Brands must consider news genre for performance marketing: SoCheers' Siddharth Devnani

After working with clients in the entertainment space majorly during and after the pandemic, SoCheers’ goal for 2023 was to diversify its portfolio into new industries by doing the work that it had never done before in a space where being cutting edge and innovative is extremely important.

This year, the agency was just right on point in doing that, as per Siddarth Devnani, Co-founder and Director, SoCheers, along with clocking in 20% revenue growth on a year-on-year basis in business terms and coming up with work which is 1.5x more from what it did last year.

“In the two three years that have gone by, SoCheers as an agency was always focused more on entertainment because of the way the industry was moving with a lot of OTT shows coming into the picture. 70% of our revenues came from clients in the entertainment space. But, the last year has actually been the flip side of that where we've entered new industries such as BFSI, Consumer Electronics, FMCG, Gaming, etc. intentionally and grown our financials by 20% on a YoY basis,” he said.

Commenting as to whether the learnings from the entertainment space helped the agency in this growth journey and in what manner, he stated that when it comes to categories such as Consumer Electronics and FMCG amongst others, the objective, the majority of the time, is to generate consideration and demand, which is fairly different from entertainment. Still, at the same time, there are a lot of learnings which one can deploy in these categories from entertainment. One of them is literally on the toes when it comes to creativity and that too all the time.

Similarly in the gaming category, while it is a natural extension or subset of entertainment today along with shows and movies, the challenge associated with it is mainly from real money games and the rulings around the same. But even so, the industry continues to be bullish on gaming.

“In 2024, we will be doubling down on the work that we’ve been doing in the FMCG space especially as we see a lot more headroom there in terms of what values we can add to the brands which we're working with. That being said, we will continue to diversify our roster and work with clients from various categories and not just stick with entertainment,” he added.

Furthermore, he also mentioned that next year the agency will also be focusing on building profitability and sustainability because, in the last few years, the agency has grown its team quite swiftly and thinks that now is the time to capitalise on the sheer capabilities they have to ensure that SoCheers delivers cutting edge campaigns for clients.

“Next year onwards, we'd also like to grow ourselves from the lens of doing work which results in societal good, albeit from a POV of giving back to society or spreading a small cause message while leveraging the brand’s visibility,” he added.

Touching upon some of the top new clients that the agency added to its kitty this year, Devnani mentioned that this year the agency won the mandates for certain brands under Diageo Group, ITC, Croma, Havmor, Belgian Waffle, etc. owing to the focus on creative digital campaigns on all things social media, TVCs, Influencer marketing, etc.

Commenting on how he foresees the momentum being built for GenAI-led work, especially after this year’s World Cup, he stated that it's just the tip of the iceberg where agencies are only getting started and that he’s happy that it's happening and SoCheers is at the right place at the right time to leverage the same.

“As a mid-sized digital agency which is running frugal launch-to-deliver campaigns at scale, I think it was basically a moment to shine by leveraging AI and what we saw in the past year with ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 are just some examples of what the agency model holds for us in the years to come. But it's definitely not the last step,” he said.

He then went on to add that in 2024, he foresees Generative Video, which has already started but is being used in a very small way, mostly internally, becoming big next year wherein one can type a prompt and have films created. That being said, there’s a lot to uncover and get the full understanding from a client POV regarding who owns the rights, the moral grounds, etc.

“We'll be investing in any such kind of technology that comes up because I feel that it will give us an opportunity to be frugal and deliver great ad campaigns with the help of AI,” he said.

Throwing light on how the ad world is going to navigate through the cookie-less world with Google planning to phase third-party cookies in 2024, he emphasised that the way things are sounding today is that things are going to change with the flick of a switch. However, it's the evolving nature of digital that will force the ad landscape to reinvent and again it won’t happen overnight- it’ll take its own sweet time in months or even years.

“One of the things which we can do to prepare ourselves or rather help our brands prepare for this is by capturing first-party data, which essentially means maintaining your own community, which we've always been bullish on since the year of inception as a brand is built on its community and not necessarily the data points available on the platforms. Also, once you have your community, then the dependence on these cookies by nature is lower because the community is all but your first-party data,” he said.

He also emphasised that with many things going cookie-less, we’re likely to see the impact on performance marketing in terms of low-performance rates, but it would be a little gradual and not a mayhem kind of situation.

“Even though Google is sunsetting the third-party cookies, there will be other big tech players who will continue to do tech innovations to counter this and as an agency, our responsibility would be twofold in this- to prep our clients well in advance so none of this comes as a shocker and educates them in terms of what are the changes each time there's a new announcement that comes up from Google and the other one to scout the new options that will be coming up in the times to come on behalf of our clients because there's a new company that's pitching some solution to us every second day making it all like finding that needle in the haystack,” he said.

Unlike television or outdoors where the rules of the game don't change for decades and decades, digital is a space where things change every month with a lot more platforms coming into play and algorithms changing requiring one not just to tackle the issue but also leverage things as an opportunity, he opined.

On the performance marketing bit, he emphasised that brands should and will consider news as a genre for performance marketing campaigns all the more in 2024 owing to the fact that news is such a platform where people spend a considerable amount of time reading and jumping from one article to another deep diving into topics and seeing related subjects which makes it an extremely high engaging platform as compared to other social media platforms where things are a little more like casual browsing.

Upon questioning where he sees the most ad monies on digital channels going today, he replied that digital is very different from TV, Print, etc. because the lines are so much more blurred over here. The entertainment industry spends very heavily on influencer marketing over everything else because they want to influence people’s consideration to watch a piece of content, but Consumer Electronics double down on e-commerce and marketplaces and D2C brands on performance marketing because when one is establishing a brand and growing a brand from scratch, having a volume of sales coming through digital channels is important to hit profitability.

But industry-wide the trend is definitely skewed between the large ones being performance marketing, brand campaigns and influencer marketing, and the small ones like meme marketing that are catching up in the past few years for it not just drives consideration but also awareness.

Throwing light on the major challenges that the agency faced in the year gone by, Devnani pointed out that given that SoCheers is an independent agency, it works both ways- being independent means being lean and being able to do things more frugally and effectively with a shorter turnaround time but at the same time what it also means is that a lot of traditional brands still will trust the network agency because of their sheer scale, integrated-ness and a safety net owing to their size and the legacy campaigns that they’ve run.

“Honestly, there's enough space in the market for everyone to coexist because each client’s needs are different and therefore they select their agencies based on what fits their requirements right. But, I don't think commissions are increasing or are likely to increase because there have been challenges like cost pressures stemming from massive budget cuts that have taken place in the past year along with the venture capital funding drying up, not to forget last year's dip in the US stock market which impacted a lot of budget spends here. But even with all this, what we’ve been prioritising at SoCheers for 2024 is building the organisation sustainably in a way that SoCheers is not just an agency but a business which is more profitable,” he added.

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