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Note to readers: Valued at Rs 900 crore, influencer marketing is a fast-growing industry in India. Be it brands, content creators or digital publishers, bringing them all together and curating a narrative for marketers are influencer management agencies. They are new-age agencies focused on influencer marketing. Storyboard18’s special series brings to you an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of what they do and how they work.

They started out six years ago with a production company called White Shadows where they shot films for college festivals. They themselves were anywhere between 19 and 20 years old. This is where they met people of their own age group who were into content creation. And that’s when NOFILTR came into being. At that time, influencer marketing wasn’t even a concept but the founders at NOFILTR soon realised that people were going to pick their own celebrities on social media and that social media would start following a democratic model where some people will have a lot of value and will reach a kind of stardom.

“We thought it was something we should capitalise on and we went with our gut and started NOFILTR,” said Hitarth Dadia, partner and chief marketing officer (CMO) at NOFILTR.

They started out by signing just two to three creators and grew from there.

Who are they?

NOFILTR is an influencer marketing and incubation agency that wants to build a seamless bridge between creators and brands. Their speciality, they say, is not only focusing on boosting popularity and follower count but batting for putting together original and fresh content that leads to popularity and business.

“We are a talent incubator. We believe in caring for talent, and build a holistic economy around their value,” Dadia said.

Fact File

Year: 2017

Founders: NOFILTR was founded by Sumedh Chaphekar and 26-year-old Hitarth Dadia, now partner and CMO, began his journey in the organisation as a sales intern.

Employees: 70-odd members.

Growth: For NOFILTR, growth is measured by the number of people they get to work with. From an agency that started with just about two influencers, they now work with 40 exclusive creators.

Key clients (Brands): Amazon, Flipkart, YouTube, L’Oréal, among many others

Key clients (Influencers): Aashna Hegde, Anam Darbar, Angry Prash, Awez Darbar, Dhruv & Shyam (Funcho), Manav Chhabra (mr.mnv), Nagma Mirajkar, to list a few.

The lowdown

In an interaction, Dadia broke down the day-to-day functions of the agency, what brands want, how they guide content creators, and more. Edited excerpts:

What’s your best work?

When we started, we got a creator a deal that was worth Rs 50,000 for a collaboration. Five years back, this was an unheard-of number. Setting that benchmark for us, the creators and the brands has been a great achievement for us.

That apart, we have developed and on boarded talents like Awez Darbar, Nagma Mirajkar, Mr. MNV, themermaidscales (Krutika), amongst others. That, in my opinion, is one of our best achievements.

If we talk of campaigns, we did a great collaboration with Cadbury when they launched their Cadbury Dairy Milk Turkish Delight. They flew a couple of our creators to Turkey for the launch and some amazing content came out of that campaign. We are proud of what we could get out of just one campaign.

What is NOFILTR Escape?

Content creators’ lives revolve around creating valuable content and you cannot do that while being based in just one location and you will have to venture out at some point in time. That’s where we got the idea that these people are lifestyle creators and need to have a certain lifestyle where they promote that lifestyle or show the true value of it. With that we started NOFILTR Escape. The idea of NOFILTR Escape is that influencers get to travel to these exotic international locations and share their experience with their audience. Basically, we get either a brand or tourism or other partners on board so that the influencers don’t have to spend for everything. It’s all taken care of and essentially they get to bring a small part of the culture from that country or location back with them and it has really worked out well for us. I believe we have done a total of nine NOFILTR Escape episodes so far and every time creators go for an Escape or are on an Escape and come back, we can clearly see the difference it makes on their social media platform and in general also their value rises significantly.

What are the biggest challenges in the industry at the moment and how is NOFILTR dealing with them?

The biggest challenge is helping a content creator find their niche and also carve out their own niche in the market. Being a creator or an influencer shouldn’t feel like a mainstream job but rather a space where they can create something original and express themselves. In the content creation space, people have fought really hard to get their voice heard, and we strive to make sure our creators never burn out and always thrive in crafting something special.

What are the biggest opportunities you see and how is NOFILTR preparing for it?

For now, all I can say is—stay tuned for big things! On how we are preparing for it, at NOFILTR, all of us know that if our work is good, people will talk about us and want to collaborate with us.

What are the top trends that will change the ecosystem?

Individual genres are going to start sprouting and growing. Vernacular content will become a big beast in itself. Thanks to the exposure we have to this huge barrage of data around us, it will eventually help each and every one of us discover what we prefer as creators as well as consumers.

That apart, we would be seeing creators become brands. The trend has already started and it will grow from here. Creators are becoming entrepreneurs and it is just the beginning of their journey to establish themselves as products brands as well as individual human brands.

What is the next big thing and big disruption coming down the line for the industry?

This is a democratic space and out here a single person can never decide where the industry is going, the constant feedback of numerous people will dictate its direction. Feedback and engagement will become the key to all sorts of content communication and that is the direction where brands and the content industry is heading.

List three annoying things all clients do.

While I don’t have many things that annoy me when it comes to clients, I do have one small caveat, and that is about comparison. Some clients compare two different creators from diametrically opposite genres with the same yardstick, often missing out on the unique essence of their individual personalities. No two creators are the same, even within the same genre, and they need to be evaluated within their own context. This needs to be accepted and understood.

Three questions you have for influencers?

The NOFILTR team has done intensive and extensive research on this subject, and the moment we join hands with any talent, we have an in-depth questionnaire ready to be shared with them. So, any influencer/creator-related question under the sun has already found an answer at NOFILTR, and if indeed there are new ones that pop up, our creator family is more than happy to address them.

Influencer Marketing Mavericks: How NOFILTR is building the stepping stone for the next big trend in content creation

Note to readers: ‘Influencers’ have forever changed the way brands and people engage with each other. Bringing together brands, content creators and digital publishers and curating a narrative for marketers are the influencer marketing agencies. They are the new-age agencies focused on the biggest disruption in the world of brands - influencer marketing. Storyboard18’s special series brings to you a view of what these influencer marketing mavericks do and how they think. 

Founded during the Covid-19 pandemic by twenty-somethings. That's a commonality that ties together some of the Influencer Marketing Mavericks we've covered in our special series. 

24-year-old Vishal Srivastava and 23-year-old Ozair Yermal are the co-founders of Krazyfox, a Pune-based influencer management agency. The duo started the agency in 2020 while they were in college. At the time, they had no creators on board and no employees. Cut to 2022. Krazyfox has over 250 employees across India and markets like Singapore and the Middle East. In two years they have worked with over 15000+ influencers and content creators across categories.

“We are glad that we started Krazyfox in the early days because the influencer marketing business has grown tremendously in the past two years. We believe that industry has a lot to achieve in the coming years as it is becoming an integral part of marketing,” says Yermal. 

Srivastava also has a global vision for the company. He says while they have already established the business in India, Bangladesh, Middle East, it’s time to look beyond. “We are now looking forward to unleashing the potential of the US market,” he tells us. 

Take a look at the latest agency to enter the Influencer Marketing Mavericks club. 

What is Krazyfox and what do they do exactly?

Krazyfox is one of the fastest growing multi-channel networks in India, helping brands, creators and influencers to increase their digital presence through various social media platforms. It provides the right brand collaboration opportunities to creators and drives effective content. In other words, they basically try to find the right creators for strategic brand campaigns and promotional activities and help brands to reach their target audience via digital influencers, creators and bloggers, and vloggers. To sum it up, services include digital marketing, content creation and influencer management.

FACT FILE

Founded: 2020

Founders: Vishal Srivastava and Ozair Yermal

Revenue: From Rs 90 lakh in its first year, the brand has grown to a revenue of Rs 26 crores in 2021-2022.

Employees: 250+ 

Key Clients

Brands: Till now, Krazyfox has worked with 200+ national and international brands, that includes big giants such as the MOJ app, ShareChat app, Zee Entertainment, Happn app, Apna app, Snow Corporationand more. 

Influencers: Saloni Singh, Dhiru Monchik, Riza Afreen, Shivamsingh Rajput and others.

GET TO KNOW

Best campaigns and what it did for influencers and brands

In its first year, Krazyfox started working with a newly launched short video app. The founders were given the opportunity to onboard content creators and celebrities and in six months they ended up onboarding 3000+ content creators across languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Odia, Bhojpuri and Bengali.

"Recently, we collaborated with Moj and launched a creative studio in Mumbai to resolve the creator's shoot needs. It helps creators and celebrities to shoot video content with 19 different setups and equipment. It further helps creators to get good monetization opportunities," they share. 

Biggest challenges facing influencer marketing agencies

"The biggest challenge agencies face is educating creators to wait for the right offer," the founders tell us. "Sometimes brands offer less than what the creator rightfully deserves and creators end up accepting the offer fearing loss of revenues. Continuous creator motivation and confidence are also a challenge. As an agency, we need to ensure that the creator is floating the right content in the market so brands collaborate with them. So we push the creator to develop the confidence to say ‘No’ if the offer is not up to the mark." 

Biggest opportunities

"In the past two years, brands have realized the potential of influencer marketing for success and they have increased influencer marketing budgets. This is an excellent opportunity for us and we are growing our creator base globally. We think it is also an opportunity for India to become a leader in the creator space as we have a vast young population inclined toward the industry." 

Top five trends that will change the industry/ecosystem

1. Rise of Metaverse Influencers and their participation in branded content.

2. With blockchain, social tokens under influencers' names can be launched, further creating an independent platform for Influencers to sell their own NFTs, merchandise and more. 

3. Privatization of content by influencers holds the key to unlocking higher monetization value for creators who are subject-matter experts.

4. Creators marketplace bridging the gap with brands and influencers, which can further benefit the brand in swiftly executing campaigns. Influencers can get more monetary value since there will be almost no middlemen.

5. Performance marketing is another trending space. Influencers with a loyal and engaged fan base can earn more via accepting variable payments for integrated/dedicated videos on YouTube and Instagram.

Brands tend to pay a fixed amount to influencers for collaboration, wherein, at times, they need only view commitment on the deliverables. Creators who accept variable payments get paid based on the number of app installs and successful registrations, and they end up making much more than fixed payments. This setting is primarily applicable for app promotion as of now.

Annoying things all clients do

"Follow-ups just after shooting the campaign. We try to help brands as much as possible, not only assisting with their requirements but also trying to build a long and trustworthy relationship. And when you build relationships, you don't get annoyed, but you try to make them work by enhancing your services and providing a solution to the best of your abilities. We are working with the same mantra." 

Three questions for brand managers

1. How can we serve you better?

2. Have you increased your brand's influencer marketing budget? If not, please up your marketing game.

3. Feedback is key to success in any business. Therefore, we keep asking our clients if they are happy with our services? 

Three questions for influencers

1. Do you need an influencer marketing agency?

2. Do you want a content strategy?

3. Do you want to earn more money from your content?

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-monk-entertainment-2692.htm">Read more: Influencer Marketing Mavericks: Monk Entertainment</a>

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-how-mad-influence-was-built-2543.htm">Read more: Influencer Marketing Mavericks: How Mad Influence was built</a>

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-clout-talent-pocket-aces-2191.htm">Read more: Influencer Marketing Mavericks: Clout Talent, Pocket Aces</a>

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-our-artists-are-our-greatest-currency-say-the-girlfriend-boxs-founders-2026.htm">Read more: Influencer Marketing Mavericks: 'Our artists are our greatest currency,' say The Girlfriend Box's founders</a>

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-how-finnet-medias-building-a-fininfluencer-empire-1759.htm">Read more: Influencer Marketing Mavericks: How Finnet Media’s building a ‘fininfluencer’ empire </a>

Influencer Marketing Mavericks: Story behind pandemic-born Krazyfox's quick rise

Note to readers: ‘Influencers’ have forever changed the way brands and people engage with each other. Bringing together brands, content creators and digital publishers and curating a narrative for marketers are the influencer marketing agencies. They are the new-age agencies focused on the biggest disruption in the world of brands - influencer marketing. Storyboard18’s special series brings to you a view of what these influencer marketing mavericks do and how they think. 

The website says ‘As you browse through this site, we've gained over 12K impressions for our brands in real time.’ Viraj Sheth, co-founder and CEO of Monk Entertainment is a strong believer in reach and engagement and that is what his company is all about, he says. 

Sheth says the rise of GenZ, infotainment and regional creators has taken over influencer marketing and Monk Entertainment is working to connect the dots between these and create impact.

“You have a brand? Let us tell your story and leave it to us for a seamless execution right from the start," says 26-year-old Sheth.

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Sheth hails from a traditional Gujarati family with no background in the industry. An electrical engineer himself, Sheth met Ranveer Allahbadia popularly known as BeerBiceps in his engineering college.

While still in college Sheth started experimenting with internships across content, copywriting and digital, before joining hands with Allahbadia. With the latter’s YouTube channel, BeerBiceps still in the initial stages, Sheth soon started managing the business and campaigns while in his final semester of college. Soon after graduation the duo started Monk Entertainment.

Cut to 2022. They are managing more than fifty influencers across genres.

Read More: <a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-how-mad-influence-was-built-2543.htm">Influencer Marketing Mavericks: How Mad Influence was built </a>

Sheth believes that the next phase of success in the influencer marketing ecosystem should come from the global fame of Indian creators. While global creators have managed to make a name for themselves in India, their Indian counterparts have not been able to replicate the model outside India. Alongside servicing brands with end-to-end creative and social support, Sheth’s agency is working hard to take creators in India global. 

So what is Monk Entertainment?

Monk Entertainment is a talent management, influencer marketing and video production company. They specialize in enabling the best opportunities for digital creators and empowering Indian startups to scale their acquisition through influencer marketing and video production.

FACT FILE

Founded in 2017

Founders: Viraj Sheth, Co-Founder and CEO. Ranveer Allahbadia, Co- Founder of Monk Entertainment

Employees: 80

Key Clients (Brands): Unacademy, Spotify, YouTube, Zomato and Sony Music among others. 

Key Clients (Influencers): Ranveer Allahbadia aka BeerBiceps, Niharika NM, Mumbiker Nikhil, Abhi and Niyu, Your Food Lab by Chef Sanjyot Keer, Ruhee Dosani, Madan Gowri, Neel Salekar aka Just Neel Things, Aanchal Agrawal, Radhika Bangia, Ted the Stoner, Dipraj Jadhav, Anisha Dixit.

Read More: <a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-clout-talent-pocket-aces-2191.htm">Influencer Marketing Mavericks: Clout Talent, Pocket Aces </a>

GenZ content creators: Tarini Shah, Aryaki Joon, Taneesha Mirwani, Dev Raiyani, Aastha Shah, Harsh Rane, Mohak Narang, Leisha Patidar, Prableen Kaur Bhomrah and others.

Regional creators: Steffy Sunny, Mohak Narang, Ahmed Meeran, Vrushali Jawale, Naveen Singh aka Bihari Ladka, Mangesh Kakkad and others.

GET TO KNOW MONK ENTERTAINMENT

Best campaigns

Monk Entertainment counts a series called Office Canteen with Be YouNick in association with upGrad as one of its best work. This was a two-season web series airing on YouTube that garnered more than 30 million views, converted new customers for the client and also bagged the YouTube Works award for the best creator collaboration.

On the 2022 India tour of Niharika NM - enabled collaborations with the country’s biggest actors across the industries of Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada cinema to achieve viewership of over 200M+ views for Niharika within a span of 3 months. Niharika is the first ever creator to collaborate with Rocking Star Yash, Mahesh Babu, Prateek Kuhad and Siddharth and mark their debut on Reels. The other collaborations were with notable names like Ranbir Kapoor, Vijay Deverakonda, Dulquer Salman, Aamir Khan, and more.

Sony Music hosted Marvel’s Venom, their first ever screening in India in partnership with Monk. This was the agency's first movie premiere activation making their talents and friends the first to watch the movie before anyone else in the country.

The company also licensed The Ranveer Show to Spotify as an exclusive podcast. This was Spotify's first exclusive acquisition in India. 

Monk enabled global opportunities for its creators. Niharika NM x Natalie Portman, Ranveer Allahbadia x Arnold Schwarzenegger, Manchester City x Bhuvan Bam and Gaurav Taneja.

One of the biggest brand projects till date involved creator Ruhee Dosani who was the face for H&M India’s New Smiley collection making her the first Asian content creator to have collaborated with H&M for this property.

Biggest Challenge

Sheth spotlights the main challenge: "One of the key issues is the lack of transparency that agencies have in terms of the commissions/margins they charge. Creators that are exclusively signed to an agency will expect utmost transparency and that is what we provide by sharing a common email address with the creator where they can directly access the conversations between the talent manager and the brand. We also maintain a P&L between the creator and us to ensure that the deal tracking is done in a systematic manner." 

Timely payments are another major issue that creators regularly face with agencies, says Sheth. He adds, "We’ve enabled a 30-day payment policy from the date of invoice from our end for all payments for our roster of creators, regardless of whether we receive it or not from the client." 

Biggest opportunity and how to leverage it 

One of the next big opportunities is in the fact that creators are turning investors. Creators don’t just have capital but they also have one thing that is extremely rare amongst most investors - social capital, says Sheth. "Because of their network and distribution online, creators will be able to get a seat at the table and truly be able to generate wealth by being investors in India’s biggest up and coming companies. We’re connecting creators with founders and VCs to make these associations happen. We are also consultants to plenty of founders and VCs who reach out to us to bring on creators on their cap tables." 

Another massive opportunity is to take Indian creators global, says the founder. "We have seen the opposite happen quite often -- global creators getting popular in India, although there have barely been any cases of Indian creators making it big globally. This is our next focus with creators like Niharika NM and BeerBiceps whose English-speaking content is reaching out to audiences globally. We are leveraging collaborations with international creators, exploring work opportunities with the global arms of OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime Video to make this happen." 

Read More: <a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/influencer-marketing-mavericks-our-artists-are-our-greatest-currency-say-the-girlfriend-boxs-founders-2026.htm">Influencer Marketing Mavericks: 'Our artists are our greatest currency,' say The Girlfriend Box's founders</a>

Next big disruption coming down the line for the industry

"The next big thing in influencer marketing is sustainable partnerships. Brands and agencies want to work with creators that resonate with them and want to do it at prices that are sustainable in the long run. A lot of the brands and creators are also now keen on seeking deeper relationships in the form of long-term deals with each other instead of engaging with multiple brands or multiple creators. We will also be seeing a lot of hybrid deals (half equity + half cash) being enabled between top creators and top and emerging startups." 

Top five trends that will change the industry/ecosystem 

1. Content creators are becoming increasingly important for movie promotions because of the visibility, audience and relatability they bring with them. 

2. The rise of nano and micro-influencers has taken over. 

3. Short-form video content has been a hit and is here to stay. 

4. Content creators turning entrepreneurs and startup investors

5. Brands Will Look for long term Partnerships Instead of One-Off Projects

Annoying things all clients do all the time

1. Focus too much on making the logo bigger. 

2. Say that they love giving creative freedom to creators but don’t actually follow that philosophy. 

3. See what their competitors have done and copy it blindly. 

Three questions for brand managers

1) How much bigger do you want your logo to be?

2) Are you shortlisting influencers based on your personal liking or basis the right fit for your brand?

3) How can agencies do better in servicing your requirements?

Three questions you have for influencers

1. Are you preparing well enough for your future in a career path that has a very short shelf life?

2. Are you building a team that will help you scale your operations as a creator so that you don’t drain yourself out in the process?

3. How have things changed for you after you got famous?

Influencer Marketing Mavericks: Monk Entertainment

Note to readers: Valued at Rs 900 crore, influencer marketing is a fast growing industry in India. Be it brands, content creators or digital publishers, bringing them all together and curating a narrative for marketers are influencer management agencies. They are new-age agencies focused on influencer marketing. Storyboard18’s special series brings to you an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of what they do and how they work.

One gala event is all it took to come up with a full-fledged agency. After successfully putting together a corporate event with delegates from India and abroad, 21 year old Gautam Madhavan knew he was good at bringing together talent, resources and creating impact. That was December 2017. Cut to 2022, Madhavan, now 26, runs a full-service digital marketing agency that started with one client in 2018. Today, they put together twelve to fourteen campaigns every day. What is it that they do exactly? Well, they work with influencers and, while technically Mad Influence is an influencer management agency, they do more than just connecting creators and brands. They are into digital marketing, social media management, content authoring and provide consulting services to businesses.

Who are they?

“We are a new kind of Influencer network,” Madhavan tells Storyboard18.

“We say this because we are not limited to our network of influencers. We listen, we challenge, we work collaboratively, we are Mad. It’s in the name. Mad Influence is a company of experts of varied backgrounds, in technology, business strategy, creativity, data insights and operations. We’ve come together to help ambitious businesses differentiate and compete - to become successful businesses. We are strategic, analytical, Insight driven but on top of all we are emotional,” he added.

Along with their expertise, what helps the team achieve their objective, is their wide network of influencers. They have an influencer for every brand and a brand for every influencer on board.

Fact File

Year: December 2018.

Founders: Gautam Madhavan and the Mad Influence team 

[caption id="attachment_2606" align="aligncenter" width="768"]<img src="https://images.storyboard18.com/storyboard18/WhatsApp-Image-2022-10-13-at-12.04.48-AM.jpeg" alt="Gautam Madhavan with his team " width="768" height="1024" class="size-full wp-image-2606" /> Gautam Madhavan with his team [/caption]

Employees: The agency has 60 employees with a core leadership team that includes Aman Narula who joined as an intern and is now the national business head. Then there’s Abhilash Singh, the ex-business head of Social Samosa who is the business head - operations, Tanya Kundnani who is the business head for the west market and Manav Mehra who is the CFO.

Key Clients (Brands): Emami, Sharechat, Saregama, Nivea, Alt Balajee, Cipla, Beardo, Colgate, Bumble, Mamaearth, Myntra, Oppo, Tata Motors, Vivo and many others

Key Clients (Influencers): Surabhi and Samriddhi (aka Chinki Minki), Aadil Khan, Akshara Singh, Daisy Shah, Abhishek Nigam, Roshni Walia. The agency has 15 exclusive creators and an overall network of 10000 influencers.

Get To Know

Madhavan breaks down the day to day functions of the agency, what brands want, how they guide content creators and more.

What’s your best work?

We have one project almost every month that we can call our best work so it’s really a moving target but there are two campaigns we put together in the last two-three months that were a huge success.

We launched Sharechat Moj Live and we could help the platform garner more than 1 million users within the span of a week. Downloads is something but getting over 1 million daily active users says a lot. We were stoked to put together this campaign.

What has been Mad Influence’s most challenging campaign?

The most challenging campaign we’ve worked on Bachchhan Paandey. It was not just an influencer campaign but a 360-degree campaign where we staged a kidnap. The narrative began with the disappearance of twelve Moj creators until it was revealed that Bachchhan Paandey played by Akshay Kumar was behind the abduction.

The campaign delivered 1.2 billion views in less than 28 hours.

What are the biggest challenges and issues facing influencer marketing agencies?

The biggest challenge and opportunity both is the plethora of options there are when it comes to creators. There is one new influencer every day. So innovating and making them grow is one big challenge that we work on every single day.

What’s the biggest opportunity and how are you preparing to leverage it?

Our focus is now on non-lifestyle influencers especially creators in the tech, finance and crypto space. While short format videos have already changed the social media ecosystem, podcasts and live streams are the next big things. We haven’t capitalized on livestream but we should, to unlock its real potential.

What are the top trends that will change the influencer marketing ecosystem?

Livestream and commerce is all set to change the social media space for both brands and content creators

What are the most annoying things all clients do?

Payment delay is something that bothers the entire industry. While creators expect payment in a month’s time the average time taken to clear payments is between 90 and 120 days. Timely feedback and short deadlines are the other shortfalls of the ecosystem.

Any questions you have for influencers?

Have you started gaining financial knowledge? Do you know how to take care of your finances?

Do you know what your competitors are doing?

Have you started learning about the NFT space and its potential?

Influencer Marketing Mavericks: How Mad Influence was built

Note to readers: ‘Influencers’ have forever changed the way brands and people engage with each other. Bringing together brands, content creators and digital publishers and curating a narrative for marketers are the influencer marketing agencies. They are the new-age agencies focused on the biggest disruption in the world of brands - influencer marketing. Storyboard18’s special series brings to you a view of what these influencer marketing mavericks do and how they think. 

“Even a papad-wala from Gujarat will use influencers to make their brand known.” That’s how Shubham Singhal and Vaibhav Pathak explain the power and influence of influencer marketing. With an eclectic mix of brands and influencers on board, The Girlfriend Box (TGB) is unboxing new trends in content creation and client management.

Their mantra: Reach. Engage. Succeed. 

The founders tell us that for every brand and every content creator they meet they have just one question. “How can we help?”

WHO ARE THEY?

TGB is a Mumbai-based influencer management agency founded precisely three years ago in the middle of the pandemic-induced lockdown. Storyboard18 talks to its twenty-something founders Shubham Singhal and Vaibhav Pathak to know more about the industry, the trends and what exactly they do for brands and the influencers they manage.

FACT FILE 

Founded: 2020

Founders: Shubham Singhal, Vaibhav Pathak and Om Singh; Appurva Hooda Bhoker, Mariya Jamal, Pranav Nigam, Yogesh Bajpai, Bandana Kaur, Kunal Arora

Revenue: Rs 25-30 crore

Employees: +60  

Key Clients (Brands): Saregama, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Netflix, Loreal Paris, Tanishq, Disney plus Hotstar, Maybelline, Amazon Group, Mac, Bacardi, Coke, Flipkart, OnePlus, Licious, Vivo, Cadbury and YouTube India

Key Clients (Influencers): Ronit Ashra, Abhijeet Kain, Kiara Nautiyal, RJ Mahvash, Aatman Desai, Rishab Rai, Haania Manzar, Atisha Pratap Singh, Karan Kundrra, Pearl V Puri, Paras Kalnawat, Mohsin Khan, Ruhii Singh, Mandana Karimi, Monica Shaema. The agency handles more than 150 creators.

GET TO KNOW TGB

Best work 

1) Putting together music promotion campaigns on Instagram, curating the most popular and trend-setting campaigns on songs such as Heat Waves by Glass Animals (UMG), Positions by Ariana Grande (UMG) and Buhe Bariyaan by Kanika Kapoor (Saregama). 

2) “I Am A Rebel” campaign for BoAt, which was a multi-faceted launch online and offline. The activation included an online gratification, giveaway campaign and an offline launch with kiosks and specially curated zones across concerts like SunBurn, NH7 Weekender, Dimitri Vegas, LikeMike, Wiz Khalifa and more. 

Singhal and Pathak say their secret sauce is “Personally investing in the growth of our creators and guiding them with content, campaigns, trends and much more in their early phases, leading to the rapid growth and reach of influencers such as Haania Manzar, Sakshi Keswani, Rishabh Rai, Aatman Desai and SODA Gang. Our artists are our greatest currency.” 

Most challenging campaign 

Campaigns featuring Hrithik Roshan and Karan Kundrra

The campaign was conceptualized to achieve user generated content (UGC) from active users on Hrithik Roshan’s hook step dedicated to the Free Fire Game. This step was performed by 40 dance influencers like Awez Darbar, Mohit Solanki and Avneet Kaur, who replicated the actor’s performance in their own dance studios using Holi colours.

“This campaign was extremely challenging due to various factors. An extremely time sensitive campaign, landed only a day before Holi. Considering the time and availability of our team because of festive holidays, the campaign with 40 creators was executed by only 3 people including my co-founder Shubham and myself. Being content heavy, with various elements to add effects and the perfect recreation of the hook-step was essential as well as the fact that all creators had to go live on the day of Holi, this made the campaign challenging yet memorable,” says Pathak.  

It garnered 70 million reach and 120 million impressions. 

Most controversial campaign 

Singhal says, “Karan Kundrra during his Bigg Boss stint was supremely challenging since we had no contact with the artist for months, it was controversial owing to the nature of the show but the team rallied and garnered a 2 million+ follower growth for the artist, and lined up a number of branded deals even before his exit from the show.”

Biggest challenges and issues facing influencer marketing agencies  

Pathak says, “With the onslaught of massive amounts of content and influencers on a daily basis it is essential to be personally invested in the careers of your influencers as an influencer marketing agency.”

According to him, new trends, algorithms and updates on a daily basis make it difficult for creators and influencers to keep up and they reach a point of content saturation. There are also creators that cannot keep up with the technology and improve the quality of their content and production, which is essential at this point to differentiate them from the masses.

“We are solving this problem by giving them hands-on help with content as well as production support. Not only mapping their content in a way that focuses on quality but also having them create content that has virality potential. You know what they say, team work makes the dream work,” he adds.

He also says that another important aspect to take into consideration is that brands are not just going for mass and reach, but rather quality, aesthetic and credibility. This is where the agency steps in.

The “class divide” in the influencer ecosystem between Bharat and India, between regional creators and elite creators. 

Singhal says, there is a very apparent class divide in the influencer ecosystem. “The regional creators are often unaware of the entire process and end up being paid way less for similar campaigns even if the follower range might match that of an elite creator. The influencer network is mirroring the social stratification of the world - it’s unfortunate but it’s a divide that management agencies have brokered over time.”

“At TGB, we make a very conscious effort to ensure that all the artists get paid their dues and that their art is compensated for, no matter which category they belong to and I would like to believe other agencies do the same, if not I would encourage them to do so. The idea is to build an ecosystem of trust and transparency and compensate the artists’ effort 100%,” he adds.

Biggest opportunities and how are you preparing to leverage it? 

“We’re always prepping for the next big thing, it has been our good fortune that we collaborate with like-minded people and are in the process of building our very own music label, our own production department and a very strong ecosystem of artists from all walks of life,” Singhal says. 

Top five trends that will change the influencer marketing ecosystem

- D2C brands, smaller brands understanding influencer marketing.

- Micro Influencers Influx - The smallest of the small profiles will make a huge impact in the 
coming months, there will be an influx of profiles and they will all have a monopoly over public opinion.

- Influencers become brands. The already established artists will become brands themselves, whether that be a skincare line or a custom tee-shirt startup, the artists will create an economy for themselves.

- If content is king, the queen will be distribution, the agencies with an established network of distribution will have power over the rest.

- Strictly influencer marketing/management agencies will cease to exist. Full service agency is the way forward.

The next big disruption coming down the line for the industry

Tech majors automating and streamlining the entire industry, creators catapulting into brands, OTT platforms recognizing talent on social media and casting faces that are internet famous.

Three annoying things all clients do

Micro management, adding extra deliverables at no extra cost and ill-treatment of talent who don’t have representation.

Three questions for brand managers 

How can we start prioritizing artists’ creative bend over what brands say?

How can we aid the process more, as a middle man?

How can we create more lasting, impactful content together?

Three questions for influencers

Why don’t we prioritize creativity over consistency?

What is your endgame, and is every move you make taking you closer to that?

How can I help?

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INFLUENCER MARKETING MAVERICKS