With consumers turning to ‘real-life’ brand allies to learn about products and services before loosening their grips, the emergence of influencers is finally displacing historical brands’ obsession with traditional forms of advertising in India. And as influencers continue to bring much-needed relatability and authenticity to the table, consumers are finding comfort in them and listening to them because they’re making conversations enjoyable and enjoyable. Influencers have metamorphosed into new-age celebrities, and with brands finding proven success in associating with them, they have become a crucial body of brand marketing.
As the creative economy emerges as one of India’s most promising sectors, largely revolutionizing the way brands engage with their audiences, artist collective network Big Bang Social – an Indian creative marketplace that connects brands with influencers – is ramping up its efforts to bridge the gaps of space needs allowing penetration across the length and breadth of the country. They have recently launched the City Ambassador Program which aims to use relevant regional influencers to grow its network of micro-to-nano influencers to create new avenues of growth for creators and provide them with deeper reach to showcase their talent.
The idea is to empower this new crop of talent by bringing them best-in-class opportunities to showcase their content and monetize the same.
Vijay Subramaniam, CEO and Group Founder, Artist Collective Network, explains, “Engaging with influencers is an effective way to grow and maintain brand reputation by building trust with the right audience versus the right influencer’s followers. It soon becomes the most effective way to grow a pool of brand advocates. Making the process of executing large influencer campaigns smooth and fast – it’s a tool that can cut time and effort to a large extent and deliver effective and tangible results.”
“Also, without a solid process for it, any influencer marketing campaign means the burden of finding the right fit, curating the right content and getting it out to the right audience falls on both the brand and the influencer. This is a nationwide issue that we want to address, and that’s why we’ve put in a strong technology infrastructure. We’ve taken this long, arduous process and removed those barriers. This significantly reduces the effort and time of both parties. For brands it means faster execution with more cost transparency and for creators it means finding and taking advantage of the best opportunities in the market.”
Highlighting the scope in the sector, Vijay says, “The pandemic led to a certain increase in digital marketing spend and we witnessed significant growth in advertising budgets allocated to creators. In the creator marketing world, we have consistently grown around 80-100 percent over the last two financial years. Our network today is a carefully curated list of 18K+ influencers that have been hand-picked and cataloged with rich data insights and analytics, richer than any other platform on the market today.
The scope is endless from where we are today, right now influencer marketing is the buzzword, but I’m convinced it’s the only vertical of the creator economy. We will see the evolution of the creator trade. Today Big Bang Social is the only platform in the country that has skill development and new monetization avenues built into the product along with influencer marketing. We have also made several acquisitions in the space and plan to double down on team expansion across the length and breadth of the country.”
When asked about Big Bang Social’s revenue model, he elaborated: “We currently charge brands a platform fee, along with a subscription model there’s also an offline fee model. With the influencer market growing at its current rate, we see it reaching half a billion dollars in the next three to four years.
Betting big on the future of the sector, he believes that while the pandemic may have sparked a new wave of influencers, this is not a passing trend.
“Some aspects of it will certainly change, but ‘Influencer’ is here to stay even if the platforms change. I especially think it brings great opportunities for artists, who often struggle to follow their passion and maintain a steady stream of income at the same time.”
“Platforms like Big Bang Social can help them grow their audience and generate a revenue stream at the same time,” he concludes.
