The perfect icebreaker between platforms and brands for content partnerships

A very famous digital content creator received a query regarding brand integration with his content, but the very first query left the creator miffed. The reason was that it began with how much reach and impressions the content creator would be able to deliver. According to the creator, if the marketer wants to begin the conversation only with the reach and views number, then what’s the point of doing branded content integrations. He said, “The marketer better buy digital media ad inventories if he is looking at content partnerships like media buying.”

Pranav Thakker

Seconding the above-mentioned digital creator’s worry, Pranav Thakker, National Head, Brand Partnerships at The Viral Fever, said, “Often we are approached from a media partnership perspective. Often it seems that marketers are looking to buy content as they buy media inventories. Those are very important points to discuss but when you are talking to a content creator like us, then you are talking to somebody who has a creative unit and the power to bring organic reach. It’s a mix of discussion, but if you are going to just talk about views, impressions, reach. Somewhere, we have realised that such discussions don't land up in a very great place.”

Chhavi Mittal

Chhavi Mittal, an actor and social media influencer who also runs the content platform ‘Shitty Ideas Trending’ and the women-centric platform ‘Being Woman with Chhavi’, shared her experiences with the same. She said that the conversations never begin with the deliverables when the brands approach them directly for content integrations. It is only when an agency is involved that they are asked for deliverables first before the conversation can move ahead.

Although, Chhavi added, “Over time, I have understood that the agencies ask these kinds of questions because they are also trying to make a pitch that they can send to the brands by showing certain deliverables. But in this process, the whole essence of organic reach gets lost.”

When initially brands started doing branded content, it fell under the purview of content innovation. As it came under the umbrella of content innovation, KPIs like views, reach and impressions were not necessary. The marketers used to allocate a certain budget to branded content, without linking it to quantitative metrics. It is only recently that the conversations between the publisher/content creator and the brands have been starting with how much reach, impressions, or engagement the content piece will deliver.

Kumar Deb Sinha

“When content marketing was new in India, marketers understood that it worked, but they never quantified it. Eventually, one can't keep on investing money in a completely black box,” said Kumar Deb Sinha, Director, India Production Hub of GSK and a seasoned content marketing professional with over 20 years of experience in mediating brands and content platforms’ partnerships.

“Marketers are now well-versed about what content can do for them and some valuable parameters should be associated with it. If a marketer is spending a hefty amount of money on content, then he ought to know what he/she will achieve from it,” Sinha added.

Dheeraj Kummar

Dheeraj Kummar, National Creative Director, Brand and Consumer Experience, Motivator (GroupM), commented, “A brand will always inquire about the KPIs they will get from the money they are putting into the content. Content creators and platforms can’t get away with such hygiene level conversations.”

Kumar Deb Sinha further said that the content creators and platforms are to be blamed if they think brands look at them in the form of media buying. “The content creators need to understand that they have on their own presented themselves as media platforms. Today, influencers, creators and platforms show their effectiveness through their audience base. Now when the content creators are only positioning themselves as a media platform, then why is there a problem when a brand asks for metrics of engagement? The digital content creators who started to build the platform on the back of the audience base are liable to tell the brands about the reach, views, impressions, it can fetch,” Sinha explained.

It isn’t that brands only look at numbers when collaborating with platforms and content creators. The brands always try to find a balance between metrics and value for creativity, which can’t be quantified.

Kummar said that he will always prefer a content partner who has great resonance with the brand’s audience and produces good quality creative content in comparison to the digital publisher who doesn't have great content but has more reach, views, and engagement. He said, “Either you are an artist or a marketer. It doesn’t make sense if you want to be present in a beautiful creative content piece just because it is nicely done even if it doesn’t match what the brand stands for and its audience.”

Saurabh Sharma

From the publishers’ side, Saurabh Sharma, Head of HT Brand Studio, believes that a perfect partnership happens when publishers and content creators can deliver the set KPIs desired by the brand along with the kind of storytelling the platform and creator want to do. “Like this, one creates long-lasting relationships. It can’t be my way or highway,” Sharma said.

Priyadarshi Banerjee

Another content platform, Worldwide Media’s (Times Group), Assistant Vice-President and Head, Marketing and Digital Solutions, Priyadarshi Banerjee, said, “Leaving aside the brands’ angle, today if a platform is creating original content for itself, wouldn't the advertising, editorial and analytical team want to know how the content performed. I don't think that there is any publisher in the world who only looks at good creative concepts and does not think about numbers. If you're looking for numbers for yourself then what's the harm in agencies and brands asking for numbers?”

“There is a saying, “Jungle mein mor nacha, kisne dekha?”, in this context, it implies that what’s the point of doing great work if it doesn’t get you the desired results. No matter how good your content is, it should have a massive reach among relevant audiences,” added Banerjee.

Sharma of HT Brand Studio shared how the sales and marketing team at his organisation go about content-led deals. He said that they look at content partnerships from two angles: They either start with a content-first approach and arrive at KPIs or they set KPIs and then identify the form of storytelling. “But the fact that the KPIs have to be there is a given. We cannot be completely divorced from performance delivery,” said Sharma.

Giving an example of the content-led initiative “Friday Finance” HT Brand Studio executed for Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund, Sharma told BuzzInContent.com that the KPI defined for the initiative was to build brand awareness. “The KPI defined for it was to build awareness about the insurance product in a particular cohort of the audience up from a single-digit to a double-digit number. Whereas traffic and time spent were set as secondary KPIs.”

He further said, “Once the output KPI is defined, then the conversation of input KPIs happens on how to deliver the output KPIs. That’s the engineer in all of us that needs to come alive.”

Sharma said that in the case of Friday Finance, the output KPI was awareness of Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund’s insurance product and the input KPIs set to fulfil the output KPI were - reach, time spent, impressions and other such metrics.

Banerjee said that for any partnership with brands, Worldwide Media works on PACD (platform, audience, content, and distribution) model. He said, “After understanding the platform the brand wants to associate with us at WWM, the audience it wants to reach, we create content accordingly and formulate its distribution strategy.”

He further said, “We are not in the business of advertising but in the business of adtech. It is not about the advertiser or the publisher, but for whom one is creating the marketing proposition, i.e., the consumers. At the end of the day, the destination is the consumer and the way of reaching the consumer has manifested into multiple formats.”

Banerjee concluded that the idea and concept of the content should be the starting point of any content partnership conversation, but distribution numbers are equally important. “I understand it gets irritating when the conversation starts from distribution numbers. But to gauge the efficacy of content numbers are very important. Overall, the basis of conversation should happen on the strength of creativity and ideas, followed by deliverables.”