How to go about forming kickass branded content teams

Hiring and retaining skilled talent has been a matter of great concern for advertising agencies for almost forever. With content marketing and branded content gaining more importance in recent times, the agencies have also increased the hiring of people to specifically join content teams. Not more than 5-7 years ago, content teams at agencies hardly comprised of 5-10 people. Now the content team sizes have increased to 50-100 at agencies, which has made hiring in content teams more robust. 

Varun Shah

Having the best set of skilled branded content professionals on board is every content agency’s desire, but hiring and retaining them is the toughest job. Varun Shah, Executive Vice-President and Head of Prodigious and Content Factory, said, “The demand for skilled branded content professionals is more than the supply. With the growth of OTT and mainline films, a lot of good talent has moved to that side.”

Karthik Nagarajan

Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker India, told BuzzInContent that not just branded content, it’s challenging to hire in most roles other than non-core marketing ones (data, performance marketing, Content2Commerce), which are outside traditional media planning. 

Nagarajan said, “A part of this challenge is a supply problem. Another part of it is also the speed at which organisations like GroupM are growing. Being in business is not enough, you have to be of a certain quality. Both coupled together, reduces the pool from where one can hire people for content teams.”

Stating another reason that makes hiring in branded content teams difficult is that like performance marketing and other non-core marketing streams, branded content is not a monolithic entity. One has to be ambidextrous in terms of having creative as well as analytical thinking to be a successful branded content specialist.  

Nagarajan explained that a branded content team consists of people who have different sets of expertise across analytics, design, creativity, sports marketing and content partnerships. “So, when we say there is a talent challenge, we are not talking about branded content as one subject, it includes a variety of subjects,” he added.  

Shailja Varghese

Bringing in a different perspective, Shailja Varghese, Chief Content Officer, Omnicom Media Group, believes that there is talent readily available as branded content is not limited to the platform but is platform-agnostic. Although, she added, “The only challenge is that when one is in a leadership position, he/she is expected to be a good generalist who can wear both the creative and commercial hats and maintain a fine balance while working towards building a great content culture and profitability at the same time.”

Nagarajan went on to say, “Seven years ago, being in content business would have meant being good at cracking long-form video or AFPs. Today, when you say you are in the content business, you most definitely need to have both the right and the left brain working together. It is very difficult today for one to be just an idea and creative person or just being an analyst is not enough either.”

Therefore, BuzzInContent.com caught up with content heads at India’s top network agencies who shared what they look for in people while onboarding them into content teams. They also talked about how they go about upskilling the teams from time to time. 

Ajay Mehta

The average age of 80% of people in Mindshare’s content team is 25 years. Ajay Mehta, Senior Vice-President, Mindshare Content+ and Partnerships, GroupM, said, “People in this age group bring fresh thinking and a unique perspective. They are the ones spending more time on social platforms, gaming and are well engrained in social culture. 

Sharing what Mindshare keeps in mind while hiring, Mehta said, “When we hire, we look at people who have a certain amount of experience working on brands or have a bent towards brand building. The cherry on the cake is if they have an added experience in partnerships and collaborations. We tend to hire talent from diverse backgrounds. This also helps in bringing a more 360-degree perspective. For example, we have a stand-up comedian to an influencer, to tattoo culture expert in our teams. Each one brings a unique perspective which helps decode pop culture and consumer behaviour.”

Varghese said that at an entry-level, candidates can start with specialist skills and gradually learn the width of branded content across various mediums and platforms. 

Nagarajan said that one thing Wavemaker looks at in the candidate is if he/she is equally at home both with the creative practices and the analytics practices. 

He also said that the person’s worldview really matters as far as branded content is concerned. “Content is a cultural intervention, whether it is the culture of food, music, or gaming. One needs to have a very strong worldview on it. This is something which can’t be taught. It should be inherent.”

Siddhant Mazumdar

On the other hand, Siddhant Mazumdar, India, Head, IPG Mediabrands Content Studio, doesn’t necessarily believe in hiring all of the creative talents for internal teams. He said, “While yes, a lot of our work can happen in the house, MBCS is absolutely open to working with the best talent available in the entire market based on the nature of the project. This allows us freedom and flexibility and ensures that our executions are top-notch.”

Upskilling is highly important to stay abreast with the dynamic world of branded content

Omnicom’s Varghese pointed out that whatever level a person joins the content function, it’s imperative to upskill constantly. She commented, “Considering the industry is rapidly changing. If one doesn’t re-invent herself with the changing times and learn to adapt, complacency can set in and eventually redundancy. Content is an ever-evolving stream and there is something to learn every day.” 

Sharing how OMG goes about upskilling, Varghese said that the agency has a great number of practices in place for this, including but not limited to content immersion workshops and Omnifluencer workshops. “We also intend to bring back the OMG Open Mic platform for our partners to showcase their offerings and capabilities to challenge our thinking. We had a good Season 1 of OMG Mic in 2021 – where almost 30 partners across creative, technology, media, production and networks engaged with us on this platform,” she added. 

At IPG Mediabrands, the agency management conducts robust training sessions across every advertising domain for all of its employees from time to time. Mazumdar commented, “We regularly encourage our team members to attend such sessions so that they are always ahead of the curve. However, we also believe that it is important for the employee to realise that training needs to be primarily initiated by ourselves. It is absolutely critical that team members continue to follow good work and then try to answer the right questions themselves so that they have a strong base to build on.”

Sharing an interesting concept, Shah told that Publicis Groupe India’s Content Factory internally runs a programme called ‘Breakfast Club’, where Publicis employees come and pitch branded content and creative ideas. “It is like a think tank to develop branded content creative ideas. If we like the idea, we package it and propose it to the client,” said Shah. 

When it comes to deploying the best tools in content marketing, Wavemaker doesn’t leave it to chance, said Nagarajan. “For example, we start at the larger global tool ecosystem level. We start with the Gartner quadrant and look at the tools which are there. We are very constantly engaged with the start-up ecosystem in India as well as globally. We are testing tools and benchmarking them months before clients use them. In some cases, we are shaping them.” 

He also told BuzzInContent about Wavemaker’s practice Mesh, which is the agency’s tech outpost. “Whether it is social listening, content analytics or content management systems, this is the team which is benchmarking and getting the tools ready for the ecosystem.” 

Along the same lines, Mindshare too relies on reports, analysis and social listening to build narratives and solutions. “We have proprietary tools that help enable this and track conversations in real-time. This keeps the teams up to speed with consumer behaviour w.r.t content consumption, social sentiment and decoding of pop culture insights and codes,” added Mehta.