In conversation with Punkaj Saini, Business Head- Delhi, Social Kinnect. How has the collaboration with actors and influencers for your recent campaign for Wills lifestyle benefitted the brand? Wills Lifestyle was able to reach a wider pool of audience and increase brand awareness by tapping into the follower base of these influencers. The brand also aced bringing about the perfect combination of Moment Marketing and Influencer Marketing by partnering with Radhika Apte, who was at the time, in the limelight for her work in the ‘Sacred Games’ series.

How do you strategize your reach to your consumers? There's no one way to drive reach. It’s unique for each client. If it’s a new brand, the first step towards doing this is to have healthy and open conversations with brand managers to identify their key USPs and how they differentiate from their competitors. It is also important to identify who the potential target audience is and what their digital traits are. A lot depends on the perception which the brand wants to create for themselves. Once you have understood the brand, it’s TG and the space you want to play in, you start crafting a unique content and creative strategy that will do justice to achieving the objective. Once the communication is in place, it is the media mix which plays a critical role. And there are times when you devise your communication basis certain social platform and/or ad platform/content partner which are important to influence a certain audience. On the other end, if it’s a brand which you’ve been working with, it’s usually taking in learnings and insights from previous campaigns and building on top of it. While everybody is on social media today, what are the pros and cons for brand building through social media? There are a lot of variables instrumental in defining the pros and cons. Some of the factors being, if you are a new brand or an existing one. If you are B2C or B2B. How evolved is the industry digitally and most importantly, what’s the digital maturity of the brand. Since there’s a lot of noise online and the brand will want to break free from the clutter, one will always have to try and create a unique and niche positioning for the brand. The key is to be niche, else you will be lost. How one does that it is a strategic call which needs to be charted out creatively. You can either be loud and upfront about the brand in your communication or could just have the entire emphasis on driving a certain message with a very subtle brand integration. However, if you do make your brand presence felt on a certain platform, it is important that you have the strategy and the resources to track, manage and grow the same by planning much ahead. The consistent brand language, quick turnaround time and ensuring a quick resolution is something to be taken very seriously. In terms of digital brand building what are the changes you have noticed in the last few years? There’s lot more accuracy, targeting options, ad formats, and better funneling, reporting and tracking conversion options available with ad-publishers today. Apart from which there are more changes noticed like the fact that one can’t afford to have digital as a backup or an add-on plan. Having considerable budget allocations for a digital strategy is a pre-requisite. Each of the social media platforms has evolved substantially - Instagram is great for driving engagement with the younger audience. Facebook for higher visibility and it’s massy. YouTube is considered for its great discovery engine and storytelling. And, LinkedIn is gaining prominence for thought leadership and recruitment. Apart from this, one also notices that more and more of influencers are being leveraged for brand building as well as for sales and conversions. Collaborating with the right celebrities and influencers is more important than ever, because the audience is digitally evolved as well.