Mumbai: Communication strategy consultancy Pitchfork Partners has launched a specialised influencer marketing division led by Sangya Lakhanpal, an experienced influencer marketer with both back-end and front-end knowledge of the industry.

Through this new service, Pitchfork Partners will concentrate on content and its amplification through tools like SEO in its effort to provide holistic solutions to brands and other agencies via a B2B model. The service has been pilot-tested for a year. The services will span all relevant platforms, from Instagram to YouTube and others.

Influencer marketing is maturing rapidly as an industry and is expected to grow to $16.4 billion globally in 2022. Pitchfork Partners aims to simplify and streamline the demand and supply of relevant influencers for brand campaigns along with strategic brand reputation management, thus providing holistic solutions to raise brand sentiment, awareness and engagement.

During the covid-19 pandemic, with people confined to their homes, there was a heightened consumption of digital content and e-commerce. The early apprehensions around influencer marketing were soothed during this time as the industry flourished on the back of authentic and relatable influencer content. Brands engaging with them witnessed a significant increase in loyalty and engagement in comparison to traditional branded content.

This led to more than 75 per cent of brand marketers committing to a dedicated budget for influencer marketing in 2022. This also led to many new influencer marketing agencies and others extending their service offerings to include influencer marketing.

Pitchfork Partners believes that, with this positive shift in the marketing industry and media spends, it needs to broaden its offering to be able to cater to increasing influencer marketing demands of brands and other agencies.

Commenting on the development, Pitchfork Partners chief operating officer Pannkajj D Desai said, "With an influencer marketing service, we can create much-required synergies for holistic marketing solutions, which are the need of the hour. It will act as a force multiplier for brands as they seek to spread their reach and achieve instant recall. Established brands who were allocating large budgets for celebrity brand ambassadorships will now be able to economise better with influencer marketing. Evolving brands, meanwhile, will be able to grow their reach through smaller budgets, making it a win-win situation for all."

Pitchfork Partners is a strategy consultancy committed to taking care of clients’ reputations. This is especially important at a time when the covid-19 pandemic has permanently altered the business landscape, from consumer mobility to media consumption and supply chains. In such a scenario, a brand’s reputation is its strongest asset. To maintain it, therefore, there is an even greater need to ensure positive experiences for stakeholders. This is why Pitchfork Partners specialises in understanding business needs and aligning communication with business goals, championing reputation building, management, and protection. The consultancy sees itself as a reputation warrior, offering bespoke solutions and a team comprised of marketing and communication veterans.