How are network media agencies upping their content game in India?

While network media agencies have for several years acted as mediators between platforms and brands to execute long-form branded films, advertiser-funded programmes and sponsorship deals; their roles have now become even more important to help brands catch the speeding content bus, which has accelerated due to the pandemic, the advent of influencer marketing, growth of OTT, gaming and social commerce.

Mindshare has been building its content arm Mindshare Content+ for more than a decade now.

 

Ajay Mehta, Senior Vice-President, Mindshare Content+ and Partnerships, said, “Today, we are far better placed in terms of the true intersection of media and creativity. Typically, one would go to a creative outfit for solutions but today, a lot of marketers are looking at media agencies for solutions.”

He further said, “I realised the lines were blurring between creative and media when I moved to this side seven years ago. At that time, brand solutions revolved more around traditional media partnerships and activations across radio and print, among others. Today, the explosion in media platforms has enabled us to give quicker, nimbler, faster, and more agile content solutions than a lot of other setups which have a very traditional way of approaching things.”

Shailja Varghese

Omnicom Media Group Agencies have been in the content business for quite a while now. However, only in the last year the agency was able to bring all content efforts under one umbrella and launch Omnicom Media Group's content practice, OMG Content. The agency then appointed Shailja Varghese as its Chief Content Officer.

Varghese believes that having a media agency in place helps brands spin a story that speaks to the audience, has high relevance within the cultural context and delivers with executional excellence and positively impacts the business.

She said, “The challenge which marketers face is to find all services of content marketing under one hub. This is where the agency content experts play a major role. We don’t only know how to craft the stories which are embedded in consumer insights and passion points but also get supported by media, digital and planning teams to build strong scalable and sustainable ideas backed by science and data. This integrated teamwork makes content practices within media agencies a powerful hub to solve business challenges.”

Karthik Nagarajan

Maxus is India’s first agency to have a full-fledged content and sports practice in India. In 2018, GroupM’s Maxus and MEC were merged to form Wavemaker. Post the merger, Karthik Nagarajan was appointed as Wavemaker India’s Chief Content Officer. 

While the content stream was growing at a steady pace pre-pandemic, the Covid-induced lockdown increased content consumption multi-fold, which led to clients increasing their focus on this front. 

Nagarajan said, “What really has worked for us from a branded content canvas perspective is that we were ready when the clients’ demand increased in terms of branded content skillsets, and understanding of the audience.” 

IPG Mediabrands’ Content Studio forayed into India in May 2021 and appointed Siddhant Mazumdar as its India Head. 

He believes consumers’ fragmented attention and decaying trust have pushed brands to be more creative which has, in turn, led to a rise in agencies developing content arms as it bridges the attention deficit and helps sell a brand better.

Varun Shah

Not staying behind in the race is Publicis which launched ‘Content Factory’ in 2018 and most recently consolidated it with its production arm ‘Prodigious’ under Varun Shah. 

Shah said, “We had thought that the digital content revolution will happen by 2024-2025, but that shift is already happening now because of Covid-induced lockdown. Consuming content on digital has already become a habit. Branded content has become equally big as mainline content.”

Uday Mohan

In April 2022, Havas Media Group India also announced the launch of a specialised content division, ‘Havas Content’, which is led by Uday Mohan, President and Chief Client Officer, Havas Media Group India. 

Mohan commented, “Havas's reputation globally in the content space is unparalleled. With Indian brands becoming content-conscious, we officially launched our content division in India. Bringing together the combined expertise of Havas Village, and the content powerhouse within the Vivendi network, we are confident Havas Content will become a one-stop-shop for all our client’s content needs.”

Mehta told BuzzInContent.com that Mindshare Content+ has grown three times in size in the last five years. “We have been on trend and introduced various verticals which are relevant from a client’s business perspective. Earlier, a lot of focus was on film and entertainment in terms of content partnerships and activations. Today, we offer solutions across Social, B2B content, Social Commerce, Advocacy and experiential. All of this is delivered given the diverse talent pool we have which complements each other beautifully to land solutions.”

Going ahead, OMG content practice will put a special focus on building partnerships, creating bespoke content, innovation, launching new products and verticals, doing advocacy, conducting content boot camps and cross-pollinating best practices from across the globe offices of OMG agencies.

Varghese said, “OMG Content is a future connected content practice for creative storytelling solutions to brand challenges. We have delivered hundreds of solutions across influencer marketing, events, activations, production, branded content and OOH across category clients.”

Focus area for 2022

Doing AFPs, long-form branded content and snackable content on content platforms to remain the bread and butter of the content arms of media agencies, this year the agencies will increase their focus on social commerce, gaming, Web 3.0 revolution and regional content. 

This year, Mindshare would focus more on content which impacts beyond media metrics. “The needle has shifted from compelling storytelling to hard-working content. We would focus on content that has the ability to convert business. Today, it is far easier to prove that. Given the growth of eCommerce, content has a larger role to play from an advocacy and B2B point of view. It can drive awareness, consideration, as well as conversion in one go. The key is to cut across the marketing funnel and create an impact on media, brand and business metrics,” said Mehta.  

Mediabrands Content Studio’s priorities for this year involve three major things. “Firstly, we want to unlock more unique original content strategies for brands. Secondly, we want to ensure that everything we make for brands is built entirely on a rock-solid and believable brand purpose. And thirdly, we also want to prove that content doesn’t just need to be video or text – we must innovate with all kinds of eventual executions to expand what content can be, be it trying experimental formats or actually building something physical out of scratch,” said Mazumdar. 

OMG Content would focus on strengthening the content process, operations, and executions. Varghese said, “That's what matters the most when it comes to executing campaigns and ensuring client delight. Furthermore, we will be carrying out more feasibility studies on new vertical launches. We would also look at rolling out Omnifluence workshops for a select few clients.” 

Omnifluence is Omnicom Media Group Influencer platform, that offers influencer analytics, coupled with influencer deep insights into one platform.

Wavemaker’s Karthik shared that his agency is very excited and cognisant of what’s happening in the Web 3 space. “We don’t look at it to be just the world of cryptocurrency or Metaverse events, etc. We think Web 3.0 has the power to change societies. It is not just a marketing thing but a societal change. It will affect the creators' economy, organisational cultures, and how we pay for things in the future. We are very steadily building our understanding of this space. Finding the right partners and decoding the whole space for our clients. That is definitely an area of criticality.” 

He further said that social commerce, content on eCommerce platforms and shoppable content will be the agency's second focus area. He explained, “Every content we do today has to work in the bottom funnel as well as the top funnel. The middle funnel is always the sweet spot for content. The bottom of the funnel is where commerce meets content. A lot of changes are happening there.”

Thirdly, gaming has been Wavemaker’s focus area for the last two years and it will continue to be important even in 2022. 

Karthik also shared that Wavemaker is also very bullish about regional language content in India. “Something we are very invested in is our ability to localise content in regional languages. Whether it is our larger partnership with ShareChat or the work we are doing in South Entertainment,” he said.