Videos make content marketing more accessible: Sameer Satpathy

Film is more effective than the written word for the new generation, says Sameer Satpathy, Chief Executive, Personal Care, ITC, adding video makes content more accessible and easier.

Satpathy was speaking at a Fireside Chat on ‘How content drives business’ with Shivaji Dasgupta, Founder, Inexgro Brand Advisory, as part of the BuzzInContent Conversations.

“The way people think and look at knowledge itself has changed. It is impacting education and other things. We are already seeing the first signs of it—Khan Academy and Byju’s. They are just the beginning. But the way we access ideas is going to be in a medium, which makes it the easiest. Video makes it more accessible and easier,” Satpathy said.

Replying to Dasgupta’s question on whether voice and video has become an accelerator for content, he explained with an anecdote. “Somebody 1,000 years back said, ‘In our times we had to learn the Mahabharata by rote.’ So another person said, “I don’t have to do it, I have a book now. The equivalent of a movie has come in and I don’t know where it will go now. Maybe it will go into a virtual reality kind of space where you can play the character in the movie. It is moving on. Film is more effective than the written word for the new generation.”

Shedding light on the driving force of content marketing, he said that during his time as a brand manager, around 15- 20 years ago, there were limited avenues to express the brand—only TVC, print and PR. “But today, if marketers and agencies have the skill and the commitment, they can recreate their brand in many ways. And the brand has to have an idea it wants to express. If you have these things in place, the world is an oyster and you can make things happen the way you want,” he added.

Speaking on the effectiveness of content marketing initiatives, he said if it is interesting and big, and will impact the brand. “It should impact your lead consumers, your cutting-edge consumers, your fence-sitters, people who are opinion makers. So you should be influencing somebody. And if you are expressing the brand idea and you do it well, it influences people to look at your brand in a slightly different manner,” he said.

Sharing his experience of marketing Savlon hand wash, he explained the effectiveness of marketing to rural audiences. “There is a larger audience in the vernacular side and that is a demographic fact. The reason why Savlon has done so well is the groundwork we have done for the last four to five years. We were going to approximately 5,000 schools to teach good hygiene habits to children up to class five. The districts where we did the schoolwork, versus the ones where we did not, the growth was two to three times. It is that valuable if you do it well and you do it on scale,” he said.

During the chat, he shared another interesting case study of a content marketing initiative for Engage Pocket Perfume through their book, ‘Pocketful O’ Stories’. Since their brand is positioned on the theme of playful romance and their target audience is teenagers, they ran a campaign seeking entries of slam poetry. They received at least 11,000 poems and they decided to publish it in association with author Durjoy Datta.

“In India, books are something we do not throw. Books stay forever. You have something which is about your brand, which expresses your brand idea. The consumers have paid money for it and so many consumers have actually participated. Then we followed it up with book readings. This wasn't part of the content strategy in the beginning. But what good brand managers do is that they take a thread and keep building on it and as you do, it keeps getting stronger. If you do it the right way, then the sky's the limit,” Satpathy said.