The exchange4media group presented the second edition of e4m Conclave South last week at the Taj M.G Road, Bangalore. From marketers to media planners, everybody marked their presence at the event as this year’s theme was all about how to connect the disconnected audiences in a short attention span. As the theme was based on ‘Emotional Connect and The Distracted Consumers’, the industry leaders took over the podium to highlight the key points that play an important role in building a connect. Rohit Gothi, CEO, Hero Cycles, addressed the audiences with the leader address. During his session he emphasized on elements that were needed to engage with the distracted consumer specifically in the auto space. Gothi, throughout his session, stressed on the importance of snackable content and how audiences have moved on from 60 seconds content to 6 seconds content. ‘‘Most of the agencies are briefed for approximately 5-6 seconds of content. So the whole brief now which earlier use to create 60 or 40 or 20 second content has now changed to 6 second which we all notice as we go to YouTube and before any video ‘Skip the Ad’ option comes. So now it has become a challenge for agencies to create a noticeable ad in that particular short span of time without skipping anything,’’ said Gothi. He further explained with an example of long video formats and how longer form of videos work well in the automobile industry. Gothi gave an example of how long video format worked well in the case of Hero when it changed from ‘Hero Honda’ to ‘Hero Motocorp’. Gothi added, ‘‘One of the most remembered and loved TVC of brand Hero is ‘‘Hum Mai Hai Hero’’ which was almost 45 seconds to 1 minute long that came out during the split in the family which happened 6-7years back. The campaign was stuck around to the core of the brand Hero which was all about the high quotient of Indian-ness in the TVC.’’ Gothi throughout his session kept on prompting the importance of great content which can overcome the notion of distracted consumer. He took an example of famous web series TVF Tripling which was presented by TATA Motors. ‘‘The power of TV or web series is that if a brand creates a powerful content, there is no reason why a current consumer will not be hooked on to a brand which will in return maintain that connect between the brand and the consumer also,’’ he said. Talking about the challenges in the automobile industry, Gothi elaborated, ‘‘Unlike any other FMCG brand, the challenge in auto industry is that to sell a four-wheeler or a two-wheeler, the consumer doesn’t buy only on emotions of the brand but you also need to have right feature and therefore it becomes challenging task on what should media strategy for the particular brand be.’’