Tag: content marketing

Budgets don’t decide content success, engagement does, award moment

Super proud of the team, in winning the small budget campaign award at ET BrandEquity trendies award.. coz there wasn’t a zero budget category :)

The video was an experiment in asking ‘what if’ to the same research we’ve had for years, and reimagining it every time for the audience…

The big motivation for the video was the fact that we didn’t know how to execute.. and that pursuit became exciting to bring every visual imagined on the screen with hacks tricks and minimal effort compared to traditional way of production.

It hit 6.5M overall views in 5 days, with 30K likes on Twitter, 250K likes and 18K shares on Instagram and widely shared on WhatsApp.

Super grateful for the team for tireless execution and the enthusiasm in going in new directions..
The video link: https://youtu.be/022BTZgvN9U

Viral Content Masterclass at SolarSquare – Mumbai

What an amazing wrap to the viral content masterclass at SolarSquare Energy Few pointers from the session..

🌞 Not just content, but all marketing must be share-worthy, period.

🌞 Love of the process is more important than the results.

🌞 You or your brand don’t matter, what you do for your audience/customers matters.

🌞 The way to beat competition is by being true and authentic, with creativity.

🌞 Ideas must be in-house responsibility, like product and customer experience, so the culture of creativity is priority one.

🌞 Branding is about staying relevant in conversations, not bombarding eye balls

(For more, chapter 3 onwards in the book)

The energy, enthusiasm and a strong sense of purpose displayed by the team at SolarSquare, truly sets them apart. Grateful for the opportunity to work with such a passionate team.. looking forward to exciting possibilities ahead 😊🚀

Marketing Insanity, Until The Investors Come Calling

Have you noticed that whenever there’s a downturn, the first casualty in a startup is marketing. With the current state of economy and investor money become scarce, the marketing teams and spends are the first to go.

Why I wonder, do we spend like crazy in the first place? Who are we pleasing but our egos, because the audience doesn’t give a sh*t about your shiny ads or celebs.. it’s the storytelling they crave.

I saw a post by this ‘unicorn’ about their super expensive celebrity video shoot, and in two weeks they announced massive layoffs. The money they wasted in that hollywood style production could have saved jobs.

Marketing is not a function of money, but creativity. You cannot spend and buy engagement. But, everywhere you see, it’s fancy expensive campaigns, celeb endorsements and templated ads, until the investors come calling.

Spend like it’s your money, and you’re always frugal, creative in scarcity, and focus to increase per person efficiency.. ask any bootstrapped startup.

But when it’s big bucks from investors, then it’s like Bachmanity Insanity (Silicon Valley – S3E6)

Posted on LinkedIn

The first video – Gurgaon Toll Surprise

This day eight years back, I released my first ever video. It was the happiest and the scariest moment of my life, happiest coz it was my first ‘viral’ experience and scariest coz if I did not build on that, if I did not figure out, learn, deep dive, obsess about why it worked.. then I’d be back to the rat race, nothing but a one hit wonder.

The journey and the obsession since then has resulted in 76 videos which went viral, 470M views and a best-selling book.. which for a college drop out, written off as a failure.. was beyond my wildest imagination. Results are never in our hands, but our action and performance is, and one brick at a time, compound effect works like magic. Life always gives you signs, shows you doors, but what matters is if you run through them.

And when that tiny door opened on Feb 18, eight years back.. I ran through it like my life depended on it.

AC

Super Grateful for everything that came after :)

The only thing which matters for viral videos – podcast preview

Few months back, Vani Gupta Dandia and I recorded the first episode of her podcast series, power packed ten minutes about videos, virality and branding.

Full episode here..