[Live Blog] Takeaways from #SMLive 2023

This Live Blog reports the real-time updates, quotes, and takeaways from #SMLive 2023, taking you through Social Samosa’s marquee event for the 7th year.

Welcome to the live blog coverage of the 7th edition of #SMLive, a much-anticipated event by Social Samosa that brings together industry experts, and enthusiasts across the A&M industry promising a day filled with insights, trends, and more. 

At today’s virtual event, we get together with industry experts who dwell in the ever-evolving digital landscape and take us through topics like Generative AI in the Marketing space to Marketing to Gen-Z, Creator Economy, Personal Branding, Mental Health and more. 

You can tune into the Live session here. You can also see the Live Feed on Social Samosa’s Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Let's buckle up, and dive into it.

Our gifting partners, who have made the #SMLive event even more delightful, include Swa, Moonshine, The Whole Truth, Natch, Pure Dust, Pascati, and Beauty by Bie.

12:00 PM - The moment has finally arrived, Social Samosa goes live with SMLive. 

12:01 PM - Karuna Sharma, Head of Content, Social Samosa and emcee for the event, welcomes the viewers and industry folks to the 7th edition of SMLive.

12:04 PM - Hitesh Rajwani, CEO, of Social Samosa Network joins and welcomes the first speaker.

12:07 PM - Shweta Bajpai, Director, Fin-Serv, Media & Travel at Meta joins to give a fireside chat on The Big Picture: Consumer Insights & Social Media Trends that will shape the future.

12:10 PM - Last year has democratized what happened in COVID with digital content consumption - Shweta Bajpai.

12:15 PM - Younger people are inclined towards digital and use reels of other methods as a mode to discover financial services - Shweta Bajpai

12: 19 PM - 70% of adults online prefer messaging service over phone calls for customer service - Shweta Bajpai

12:21 PM - Messaging, Reels and AI would define what social media would look like in the future - Shweta Bajpai

12:30 PM - A workshop on Stories vs Content – The Balancing Act: Lessons from Terribly Tiny Tales by Sanjana Singh, Creative Director – Editorial Content, Terribly Tiny Tales.

12:33 PM - We have moved on from black and white text, 140 characters; and today TTT is a mix of videos, text, interactive content and more - Sanjana Singh

12:40 PM - Five years back, social media was a Social network, today it has become a place to share people's feelings. It has become a place of escape for many - Sanjana Singh

12:51 PM - We have changed the intent as per the relevance of our TG - Sanjana Singh

12:57 PM - When it comes to creation, we ask the question of whether it's relatable to us and then combine it with the intent and relevancy - Sanjana Singh

13:03 PM - 'What is our community feeling and can we create pieces that can convey this feeling' -- This is what TTT does and has been doing from the beginning - Sanjana Singh

13:10 PM - A Case Study on BotHard: The AI rapper that blurred the lines between advertising and entertainment by Ronak Ramraje, Group Head – Creative, DDB Mudra Shubhita Aggarwal, Client Solutions Partner, DDB Mudra Group.

13:12 PM - The genesis of the campaign began in around 2019 when Rap was not the primary genre, and after the release of Gully Boy, the genre had started to pick up but was not mainstream yet - Shubhita Aggarwal

13:18 PM - The insight of an up-and-coming rapper dissing an established rapper was added to match this concept with marketing - Ronak Ramraje

13:22 PM - AI has the capability to learn and make the campaign much better than what we visualize - Shubhita Aggarwal

13:36 PM - A fireside chat on From AI to HI: The Future of Digital Marketing Collaboration moderated by Suveer Bajaj, Co-Founder, Zoo Media, including panellists Siddharth Bhansali, Founder at Noesis.Tech, Karan Mirchandani, Founder – Unojobs.

13:40 PM - A lot of people are focusing on the intelligence side. Very few people actually focusing on focusing on the artificial side - Karan Mirchandani

13:42 PM - Technology works best when it scales human connection - Siddharth Bhansali

13:48 PM - You have to make AI your ally - Karan Mirchandani

13:50 PM - In the near future, there are going to be courses in AI in the education system, very early on, so people don't feel so afraid of it - Karan Mirchandani

13:53 PM - Roles are going to have to be reimagined in an organization for AI and HI to work cohesively - Siddharth Bhansali

13:55 PM - For me, the congregation comes down to adoption - Suveer Bajaj

13:57 PM - It is going to be a network effect over a period of time for the adaption of AI to happen in our daily life - Karan Mirchandani

13:59 PM - Until we are able to bridge the gap between large language models and imbibe them with the opinion and context of a human being, AI won't be able to have its massive cultural moment - Siddharth Bhansali

14:03 PM - AI is going to make advertisements serve smarter and better - Siddharth Bhansali

14:07 PM - First panel for the day on Building Blocks for Content, Influencers & Media Investments in 2023 moderated by Hitesh Rajwani, CEO, of Social Samosa Network with panellists:

• Anvesha Poswalia, Head of Digital & E-Commerce at HUL
• Parth Desai, Head of Digital Marketing at Pidilite
• Sujay Ray, Head of Digital Marketing at L’Oréal
• Sahil Shah, President – Digital Experience, DENTSU CREATIVE
• Netravathi Balaram Associate Vice President – Media Planning, Interactive Avenues

14:12 PM - Content is playing a lot bigger role whether it be influencer marketing or otherwise - Sahil Shah

14:17 PM - A few years ago influencers were distributed more in terms of the premium set of audience, today, even rural areas have adapted to this in their own personalized way - Anvesha Poswalia

14:22 PM - Audiences crave customized content and today, brands are chasing that - Netravathi Balaram

14:25 PM - When it comes to the top 5% of the audience, identifying the audience and collecting that data becomes absolute. it's important that the audience feels at ease to share the data and brands need to take care of this - Sujay Ray

14:32 PM - There is no one size fits all and that's where all the brand's efforts need to be aligned with - Sahil Shah

14:36 PM - In order to improve the campaign's metrics, Influencer marketing as a channel, in general, needs a bit of push from the platforms they are been run on - Parth Desai

14:46 PM - A trend that I forsee is that influencers will become more mainstream and communicate the brand proposition - Anvesha Poswalia

14:48 PM - In the coming 5-10 years, through the use of deep fake, content will be controlled more by technology and less by humans - Sahil Shah

14:51 PM - Decisions will be more rational and data-driven in the near future - Sujay Ray

14:54 PM - Navigating the AI Marketing Journey with Daksh Sharma, Co-Founder, Iffort.

15:00 PM - Proprietary models and open sources need to be used together in order to function - Daksh Sharma

15:04 PM - The beauty of AI is that it's constantly evolving so if you're facing some challenges today, it will be resolved soon - Daksh Sharma

15:06 PM - What search engines are actually telling you is that you will have recursive, and contextual conversations so that you don't have to navigate to various lengths - Daksh Sharma

15:10 PM - For marketers, AI will help in thinking from a creative lens and will help us to push the boundaries even more - Daksh Sharma

15:14 PM - In the internal business operations, for both the marketing teams and brands, there's going to be a lot of automation that will be brought in - Daksh Sharma

15:15 PM - Onto the next panel discussion, Beyond Likes, Views and Shares: Social Media Playbook for D2C Brands. The panel is moderated by Raghav Bagai, Co-Founder at Sociowash. Speakers join in:

• Harmeet Singh, Vice President, Marketing and Product, Digital, The Body Shop
• Snigdha Chowdhary, Head of Growth & Strategy, Good Media

15:18 PM - The marketing landscape for D2C brands has drastically shifted, compared to what happened pre-Covid - Harmeet Singh

15:21 PM - Post-Covid, brands have cut their spends on print, OOH and other traditional mediums and shifted to digital, changing the marketing game completely - Snigdha Chowdhary

15:24 PM - The challenge becomes more difficult when the consumer wants to shop both online and offline, and this is something the D2C space faces a lot - Raghav Bagai

15:26 PM - Social media plays a pivotal role in telling the brand's story and discovery - Snigdha Chowdhary

15:34 PM - For The Body Shop, influencer marketing is a key strategy for any campaign - Harmeet Singh

15:39 PM - For a new and upcoming brand to be successful, you need to create a brand DNA and the brand's ideology in order to communicate with the audience - Harmeet Singh

15:46 PM - A case study on Vigil Aunty: Creating an Influencer for Good by Ishaan Balvani, Creative Director, FCB Kinnect.

15:48 PM - The brief given to us was that the brand needed a quick and prompt medium to alert the audience of the fraudulent behaviour in the finance sector - Ishaan Balvani

15:51 PM - The idea was to save people from fraudsters but this time using a viral trend -- Vigil Aunty - Ishaan Balvani

15:57 PM - The origin story of Vigil Aunty was essential to set the tone of the viral influencer, which was quirky and upbeat - Ishaan Balvani

15:59 PM - Her origin story was from the South of India because HDFC's big demographic comes from the South - Ishaan Balvani

16:07 PM - To further generate buzz around the campaign, influencer reach and a talk show concept was created among other segments - Ishaan Balvani

16:14 PM - WhatsApp was one of the social platforms that were a constant point of reach for the campaign and the brand - Ishaan Balvani

16:15 PM - A panel discussion on The Next in Creator Economy moderated by Mrinil Mathur Rajwani, Founder and Editor of Social Ketchup with speakers:

• Kalyan Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO KlugKlug
• Pankhuri Harikrishnan, Founder-Director at Fetch
• Ankit Panicker, AVP, Brand Solutions and Sales, Clout Pocket Aces
• Viraj Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO, Monk Entertainment

16:18 PM - We might get to see a recall on long-form YouTube videos - Viraj Sheth

16:20 PM - A lot more genres of creator economy are going to get monetized - Ankit Panicker

16:26 PM - The pie for digital marketing spends has increased and brands are recognizing that - Pankhuri Harikrishnan

16:39 PM - Brands should always think from the audience's POV and then reach out to the influencer - Kalyan Kumar

16:53 PM - Next panel on the Impact of Generative AI on Advertising & Marketing moderated by Abhinay Bhasin, Head of Product Marketing, ProfitWheel. Speakers join in:

• Anupreet Singh Lamba Chief Revenue Officer at Gan.ai
• Preetham Venkky, Chief Digital Officer, DDB Mudra Group,
• Sneha Beriwal, CMO at VAHDAM,
• Vineet Shah, General Manager, Madison Digital

16:56 PM - Imagine the Internet, we converted every aspect of a human experience into the big thing i.e. the Internet. Generative AI is contestation. We are still in the early stages of AI - Preetham Venkky

16:59 PM - I think everyone is getting overexcited about generative AI. Its definitely here to stay, but it won't overthrow people - Sneha Beriwal

17:05 PM - AI + You is more powerful than just you - Preetham Venkky

17:09 PM - Generative AI helps you scale up your brand that your audience will love - Anupreet Singh Lamba

17:13 PM - Your outputs will only be as good as your prompts - Preetham Venkky

17:17 PM - The CMO's role has changed more in the last three years than it has in the last 10 years - Sneha Beriwal

17:20 PM - Be thorough with the use of technology, and don't get dazzled by the first demo you see - Sneha Beriwa

17:21 PM - Traditional marketers who are not digitally evolved are dinosaurs at this age - Vineet Shah

17:22 PM - You need people to get constantly updated - Vineet Shah

17:25 PM - Tech is here to help scale it, it's only 20-30% of the campaign, how you use it is where the marketer comes in - Vineet Shah

17:42 PM - The next session dives into What Gen Z wants, moderated by Keren Benjamin, Lead, Research and Strategy, ‘Capital Z’, a Gen Z research lab by White Rivers Media. Speakers include:

• Sunder Venketraman, Head of Content, Creator, and Monetisation, Josh
• Devesh Rohmetra, Associate Director, Social Media and Creative, Shaadi.com
• Neha Bareja, Brand, Social Media and Influencer Marketing Expert
• Vatsal Kanakiya, Principal & CTO, 100X.VC

17:46 PM - In the Bharat space, Gen Z chases different things than their global counterparts - Sunder Venketraman

17:49 PM - Gen Z is everywhere, they know what's happening in NFL, to Ukraine to Ramayan - Devesh Rohmetra

17:50 PM - Gen Z wants to look fashionable, but they are extremely value-conscious. They don't like to follow the masses when it comes to fashion choices - Neha Bareja

17:55 PM - Gen Zs are born in an abundance environment, which means their worldview is largely different from ours - Vatsal Kanakiya

18:00 PM - Gen Z today is not shy of conversing in Hindi or their regional language and that is visible in content creation as well - Neha Bareja

18:04 PM - Gen Z is very comfortable with what they are doing and talking about. They believe in being real - Sunder Venketraman

18:25 PM - Moving on to the next session on Unlocking the power of Personal Brand for your business, moderated by Abhishansa Mathur, Founder of Local Samosa. Speakers join:

• Sujata Biswas, Co Founder at Suta
• Udita Bansal, Founder, trueBrowns
• Megha Desai Asher, Co-Founder and COO at Juicy Chemistry

18:29 PM - Skincare, personal care and mental health; all of it go hand-in-hand - Megha Desai Asher

18:31 PM - We wanted the brand Suta to echo our personal journey - Sujata Biswas

18:40 PM - On LinkedIn, you can build your personal brand and connect with the audience very well - Megha Desai Asher

18:41 PM - What works for content is being organic and authentic, for both my personal brand and trueBrowns - Udita Bansal

19:04 PM - The final panel discussion for the event Behind the Screen – Mental Health for Content Creators, moderated by Mrinil Mathur Rajwani. Speakers join:

• Chandni Bhabhda
• Dev Raiyani
• Sakshi Gupta
• Kush Sachdeva

19:11 PM - Even when I am not creating stuff, my brain is constantly creating something - Kush Sachdeva

19:15 PM - It's your audience that makes you. If your audience respects you and appreciates you, there's no stopping from there - Dev Raiyani

19:22 PM - The best way to break your creative block is breaking the mundane routine and looking at it through a fresh lens - Sakshi Gupta

19:30 PM - Trolls do affect me, but the only way I navigate through it is by getting help from my team and calming myself down - Chandni Bhabhda