Eric Jumbert, vice president, marketing, Colgate-Palmolive India, speaks about how the dental care major is harnessing the power of the digital medium. In an address at the Google for India event in New Delhi last week, Jumbert talks of how the company learnt from a recent example on YouTube. In March 2016, the company launched The Shine Song featuring Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor to promote its toothpaste variant, Colgate Visible White. The song got 1.58 million views on YouTube in the initial surge of viewers.

However, in July this year, when the brand got a YouTube content creator Shraddha Sharma and rapper Big Deal to do a version of The Shine Song , the video has already got 2.55 million views. This leads Jumbert and the audience to wonder, “Was Shraddha Sharma more appealing than Sonam Kapoor?”

Changing pecking order He’s not the only one asking that question. In the online world of videos, the pecking order of the stars is different. Samir Bangara, co-founder and managing director of Qyuki Digital Media, throws up some more interesting statistics.

Research by Qyuki, whose co-founders include reputed film director Shekhar Kapur and renowned music composer AR Rahman, has found that YouTube stars are more popular than mainstream biggies in more cases than one. For instance, Rahman himself has about 1.62 lakh subscribers on YouTube while the band Sanam has 8.78 lakh subscribers. Or for a Yo Yo Honey Singh who has about 2.83 lakh subscribers, there is a Shirley Setia with more than 4.55 lakh subscribers. (All these numbers continue to grow.) This trend is not limited to India, though. Swedish web-based comedian and video creator PewDiePie dons the mantle as the world’s most popular YouTuber. He has a massive 4.82 crore subscriber base.

That’s why brands are slowly, but surely, warming up to the power of YouTube Stars. Today’s generation of consumers are making media and product choices that fit into their lifestyle, says Jumbert. In Colgate’s case The Shine Song -related digital marketing activity resulted in an 18 per cent increase in first-time buyers of the visible variant and a 60 basis point-increase in market share at modern trade outlets.

Bangara says there are enough and more reasons “to work in collaboration with YouTube stars and harness the force of nature” to a brand’s advantage. Although there are enough and more websites promising to help you increase your YouTube viewership base, including one called www.buyactiveyoutubesubscribers.com, which flaunts a money-back guarantee, Bangara is of the view that a YouTube subscriber “depicts true fandom”. According to him, a YouTube subscriber is seven times more emotional attachment and is 17 times more engaged than a regular viewer. “If a brand shows consistency of content and feeds the right fodder, it will get the desired results,” he says.

According to digital media experts such as Simon Kahn, CMO, Google Asia-Pacific, there are many things that brands could learn from YouTube creators. First among them is on how to connect quickly and effectively with their audience. “That’s what YouTube content creators do very well. They are authentic and impactful. The reason for that is that they develop a direct rapport and connect with their audience,” he says.

What not to do While brands have an opportunity to replicate that, there are some pre-conditions. “They have to move away from the typical brandspeak that marketers have grown up with and be more real with customers,” says Kahn. He suggests that brands large and small could consider working with YouTube creators as they understand this platform and understand how to connect with their audience.

The effort must also be subtle. The YouTube creator should never be seen as endorsing a brand directly as they could lose their credibility. “The best YouTube creators understand that inherently and they would resist doing something that feels very stealthy or inauthentic. The ones that are really effective here are the ones who say to brands ‘I am very happy to work with you. But you have to give me creative licence to do what I want to do’.

Sometimes that might even be making fun of the brand. “For most of us who have grown up as traditional marketers that gives us nightmares,” says Kahn. He adds that brands which go with the attitude of ‘let’s take a chance, we are going to work in this new paradigm’ have found that this can actually work. “This is risky, and not what we typically do. By allowing creators to operate in a medium that they know so well, brands have been successful and have seen a big uplift,” he says. Jumbert, for one, must be surely nodding his head in approval.

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