The era of long-term and holistic brand association is over, says Kwan's MD

The full endorsement piece is slowing down. What people are looking for are digital and social media influencers, Anirban Das Blah tells Sangeeta Tanwar

The Indian cricket Under 19 team has been performing consistently. However, the players fail to get endorsements. Why is this so?

Look at the junior level cricket and first class cricket, it’s the same story. Or look at the last World Cup. How many of them have got endorsement deals? The reason why this is so is that soon the Under 19 boys will try and move into senior team. New kids will come and replace them. With the current crop of cricketers (Under 19 boys’ team) disappearing, there is no planning at the brand level of utilising them. Also, today, you have to play at the Indian Premier League level to make a mark.

Kwan is one of the oldest firms in celebrity management. How has this space evolved over the last decade or so?

As a company, we moved away from endorsement five years ago. The celebrity endorsement market explosion that had happened in 1997 continued for 15 to 16 years before slowing down a few years ago. In the earlier days, most of our revenue came from endorsement. Now that has changed.

Today, only 20 per cent of our income comes from endorsement. I think the big change that has happened is that endorsement is today a lot more like sharing hotel rooms. The so-called inventory (time associated with a brand) of actors and cricketers has come down drastically. The era of long-term and holistic brand association is long over. Most people are today looking to associate with celebrities they can simply afford and utilise for establishing some sort of consumer connect.

While the number of endorsements has increased a lot, the value of such associations has come down. With so many options to choose from, be it actors or cricketers, celebrities are being picked for their status value. The full endorsement piece is slowing down. What people are looking out for are digital and social media influencers. It is a function of the fact that traditional ATL (above the line) format and advertising agencies are struggling for relevance and survival. These are times of tremendous change.

One of your companies, Kwan Digital, has forayed into content creation. What is your approach towards content creation in the digital space?

With all the disruption going around in the media space, nobody understands what’s going to be the relevant platform for distribution in the next 10 years or so. But what has remained unchanged for the last 100 years and will continue to be so is that there will be a need for content creation and content creators. For the next five years, we have identified sectors that we want to operate in. And these areas are Hindi cinema, regional cinema, short-format content, music and sports. Over a period of time, we want to be the single most powerful content creation company in these genres.

As content creators we are focusing on bringing together and collaborating with the best people in the business. We are working with popular comedians, including Vir Das (Weirdass Comedy), Mallika Dua, Amit Tandon, Suresh Menon and India’s No 1 YouTuber Bhuvan Bam, of BB Ki Vines fame. In the over-the-top space, existing players have not made much of a difference in the comedy and music space. We want to change that.

We do not want to just sit, aggregate, package content and exit. We want to take charge of the last-mile delivery. For non-film music, we plan to get into the private label space and look at traditional distribution channels. We are working on building strong relationships in the distribution and production side. With Mojostar, a celebrity-driven house of brands, we want to build consumer traction across fashion, fitness, and personal care.

What are your investment plans for the next two years?

Looking at digital and music space our investments will easily be upwards of $40 to 50 million in the next two to three years. We will be investing around $20 to 22 million in Mojostar over the next three years.4