As the world spends more and more time on social media — the latest Global Web Index's Social Media Trends 2019 report says that Indians spend a whopping 2.5 hours every day — it is but natural that we are strongly influenced by the content we consume. These influencers have a pivotal role to play and egging them on to be the best version of themselves online is Mad Influence. Whether it's people or brands, this influencing marketing platform collaborates and gets awesome things done. It was started back in 2018 by 24-year-old Gautam Madhavan and today, they have joined hands with over 10,000 influencers and a have turnover of two crore rupees. How about that?
Passion to post
The model, as Gautam puts it, is that they serve as an incubator for budding influencers. Once they are approached by a budding influencer, they join hands for resource production, content collaboration and so on. We wonder if there is a prerequisite they look for in an influencer before taking them on. "Not at all, it is purely a gut feeling. If we see passion in someone, we just act as the fuel that helps them zoom up towards the status of a celebrity influencer," says the alumni of Dyal Singh College, Delhi. Research is the first tenant of every collaboration. Figuring out the competition and then creating a content strategy for them follows. From there on, the influencers are supported in every way possible — from providing a professional cameraman to understanding when to post what. "It's all a collaborative process, we don't like to restrict the influencers. They can choose what they want to post," he clarifies.
So essentially, what Mad Influence does is make sense of the unorganised industry that is social media influencers and use their own experience to handhold people and brands to the pinnacle of success. "Right, now there are several players like us in the market. They have suddenly woken up to the potential of social media influencer marketing. In fact, I personally have trained quite a few existing agencies on how to do influencer marketing," reveals Gautam.
A word to the wise?
Apart from working for brands like director Karan Johar's Dharma Productions, music record label T-Series, Vivo and so on, they are the partner agency for TikTok India. They also count actor Shilpa Shetty, comedian Kapil Sharma and actor Jacqueline Fernandez as their clients. They have three offices namely in Delhi, Mumbai and Chandigarh. And now that he has secured most of North India, they have their eyes on the South. "I feel that the South has more potential, the market is an educated and it's a much more secular space. The market in the North is saturated," shares Gautam. Because during the lockdown, posts about food and comedy have seen a spike so it is important, he emphasises, that budding influencers diversify their content across all social media platforms and then, depending on the traffic they get and their target audience, they can focus on one social media platform.
"I also strongly feel that influencer might not be the best word to use, content creator is the best word. Together, we create content and impact people," says Gautam and concludes.
For more on them, check out madinfluence.com
