed during the pandemic on the basis of informative and educative content they created on social media. Hence, branded content has been an integral part of their brand journey since inception. It becomes all the more important due to the cutthroat competition being at its peak during the festive season with everyone creating content for social media to grab the audience's attention. 

Shankar Prasad

Shankar Prasad, Founder and CEO, Plum, added, “Given that we are a D2C brand, we are consistently active in terms of our content marketing initiatives all year round. Given that our audience uses the digital platform extensively to explore and learn more about beauty and personal care products, it is essential for us to disseminate educational and informational content that helps us feature in their discovery and hence their consideration set. Due to this, we choose to continue our consistent efforts toward the informative approach to branded content throughout the festive season. However, we will be delving deeper into festive trends such as gifting and UGC as well, for reaching out to a wider audience base and to ensure that we are a part of their celebration stories.”

Sheveeta Hegde

Sheveeta Hegde, Head of Monetisation, FilterCopy, a Pocket Aces channel, said that with so much brand messaging floating across various communication mediums and platforms, especially around festival season, brands have realised that they will have to break through the clutter and grab the attention of an increasingly sophisticated digital audience. “Content marketing is important because it is engagement driven and answers your audience's questions along with helping you build trust, develop relationships, improve conversions, and generate leads,” she said.

Prasad pointed out that other key aspects that further help push content marketing during festivities are word of mouth and high search volumes of key festive trends and themes that increase the probability of content marketing efforts in this direction going viral. “Hence festivities help brands find dominant themes to be associated with their consumers’ lives by plugging in their offerings as part of the celebrations.”

Branded content during the festive period to boost the revenue of agencies and content platforms

Wavemaker’s Nagarajan told BuzzInContent.com that arguably festival season is the busiest season for the branded content activity in the calendar year and brands plan months ahead for this.

Due to the high demand for branded content during the festive period, the number of pitches also increase during this time. Sachdeva said that the festive season always brings a higher volume of inquiries and as a result pitches for agencies. 

He commented, “Last year we saw a definite upswing in billings related to content production for the key festive days. We are hopeful this festive comes with similar demand for differentiated content. The festive period definitely becomes the biggest revenue generator for creative agencies and content marketing shops.”

Hegde told BuzzInContent.com that FilterCopy has been seeing a considerable increase in new inbound queries as well as repeat queries for content collaborations for the festive period. “Brands are open to either trying the new approach via branded content for the first time or riding on the previous success of a content campaign and hope to recreate it during the festive season,” she said. 

Throwing light on how the festive period helps Pocket Aces generate additional revenue, Hegde said, “At Pocket Aces, we have witnessed additional growth in revenue coming during the festive period and special occasions over the past few years. Brands like Mia, Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk, Nivea, Skinnsi etc have continuously used our platform for special occasions and festivals.”

She further said, “We recently collaborated with Mia for their first festive campaign of Raksha Bandhan and are in discussions with many other categories like food and beverages, alcohol beverages, consumer durables, confectionary, e-commerce etc. for the upcoming festivities.”

Aastha Beecham

Aastha Beecham, Business Director – Rev Up, the branded content division of Puretech Digital, said that pitches for work ranging from wishing posts, to spontaneous campaigns, brand films for Diwali, etc. are on the rise. Although, she added, “It's is not only branded content but paid media campaigns are seeing the surge too. With all brands going on sale and offering discounts, and giveaways with their contests, it’s a mad time of the year.”

While the quarters that coincide with the festive period act as a buoyant force for the agencies and content platforms, lower to moderate demand for branded content during the rest of the months also seen. Beecham explained, “This is the only time of the year when the consumer spends abundantly and so do the brands, hence there is an increase in spending recorded on their campaigns. So yes, there is growth in revenue, but the downside is that other quarters are extremely lean as well. So, both work and revenue are quite disproportionate in any fiscal year.”