In the wake of a global pandemic, the Adclub Bangalore has been hosting a series of webinars that bring together veterans in the field of advertising, media, and communication. As a fourth installment in the series, the Ad club hosted a webinar on the topic, ‘The Business of Content in a Post-Covid World. The panelists for the discussion included, Gaurav Kapur, TV Presenter & Founder- Oaktree Sports, Akshat Rathee, MD, Nodwin Games, Ashwin Suresh, Co-founder, Pocket Aces, Smita Murarka, VP- Marketing, Duroflex, and Kishan Kumar MS, VP, Wavemaker. The panel discussion was moderated by Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker, Delhi.
The session began with a discussion on how the business of content will pan out post-Covid and what is in it for brands and marketers.
Gaurav Kapur said, “I have a team of 25 people at Oaktree and we are not just focused on what we can do to generate revenues, we are giving importance to things which will keep the team motivated. Revenue generation is tough, but we are trying our best to put things together as much as we can.”
When asked how the team at Pocket Aces has prepared themselves for the lockdown, Ashwin Suresh said, “We ended up being quite paranoid. We imposed work from home option two weeks before the national lockdown was declared. It helped us to test out the real repercussions. We realized our needs during the first week and the team was able to fine-tune the system. We also planned a lot of content that could be done during the lockdown.”
Speaking on the content strategy followed by Duroflex during the shutdown period, Smita Murarka said, “We are asleep solution company, mainly dealing in mattresses as a product. Before Covid 19, we were educating consumers about the importance of sleep. Duroflex as a brand during the current situation has come out positively, where we have spoken on how sleep builds immunity. We were able to take the conversation to a different level in a much stronger measure than earlier. Most of the content we have churned out during this period was from the knowledge we had gathered internally. We have taken on to organic content and it was perfect for the occasion. We have witnessed our traffic going up by 4X. “
Commenting on work from concept, Akshat Rathee said, “Working from a home concept in the gaming industry is easy, this is what we have been doing for the last few years. There is a power to interactivity and gaming and e-sports is a top tier of competitive branding.” Rathee further elaborated on the gaming overview and video game genres.
When asked what the current crisis meant for the Indian market and agencies, Kishan Kumar said, “ As agencies we are consultants and our consultation is based on our past knowledge. Right now, we do not have any rule book for a situation like this. As an industry, we are so dependent on passion points like cricket, music, films, live games, etc. According to me, as long as brands and advertisers stick on to the passion points to engage with consumers, and those passion points actually translate in different ways of expression, it should be fine. The situation has taught us to re-discover our fundamentals. Agencies, brand owners, content creators, all of us are using our collective influence to find out what is the re-calibrated core of the brand.”
Speaking on the quality of sports post-Covid crisis, Gaurav Kapoor said, “The situation of sports after Covid is going to be completely different, there is going to be possibly no spectators in the stadium. Now coming to live sports, as custodians of brands we are aware that people will come back with half the money, there will arise questions on rights fee etc. The most important factor than money, the quality of sports is going to be affected. Never before have the sports professionals had to sit around for 2-3 months without doing anything. Even when they are injured, they have rehab programs. There is a loss that will be suffered in terms of quality of sports on the field, as also what the viewers will be watching.”
The event was a huge success, with more than 160 participants on Zoom and Facebook Live. The webinar was hosted with the support of the Ad Club’s Managing Committee and Online Partner Medianews4u.com.
Laeeq Ali, the President, said, “Content has been one of the hottest topics for a while now and it has come a long way from blogs, social posts, whitepapers to videos, podcasts, and games. With internet penetration rising by the day as well as all the recent covid centric changes around us, I am sure it is going to be even more important for any business brand to look at content in a much more closer & focused manner. Slowly and steadily individuals are rising to become mini broadcast channels too. Our idea was to showcase the possibilities around content for brands through this webinar”
Arvind Kumar, Executive Director, Adclub Bangalore said, “The big challenge was to match the dates of so many expert Panellists. Thanks to Karthik & Kishan, who made this possible to bring some High-Quality discussion to our audience”. The Video of the Webinar is available on
https://www.facebook.com/theadclubbangalore/videos/167502944684016/
