MUMBAI: Every individual during the lockdown is trying to master one or the other skill.  But they are not realising that it is okay to ignore the pressure of productivity. Apparently, productivity is not a synonym for safety, health or sanity. This point was raised by Oaktree founder Gaurav Kapur during a webinar discussing the business of content in a post-Covid world, hosted by The Advertising Club Bangalore.

Kapoor said: “I just want to tell people that it is not a productivity contest which people initially taught it is. It is the race for survival. During the first thirty days people though it is a party, but slowly people are realising that the situation is quite dire. And now there is a shift in the mood and behaviour of people. I have a team of 25 people at Oaktree. It is not just about generating revenue but also have some things that keep the team motivated; we are trying to keep busy by generating content”

The other panellists in the virtual discussion included Pocket Aces founder Ashwin Suresh, Duroflex VP marketing Smita Murarka, Nodwin Gaming MD Akshat Rathee, Wavemaker VP and Kishan Kumar MS. The panel was moderated by Wavemaker chief content officer Karthik Nagarajan.

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Explaining the measures taken at Pocket Aces, Suresh added, “In the initial week of lockdown we realised the repercussions. So, accordingly we made the arrangements by moving the system to people’s houses. Post that, we started working on forward content; we were planning a lot of shoots that could be done during lockdown. We started researching about what is happening in the countries where lockdowns happened before India. Our HR team started preparing scenarios if it is going to be 20 day or 30 day but now it is almost 70 days. So we in a way had a capability to move into the productive mode.”

According to experts, it is time for motivating people as well as focusing ways on generating revenue systems.

There are two kinds of advertisers: those who spend a lot of money on advertising and those playing it safe. And others who are seeing this period as a great opportunity and are being more aggressive when it comes to content.

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“Before Covid2019 we were educating clients about the importance of sleep but according to Indian mentality burning the midnight oil is great. For Duroflex as a brand the situation has come very positively and organically where we say that sleep builds immunity. We were able to take this conversation out in the world through digital and TV medium in a much stronger way than we could have done earlier,” says Smita Murarka.

According to Murarka, posting the right content that fits today's environment has helped them a lot. There was an increase in the traffic on the site by 4x times. She also highlights that it is important for other brands to see if the occasion relates to you and how much connection you can draw from it organically. It is not a performance contest or a competition. Brands should see if the content is in their space and strengthen that further to help people.

Gaming industry is one of the few sectors that has seen growth or is faring better than other industries.

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Elaborating on the same, Nodwin Gaming MD Akshat Rathee said that working from home for a sector like gaming and e-sports is easy. “We already knew that PUBG mobile was doing well before it became popular. My servers are melting down because people are playing too much and watching too much. On the other side platforms like Netflix are very passive because when you watch too much it creates an urge of doing something live. E-sports comes at the top tier of gaming.”

This year was very challenging in terms of ad spends. Currently, live entertainment has come to a standstill. Major sports events like IPL and Olympics are not happening.  Considering this scenario Nagarajan pointed a question towards Kishan Kumar on how it will impact a market like India.

“As agencies we are consultants. So, basically consultancy is based on past knowledge and here we don’t have any rule book on issues like this. As an industry we work on passion points, whether it is cricket or live game or entertainment. So, when you are in a situation where a large aspect of the industry is taken away is very difficult. As long as brands and advertisers stick on to a passion point to engage with consumers that passion point translates into different ways of expression. This pandemic has also taught us to go back and rediscover our fundamentals,” added Kishan Kumar.

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