MAM
Growth of influencer marketing in the events industry
The Indian events industry is currently among the fastest growing sectors in the country. In fact, it is predicted to cross the 10,000 Cr mark by 2020-21. The tremendous growth seen in this lucrative industry can be attributed to several factors, such as digital activation, sports leagues, rural expansion, and Government initiatives followed by IPs, personal events, product launches, expansion of mini-metros, and below the line spend.
The underlying outcome of digital activation has been the growing trend of using influencer marketing as a primary form of promotion, carried out by the event organisers.
For event organisers, influencers can be broadly categorised into 3 types –
· Mega-Influencers: These are celebrities and popular personalities, who have a huge number of followers. They charge high fees to be associated with the events, and are not necessarily industry experts.
· Macro-Influencers: These influencers have a high following as well, and are industry experts, who collaborate with various event organisers, on a regular base.
· Micro-Influencers: These consist of the average person who has a high level of engagement, and hence, are prime influencers who are tapped during events.
Influencer marketing, in a nutshell, can be described as a partnership formed by event organisers and influential industry experts, to increase the event exposure, both online and offline. This new phenomena is a type of marketing which enables organisers to reach out to the targeted niche community, through a research and insight-driven strategy for creating authentic content using the voice of an influencer.
Influencer marketing helps event organisers and the brand in numerous ways, such as:
· Create Brand Awareness: Influencer marketing is the best tactic to be used, in order to create a buzz around the event, and therefore, reach out to new consumers. Event organisers apply various strategies to create awareness, while the influencers carry out multiple shout-outs about the event which is to take place. They also host giveaway tickets for the events, creating an engagement with the consumer, which is better explained below.
· Brand Engagement: This goes hand-in-hand with creating brand awareness. The most effective way of understanding whether the influencer marketing has a positive impact involves analysing social media likes, comments, and the use of hashtags. Influencers build a community and engage with old and new consumers, by doing a takeover on pre-event and event days. This helps them become a brand ambassador of the event on the particular day, and offer consumers behind-the-scene glimpses of the event.
· Consumer Retention: A well-constructed influencer marketing campaign helps an event tap into new consumers. It is extremely important to integrate them into the brand’s consumer-base. Since a large number of events take place every year, consumer retention is of top priority for a brand. Thus, with the help of influencers, it can successfully maintain that link with the consumer base.
The above is a clear indication that influencer marketing is here to stay, and will only move from strength to strength, in the coming years. With event companies pumping in more and more money into marketing, influencer marketing, one of the most sought after marketing tools today, will play a key role for events and brands alike, in the years to come.
(The author is managing director, Dome Entertainment. The views expressed are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
