“With the content explosion today, we have only a window of opportunity of a few seconds to make an impact. If the audience does not relate to our messages at a personal and emotional level, they are most likely to forget your messages. Videos, ads and campaigns that we see going ‘viral’ all have the same trait- they connect with the audience emotionally. High production value, good camera work and acting are secondary. To build brand loyalists and ambassadors, we must make an impression on the user’s mind and heart. A relationship has to be built to make them care for your brand. When your message connects with the audience emotionally, they instinctively respond to your brand.” Said Samir Vora, Chief Marketing Officer, Dailyhunt.
In an interaction with MediAvataar India Samir gives in-depth knowledge of the digital content game in India and also a few pointers on how to run a successful digitally-led campaign to entice Youth.
Here is the complete Q&A…..
MediAvataar: Tell us about the #DailyhuntHaiNa campaign?
Samir: It’s our exciting new campaign, quite different from our previous campaigns, #HarBhashaEqual and #KhudKiSochBanao. It’s a very special campaign for all of us as we are adopting a young and fun tone, to build brand resonance with the youth, through situational humour.
It’s a multimedia campaign featuring six 6, fresh, young and fun videos of which we have released 3 right now. Through these videos, we have highlighted the benefits of Dailyhunt for its users. We have communicated how relevant we are in terms of content, our hyper-local presence, news and entertainment, and above all, we help keep the youth of our country abreast with what’s happening around them
In the first week itself, the campaign has seen over 20 million views, over 500K likes and has been shared over 50K times.
MediAvataar: What made you decide to target the youth?
Samir: India is a heterogeneous market with complex socio-economic-political diversity. Today’s digital consumption is being led by youth as they are technologically savvy, aspirational and thirsty for entertainment and being updated with what is happening around them.
With the inclusion of tier 2 and tier 3 towns in digital conversations, the role of the youth cannot be underestimated. The youth have always been an important target segment for Dailyhunt and with this ad campaign, we are tapping into them in a focussed manner.
MediAvataar: What are your views on the digital marketing scenario in India?
Samir: Digital marketing in India is very promising, and it is poised for even more rapid growth.
I see the following important trends in the industry
– As the next 500 million Indians get online, we are seeing greater demand for hyper local and vernacular content pan India. We can see it playing out in Dailyhunt as well.
– The growth is largely credited to deeper mobile penetration in India and internet accessibility with tier 2 and tier 3 towns. As more people access the internet, vernacular digital platforms have grown larger in the country making them the preferred choice of marketers seeking better targeting and ROI on their spends.
– Diversification of digital marketing spends is also happening at a fast pace to hyper local platforms like us. The duopoly that exists in the industry today is getting challenged seriously.
MediAvataar: Is video consumption soaring?
Samir: Yes, not just in India, but also globally. According to a report by Deloitte, the estimated online video audience in India is expected to touch 500 million users by 2020
While content is moving towards video consumption, the device of preference is becoming the smartphone, it is always handy and makes the consumption of video content independent of location. Today, we see consumers prefer video content over text, across genres, whether it’s for entertainment, news, education or sports
At Dailyhunt, we believe that the future of the internet lies in video and vernacular. As a digital platform, we need to adapt to the changing habits of the audience. So, even our app experience is centred on the video format. Today, we have 1 billion video views per month, and to further tap into the potential of video content, we are also focusing on exclusive content partnerships like with Discovery channel
MediAvataar: How do you look at the competition?
Samir: Our goal is to become be THE Indic platform empowering a billion…enabling them to discover, consume and socialise with content that informs, enriches and entertains.
In this journey, we are focusing on our own work, rather than worry about the competitors
Our growth trajectory has left platforms of similar nature, far behind
o Today, we have more than 250 million monthly active users
o Average time spent on our platform is 24 mins
o One of the most important differentiators for us is that we aggregate content that is original, high-quality and verified
o It comes from licensed sources, so we are also a brand safe environment
MediAvataar: Do you think emotions play an important role in crafting a messaging?
Samir: Absolutely, with the content explosion today, we have only a window of opportunity of a few seconds to make an impact. If the audience does not relate to our messages at a personal and emotional level, they are most likely to forget your messages.
Videos, ads and campaigns that we see going ‘viral’ all have the same trait- they connect with the audience emotionally. High production value, good camera work and acting are secondary
To build brand loyalists and ambassadors, we must make an impression on the user’s mind and heart. A relationship has to be built to make them care for your brand.
When your message connects with the audience emotionally, they instinctively respond to your brand.
MediAvataar: What is your content/messaging strategy?
Samir: Dailyhunt, as a brand, has always been a “leader”. Our approach has been to position Dailyhunt as a thought leader who understands Bharat and its customers the best. The attempt is always to build campaigns that go beyond what we do and resonate with the audience at an emotional and personal level.
#HarbhashaEqual was one such campaign. It is the corner stone of our thinking and through this campaign, we celebrated the linguistic diversity in India. We encouraged the ambitious Indian youth not to be hesitant just because they can’t speak English fluently. The campaign was based on the very foundation of Dailyhunt: that the power of the vernacular is to be celebrated. It was a social experiment that sought to overcome a deep-rooted language bias that exists in India, towards people who speak vernacular languages
Similarly, for our next campaign, for the elections in 2019, we again took a leadership stance, by addressing the challenges of fake news and content explosion. The #KhudKiSochBanao campaign was also close to our hearts as it highlighted how it is imperative for us to have a ‘Trusted’, ‘Unbiased’, ‘Credible’ source of information online to make an informed choice. We reiterated the significance of forming one’s opinion at a time when the presence of multiple channels of information often leads to the misrepresentation of facts, biased coverage and has an impact on neutrality
MediAvataar: How is Dailyhunt faring amongst the Indian viewers?
Samir: We are in India, for Indians, by Indians- serving in local languages. Today, we serve over 265 million monthly active users, satiating their desire for entertainment, news, sports and local information. It is even more encouraging that our offerings in 14 vernacular languages have been welcomed by tier 2 and tier 3 cities, from where we get 70% of our traffic.
Adding an average of 20 million new users every month, and maintaining an average time spent of 24 mins just further validates how integral we are to their lives. We also see engagement from Gen Z. Today, 65% of the users coming to our platform are less than 25 years of age.
MediAvataar: How do you deal with unwanted content?
Samir: For content platforms like ours, building trust with consumers is key, especially in this age of fake news and content explosion. At Dailyhunt, we have put a strong process in place to ensure that our users receive only verified content. Since we don’t have any user generated content on our platform, a large issue is circumvented.
We work with only high-quality, known, large publishers. It reduces the chances of unwanted content, and fake news at the very source. We also license our work to professionally generated content providers. To make this a robust system, we also have a publisher rating system, basis views and feedback (on metrics such as whether the content is disturbing, imagery wasn’t accurate etc) from users. This helps give a score to each content provider, calibrated in real time, which we share transparently with all the publishers
Further, we have a 400-member editorial team which reviews the content we receive
MediAvataar: What’s there in the pipeline for Dailyhunt?
Samir: For now, we are focusing on maintaining our growth trajectory through sustained momentum on vernacular, and on strategic content partnerships, like Discovery Channel, to bring exclusive content to our users.
Watch the campaign here
https://youtu.be/jTvYtNywySE
https://youtu.be/IfNbe1Kh7GI