Why brands need to master the art of content integration

For years, brands have been using advertising, brand integrations and branded content to reach their audiences. Investment in branded content continued to rise even amid the pandemic as it proved to be beneficial for both creators and brands.

While show and content producers struggled to procure and come up with fresh content, brands grappled with tight budgets.

Although branded content is often directly influenced by the sponsoring brand and product, it still remains the top choice for many.

BuzzInContent.com finds out how this space is evolving in the challenging times.

While it is necessary for audiences to feel they’ve learned something interesting after they watched branded content— making the brand look more credible, memorable and trustworthy, a right match of the brand with specific content is equally important.

Joy Chatterjee

“It is very important to be relevant to the kind of audience we wish to target. Viewership of a particular programme should be understood and on the basis of audience profiling, we should associate with a particular property. Resonance between brand target audience and audience viewership is really critical to understand,” said Joy Chatterjee, Deputy General Manager Marketing at Mankind Pharma.

Shahid Javed Ansari

There could be multiple parameters for this, but according to Shahid Javed Ansari, CEO and Founder of RVCJ Digital Media, majority of the viewers of a show or content must be similar to the target audience of the sponsoring brand.

“Also, you need to look at the type of content the channel has created in the past. Somehow it has to relate to the brand identity,” he added.

One of such example is when Unacademy had sponsored the web series ‘Operation MBBS’ for Dice Media.

Shreya Shively

Shreya Shively, Chief Revenue Officer at Terribly Tiny Tales, said, “I think primarily it’s important to understand the consumer you want to speak to, and the kind of audience the content or show caters to. If there is a fundamental mismatch there, you could be sponsoring great content, but without any benefits flowing back to you. It isn’t always about the quantity of eyeballs, but also the quality of eyeballs that the content will be reaching out to.”

The subtle art of integration

Seamless integration has a very natural recall factor with the consumer compared with forced or on-the-face branding.

While Chatterjee said active integration should be a focus for brands in the current evolving scenarios, he added, “Majorly OTC/ FMCG + Durables find the relevant space and association possibilities. However, it is completely dependent on the kind of show, format and time band in which it is going to air. On the basis of that, one must decide which brand should be associated with it.”

Ansari said today every industry is experimenting with sponsoring digital content.

“The only criteria that I see in most brands is that they are youth-oriented but even that is changing with time with more elders exploring the internet,” he added.

However, he suggested that while picking platforms for integration, choosing ones with the highest following or view counts is common.

“While this makes sense for numbers, if you don’t have the right fit, your message and product will likely go unnoticed. When the content feels forced or scripted, it never works. Showing your brand too many times won't be that attractive and the brand should connect with storyline and create curiosity rather than expecting very high sales from the links,” he said.

Over the years, Terribly Tiny Tales has integrated brands in a range of ways — from showing a dating app in one small frame, to characters discussing an upcoming movie, to an entire short film being shot inside an aggregator cab.

And the simple thumb rule, according to Shively, is, “Make sure it’s organic. The more you try to force fit a brand into a story, the lesser it works, and the more you annoy your viewer and potential consumer. As long as it flows seamlessly into the story, and isn’t jarring, the better it works.”

Sunita Quadros

Sunita Quadros, Sr. Vice-President and Business Head, ET Edge (The Times of India Group), who also looks after the IP business in World Wide Media, said these days marketers are extremely vigilant of how they spend their budget and their decision of sponsoring shows.

“Sponsorships are always based on certain objective of the brand and the need of the brand at that point in time. Generally, when we look out for sponsors, we find there are certain brands that may not be on the target list of priority for a particular show or event, but we do get interest on these brands. Because there can be something in the show, a piece of content that can be relevant to that brand in that point in time. There can be very niche B2B brands sponsoring hard core B2C show,” she shared.

Although, according to Quadros, at times, a show and a brand might not fit, but that could be the need of the brand. And that won’t impact the audiences as long as there is a positive transfer of ethos and values between the two.

“But a brand has to be subtly integrated into the content so that the audiences don’t get jumbled up,” she added.

Apart from this, it is natural that brands in challenging times like these might jump onto the bandwagon of sponsorships or out of sheer necessity of sponsoring content, can commit a mistake.

Challenges amid the pandemic

According to Chatterjee, properties such as Ramayana on Doordarshan worked really well and the brand associated with it amid the pandemic for higher mileage. It was a conscious decision for the brand to be active in mass media as consumption pattern had spiked.

Initially, everything was challenging because no one knew what the next day will be like. So, Ansari said, empathy was a must.

“For brands that had a product that could sell a lot during the lockdown, the communication was very crucial and brands were careful to not look insensitive or over-opportunistic. Another challenge was to spread awareness about the situation with simple and informative pieces of content,” he added.

Even in the crisis, Quadros believes that if the content is targeted to the specific audience and is able to derive value for the partner brand, one will definitely find investors.

“In the last one month, we have seen spike in the response that we have been receiving from brands for a lot of our initiatives with WWM. Even for virtually curated content, if one is able to derive value to the brand, then there are takers in the market,” she added.

At TTT, given that most of its writers worked remotely, it found it rather easy to adapt to the new work-from-home norms. With fresh content on the page every day, it also created new video formats.

In fact, it has recently released its first web-series ‘Butterflies’ powered by Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk in this period.

Shively also suggested that any brand interested in investing in building brand awareness should look at sponsoring relevant content.