Learning from mistakes: What 2020 and Covid-19 taught content marketers

Amid the pandemic, content marketers juggled between reduced budgets and shooting restrictions, and had to re-strategise content plans in view of evolving consumption habits. BuzzInContent.com spoke to content marketers who share mistakes they made while executing content-driven campaigns and lessons they got last year

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Akanksha Nagar
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From flat marketing spends to rapidly changing consumer habits, like most strategists, content marketers had to wear new lenses in the Covid-19 reality and realign their plans to deal with the new normal.

The year, although, undoubtedly saw multiple content-driven campaigns making the right noise. New shows, formats of various lengths in all kinds of vernacular languages famously kept audiences engaged the whole year.

But as they say, ‘no great success was ever achieved without a failure.’ BuzzInContent.com tried to find out what errors marketers made while experimenting in such an agile environment and their learnings from the same.

The dire need to be more emotional

2020 was a stressful year for audiences and organisations alike. The task at hand for the marketers was to put themselves in the shoes of consumers and talk in their language.

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Joy Chatterjee

Joy Chatterjee, Deputy General Manager Marketing at Mankind Pharma, shared how his team learnt that emotional content can absolutely make one connect to its TG in such times.

“When you talk about any real instance or actual pain point your consumer is going through, you will have far better connect,” he said.

For example, the Thank you Mom (#SundayIsMomDay) campaign for Prega News empathetically encouraged everyone to honour all moms who are juggling work and home flawlessly in difficult times.

For another brand, Acnestar Face Wash, Mankind Pharma created a music content video, #ThankYouHaters, encouraging all to keep haters and acne far-far away.

Positioning brand message aptly in the influencer marketing campaigns

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Rajeshree Naik

Rajeshree Naik, Co-founder and Director for India Food Network, said that one lesson they keep learning is how to work better with influencers. “The first being, the power of micro-influencers, and the second, how to ensure as authentic a voice as possible even if it's branded content,” she said.

The year saw big scale utilisation of influencer marketing across industries. As they increased their spending in this medium, brands and content platforms also learnt to craft brand messages right through the use of these influencers.

“Every time you work with an influencer for branded work, you do expect certain friction or reduction in engagement — the smart thing to do is to keep the brand messaging by the influencer as authentic and real as possible. This helps you ensure a much better engagement. It's also important to go with the influencer's advice on what their own community likes best. Influencer marketing is monies wasted if you do not work to ensure it's done well. Done well means staying true to both the influencer and the brand — tough one to manage but if you do this well, it's a win-win else the investment is better spent elsewhere,” she suggested.

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Shirish Agarwal

Shirish Agarwal, Head, Marketing Communication and Brand, Panasonic India, said, influencer marketing these days plays the most important role when it comes to a consumer’s decision-making journey. So whether it's in the initial construction stage, or the search stage or the final purchase stage, it is through influencers that a consumer actually validates a brand’s claims.

Importance of relevance and authenticity of content

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Angad Bhatia

Angad Bhatia, Founder, MensXP and CEO, Indiatimes Lifestyle Network, emphasised how one has to balance the relevancy of content in the context of the time period.

“In 2020, most of our content was around Covid, regarding the lockdown and WFH, etc. Though it was relevant for some time, we might have overdone it. The important thing is to understand the relevance and the time period of that relevance and move forward accordingly. While we have been doing this successfully through the year, this year was unprecedented and unknown. That is why we were extra careful and took our time to adjust to the situation,” he said.

In an attempt to be relevant and real, at the beginning of the year, Fevicreate had launched its #IndiaCraftingMemories campaign in collaboration with Momspresso to engage children, parents, teachers and school authorities in creative pursuits amid the lockdown.

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Shantanu Bhanja

Shantanu Bhanja, CEO, Consumer Products, Pidilite Industries, said, the amount of content grew exponentially across channels amid the pandemic and, therefore, one had to be relevant.

He said, “It is time-tested that endearing messages that are authentic, relevant and solve a need will always find a way amid the clutter.”

Going beyond the USP of a product

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Karthik Nagarajan

Sharing the biggest learning in 2020 on behalf of Wavemaker, Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker India, said, there is a need for brands to stand for something apart from mere offerings.

“It has never been more important for brands to stand for something that is beyond the USP of the product. And empathy needs to be a critical part of what it stands for. There is no devaluing this in any manner. This is also what led to us launching a dedicated practice for purpose marketing. While clients like Tata Tea and Tanishq have been pioneers in this space, it is great to see a lot more clients put purpose at the centre of their communication and impact,” he added.

A lot of brands from Amul, Dettol, Dabur, Lifebuoy to HDFC Life Insurance amped up their messaging and communication amid the crisis to go beyond products and talk about the coronavirus spread, social distancing and to mainly spread positivity in difficult times. 

For example, Dettol’s #HandWashChallenge not only saw huge participation but also became a good case study for others.

https://www.dettol.co.in/en/hand-washing-challenge/tnc/

Also, the ‘More Together’ campaign by Facebook India was an exemplary example in terms of spreading hope and positivity.

FB’s More Together:

In another attempt, Byju’s Give campaign was an initiative towards the ‘education for all’ mission; empowering five million children from underserved communities. The brand asked the audience to donate old mobile phones, laptops or tablets for the underprivileged children so that their education doesn’t stop.

According to MensXP’s Bhatia, it was relevant to the time the campaign came out. The initiative was very mindful and had a high order purpose. It’s also a testimony that even brands in adverse situations and times and can bring about the best in themselves.

Byju’s Give initiative video:

Create more and more video content

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Suveer Bajaj

The first half of the pandemic saw a lot of brands depend on influencer marketing as they played the role of brand advocates who built audience engagement, brand education and mass consideration. And, as a result, according to Suveer Bajaj, Co-Founder, Zoo Media and FoxyMoron, brands took this agenda forward with video content creators and had started allocating more budgets to start partnering with content creators for video marketing campaigns.

United Breweries, which imbibed the learnings on how consumers were inclined more towards digital and video specifically, not only upped spends in video content but also found it more engaging.

Amul truly stamped its place in the hall of fame with the kind of right video content it had put forth in the challenging times, including the ‘Amul Topical Quiz Content’ and the Live #SimpleHomeMadeRecipes.

On its handles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it garnered almost 10 million views daily on FB on its live recipe content.

Amul Live content videos:

Learning from mistakes What 2020 and Covid-19 taught content marketers