Rahul Singh, founder of Winkl, a platform that helps brands execute, manage and track influencer marketing campaigns: “In April and May we saw a 60% dip in business.” Winkl works with brands such as Amazon, Flipkart and Dabur, among others.

Brands are definitely staying away from promotional activities with influencers at this moment, said Ashutosh Harbola, founder of influencer marketing company Buzzoka. “I have not received a single client brief in the last three weeks or so. There’s a fear among top advertisers of being trolled for being tone deaf to the worsening state of the pandemic in the country if they indulge in promotions.”

Big spenders such as fashion & lifestyle, cosmetics and travel categories have paused their promotions. “Any company which cares about the image of its brand has delayed promotions. Brands are a lot of perception, after all,” said Singh.

What is an Amazon Influencer? As a member of the Amazon Influencer Program, you are a content creator who provides recommendations to inspire your audience via social media. If you are a media company or a brand and want to drive traffic to Amazon, you should apply to the Amazon Associates Program instead.

According to digital marketing agency AdLift, India’s influencer market is estimated at $75-150 million a year, as compared to the global market of $1.75 billion.

Second Wave Slowdown?

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty brand, Plum, which works with a variety of influencers, has taken a conscious decision to slow down campaigns and promotions.

“We did slowdown in terms of influencer marketing campaigns especially in May. We respected the wishes of those influencers who were choosing not to partner at this time. So, there were several promotions and campaigns that were pushed out,” said Arushi Thapar, senior marketing manager at Plum.

Renowned chef Tanaz Godiwala had to pause all influencer collaborations with food bloggers as her cloud kitchen venture A Parsi Affair was impacted by the second wave. With state-imposed restrictions in Maharashtra, there have been multiple challenges in sourcing ingredients, delivery as well as staff safety.

“Owing to the fact that there is no business happening, we are tight on the money to spend on influencers. We are doing bare basic postings on social media platforms and promoting safety and well-being messages. Nobody is going to spend money on luxury items in the current scheme of things,” Godiwala said.

Is the choice of platform post pandemic changing?

Businesses and creators leveraged Facebook and Instagram to enhance their reach online more than ever during the pandemic, but digital marketing had started booming when Google and Facebook became popular

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=813283942867862

Social media sites like Facebook and Instagram have become the go-to platforms, especially in the last two-three years, for promoting and advertising products. In 2020, though, Instagram turned out to be the most preferred platform for influencer marketing, with it being the choice of 82% marketers, as per Buzzoka, a Noida-based influencer marketing company. Released in March, the fourth edition of Buzzoka’s Influencer Marketing Outlook (an annual survey that offers a detailed look at the influencer marketing landscape) revealed that YouTube was the second-most preferred platform with 41% votes. The survey included over 300 senior marketers and leading brands across India. Around 72% of the marketers believed that influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online customer acquisition method.

In their earnings report published on Bloomberg on April 30, Amazon, Facebook and Google revealed that people had become more dependent on their offerings since the shutdowns and that this trend could drive long-term growth. The companies said their advertising and e-commerce revenue streams remained immune to the problem of business contraction during these times.

The three pivotal moments in history, however, that defined the digital shift remain the launch of Jio, demonetisation and the pandemic, with the latter being the major reason businesses shifted online, according to Bengaluru-based Abhinav Arora, co-founder and CMO, Avalon Meta, an alternative online education platform.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CPK1S09pJrF/

Another factor that contributed to the boom was the fact that offline projects and shoots were halted. As mobile consumption spiked significantly, brands increased their spending on digital and influencer-led marketing campaigns, shares Mumbai-based Viraj Sheth, co-founder and CEO, Monk Entertainment, a creative digital media organisation. According to Sheth, digital and social media marketing allow one to track the key performance indicators, something that has not been possible with the other mediums in the past. This, in turn, fetches extremely targeted data, which helps analyse the campaign RoI better and take effective steps for the next campaign.

Influencer marketing is an important component of digital and social media marketing today. It involves utilising the services of an influencer with a considerable number of followers to market a product in exchange of payment or the product/services. According to estimates by research company Insider Intelligence (based on data by California-headquartered influencer marketing agency Mediakix), the influencer marketing industry will be worth $15 billion by 2022 up from $8 billion in 2019.

Facebook India’s Bhushan shares that businesses have started communicating with their customers in creative ways, including immersive ad units through influencer marketing. “With digital influence up by 25% across categories, large and small brands are using branded content by creators to drive business impact,” he says, adding, “There’s a natural affinity to interact with public figures, creators and brands. Brands are essentially looking for one thing: business impact. This could be in the form of sales or salience. Leveraging branded content with influencers is a way to deliver on both objectives. They can essentially choose to work with a creator, who has an authentic voice and represents the brand well, to bring alive their content.”

Sharing a few such instances, Bhushan says, “Some examples would be Hyundai, which launched its sedan Aura with influencers and saw a five-point lift in awareness. Similarly, there was a 2.3-point increase in purchase intent for Cadbury when they used influencers. Even a small business like myBageecha, which is into gardening products, recently leveraged branded content in partnership with actor Kareena Kapoor Khan, resulting in a significant ad recall lift of 3.5 points.”

However, there are certain rules when it comes to influencer marketing. In February this year, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) issued draft rules for influencers on digital media platforms to protect consumer interest. According to the new rules, an influencer has to specify if their content is through a paid partnership and this should be visible on all mediums like phones, tablet, etc, prominently.

The way forward to influencing..

• A B2B brand should choose LinkedIn
• For a consumer brand, Instagram is best
• Once on the platform, one must regularly share authentic content to build audience trust
• One must ensure that purchase (or conversion) flow is smooth and user-friendly on app/site
• Brands should reproduce the user journey themselves and optimise it
• Identify and collaborate with digital influencers and content creators in one’s industry

“Social Media influencers, whether their audience is significant or small, impact the lives of everybody who watches their content. They do have a responsibility to ensure what they are publishing is not harmful or offensive.”

Bombay High Court in Marico vs Abhijeet Bhansali

The order is not a final decision on the main case under the tort of disparagement, but is an interim relief for Marico, which argued that allowing this video by Bhansali – who runs the YouTube channel ‘Bearded Chokra’ which has 152 thousand subscribers – to stay online was causing them irreparable damage, and thus, needed to be taken down at least till the time the court decides the main case.

Nevertheless, the order could prove to be a very significant one in the times to come thanks to its recognition of the recent rise of ‘social media influencers’ – and its subsequent warning to them to be more responsible.

What Was This Case About?

To get an interim injunction in a case like this, the party requesting it has to show that there is a prima facie case to show that the other party has done them some wrong, that not passing the injunction would cause irreparable injury, and that on balance, they will suffer more than the other party if the injunction is not granted than the other party if it is actually granted.

To satisfy the first part of this test, Marico therefore had to demonstrate to Justice SJ Kathawalla that they had a prima facie case of disparagement:

• That Bhansali had made false statements in his video about Parachute Coconut Oil;
• That the statements were made by him either maliciously or recklessly; and
• That the video caused ‘special damages’ to Marico.

What Do Social Media Influencers Have to Do With This Case?

It was in terms of the latter two elements – recklessness and special damages – that Bhansali’s status as a social media influencer came into play.

The order defines social media influencers as individuals who have acquired a considerable follower base on social media along with some amount of credibility when it comes to the space in which they operate.

According to the judge, these influencers often “employ the goodwill they enjoy amongst their followers/viewers to promote a brand, support a cause or persuade them to do or omit doing an act.”

They could even, Justice Kathawalla noted, use their influence to dissuade followers from purchasing certain products – as Bhansali had done in the video in question when he suggested that people should not buy Parachute Coconut Oil.

As a result, he noted, social media influencers like Bhansali have “the power to influence the public mind.” The judge held that this meant they can make statements with the “same impunity available to an ordinary person.”

Essentially, what the judge was saying was that if a regular person makes statements in a video or elsewhere which may not be entirely accurate, this is less likely to to cause damage to a company or its product’s reputation, than when an influencer does the same thing. The reach and popularity of a social media influencer means they have a greater responsibility to ensure that their statements don’t mislead the public or provide incorrect information.

“Such person bears a higher burden to ensure there is a degree of truthfulness in his statements. A social media influencer is not only aware of the impact of his statement but also makes a purposeful attempt to spread his opinion to society/the public.”

Bombay High Court in Marico vs Abhijeet Bhansali

Special Damage

‘Special damage’ in tort law has nothing to do with the value of loss caused to a person, but whether there is some form of irreparable loss to them in terms of reputation.

When looking at whether or not Bhansali had caused special damage to Marico and Parachute, the judge noted the 1,08,000 views, the 2,500 or so ‘likes’ and several comments by viewers, including comments saying they would no longer use Parachute, and that they would share the video with others.

The nature of the comments and the numbers here were sufficient according to the judge to show that there was damage to their reputation.

While Justice Kathawalla didn’t expressly refer to Bhansali as a social media influencer in this part of the order, if this is how a court will assess special damage, influencers are likely to be more vulnerable, as their large subscriber/follower count will mean more views, and will also mean more people are likely to agree with their opinion and trust it.

Does This Create a Problem for Influencers, Going Forward?

The judge’s views on social media influencers throughout the judgment were not merely observations. Some of these, particularly on the issue of recklessness, were meant to be findings and so can be cited in subsequent cases as well as by angry companies looking to get an unflattering review taken down.

Now, this should not mean that any social media influencer who puts out a negative opinion about a product is going to be facing lawsuits from an irate manufacturer. The judge arrived at the finding of recklessness after reviewing the arguments about the accuracy of Bhansali’s statements and the way in which he put them forward, and it was because of Bhansali’s failings in these departments that he was found to have been reckless.

He had claimed that he had done his research on various oils and how to assess which ones were better, he claimed to have done an “extensive review of the Parachute Coconut Oil with the tests and proof” and he used forceful and assertive language like “I will prove it”, “bring the truth to you”, etc. After assessing the claims made by Bhansali in his video and the research he’d relied on for this, the court found that this wasn’t up to the mark.

It’s in circumstances like this that social media influencers will have to be particularly careful, as intellectual property lawyer Eashan Ghosh explains:

“This is a controversial but important warning to influencers: if your content about a product or service conveys an impression that it is based on research, courts will probe into whether the research reasonably supports the content. Not just that, you will have to withstand efforts by the commercial entity that puts the product or service on the market to discredit your research.”

Property Lawyer Eashan Ghosh

If the language used by an influencer is more careful, if they don’t claim to have done extensive research or have some special expertise on the subject, then they could avoid the pitfalls that this order creates for them. Another thing to watch out for is to not go after one product only, and then recommend and include links to competing products in their content, something which proved a problem for Bhansali.

This may not be quite so easy as it may seem, since many influencers, Bhansali included, may not have even realised what they were doing was risky.

“With the advent of the internet, the youth is exposed to content from foreign social media influencers that may be considered proper as per the laws of their country,” says Ryan Wilson, an advocate specialising in intellectual property law, adding: “When they mimic such vlogging styles in India, they do so not so much with malice, but because they think there is nothing wrong with it.”

As Wilson points out, this is not something which will exonerate them in court – which means they should look to spread awareness about this kind of tort liability beyond the legal fraternity.

But was the approach of the Bombay High Court correct? Ghosh is of the opinion that the test adopted by the court to assess whether or not Bhansali had been reckless was not entirely fair.

“It’s one thing to say ‘you have a duty to post responsible content on social media’,” he argues, “it’s quite another to say ‘you have a duty to post responsible content supported by research that can stand heavy judicial scrutiny about specific products or services on social media because their owners will bring legal action against you if you don’t.”

As Justice Kathawalla acknowledges at the start of the order, the expansion and commercialisation of the internet has led and will continue to lead to new kinds of legal disputes, which the old principles and precedents may not be sufficient to cover.

Other high courts and the Supreme Court may take a different view from the Bombay High Court in other such cases – which will surely happen with the continued rise in prominence of influencers. Till then though, it might be wise for them to read up on this order, and be aware of the responsibilities that the judiciary at this time views them to have.

This article was originally published in The Quint

Pratima Mondal, 21, known as Jasmine on Vigo, has 4 lakh followers on the app. The West Bengal native was reported missing by her husband earlier this month after she allegedly went off the radar during a trip to Delhi for a Vigo event.

Mondal, however, challenged the claim in a TV interview last week, where she blamed her husband Prasenjit for forcing her to make Vigo videos.

The entire controversy has brought to light the popularity of an app that has over 20 million users worldwide and affords its content producers a chance to make money.

Vigo was launched by Chinese company ByteDance, which also owns Tiktok, another popular video app with 120 million active users. It was introduced in 2017 as ‘Hipster’ but renamed Vigo. 

ByteDance has a total user base of 250-300 million, out of which 50 million are active on its Helo app in any particular month. 

In India, Tiktok and Vigo have been known to be particularly popular in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

“Vigo Video resonates with ‘real’ India, connecting users with stories from their daily lives. With regional content gaining prominence and creators using regional dialects to create content,  users from Tier-2 and 3 cities have had a strong connection with the platform,” a Vigo spokesperson said.

Users are rewarded via campaigns that reward them with “digital tokens” and prizes like ‘Vigo Beauty Queen’. On 4 January 2020, for example, Vigo organised a four-hour “Go Vigo” festival in Kolkata where more than 300 leading content creators assembled. 

Hinterland appeal

The content stands testimony to its hinterland appeal — some examples include a Hyderabad-based peasant couple dancing to the tunes of Bollywood songs, and a cow and an ox from a gaushala (cowshed) in Ajmer, filmed by their caretakers, and a teenage girl from Hyderabad performing hip-hop dance amid a flock of sheep and goats. 

There are also purported videos of soldiers in far-flung postings singing patriotic songs and wielding guns, housewives in seemingly sensual performances, and suggestive ones of couples who appear to be newlyweds.

There are more disturbing trends too — from child labourers working in brick kilns seen saying hello with a smile, to compromising videos of stranger women that are clearly shot furtively.

Asked about these trends, the Vigo spokesperson said “promoting a positive in-app environment where users feel safe and comfortable is our top priority”. 

“We have robust and stringent community guidelines that do not tolerate objectionable content and also help people understand how to use the platform in a positive way,” the spokesperson added. 

This article has been partly reproduced from The Print

Sangha says she had a clear picture in mind of her bridal look. She, however, was fixated on the kind of shoes she will be wearing on her big day. “A lot of my focus was on my shoes and a lot of my friends and family didn’t understand why with shoes. And it was actually juttis,” says Sangha.

“I had a certain design in mind which I wanted to wear for my wedding. I went to lengths for months looking for those juttis but could not find them.” At this point the 32-year-old Sangha drew the juttis design by herself on a sheet of paper and got it custom-made. She was ecstatic to wear them for her wedding and the shoes were liked by her friends and family.

When Sangha chose to wear juttis for her wedding, they were not trendy and it was a declining handicraft. “At that point it wasn’t cool to wear juttis (in wedding),” claims Sangha. 

She grew up watching her mother wear juttis and found them beautiful and elegant. “My mother was the inspiration behind starting Needledust. Even today I take her feedback on our designs and if she doesn’t approve of anything, I go back and make amends,” says Sangha.

Sangha’s entrepreneurial journey began when a few of her friends and family inquired with her about the shop from where they could buy juttis similar to what she wore. “There was no place from where they could buy them as they were not available anywhere,” shares Sangha. 

That moment, the entrepreneurial bug bit her. “I thought that it took me so long to find the perfect juttis. There might be other girls out there like me who would want to wear juttis but didn’t find something different, extraordinary or something beautiful. There was nothing like this in the market. I felt that I want to do this, I want to explore it,” shares Sangha.

Though hesitant after encouragement from her husband, Sangha five years ago manufactured 100 shoes in six designs and five sizes. She put them up on an e-commerce portal and within seven days of Needledust going live, her entire stock was sold out. 

“I had no idea what to do (after posting the juttis on an e-commerce platform), on the seventh day of us going live, I got an email from that we are sold out and when can we get the next stock. But there was no stock because I didn’t even think I will sell these. And that’s how it started,” says Sangha.

After putting up her designs on another e-commerce website and successfully selling them, Sangha got confidence and opened a tiny store (which is today four times its previous size) in Shahpur Jat in New Delhi and then launched her exclusive online retail store Needledust.com. “I started with an online portal because I didn’t have the guts to invest in a brick-and-mortar store in a retail space or even build an exclusive website. Nobody was doing designer juttis,” says Sangha.

Ascendancy Of the Juttis

“We like to believe that when you are purchasing Needledust, you are purchasing an heirloom,” she says.

Needledust now has three retail stores; two in Delhi and one in Chandigarh; and an online exclusive online e-commerce store which ships to over 200 countries. The designer jutti brand has rolled out over 300 designs in the last five year and has currently 90 to 95 active designs on its shelves. The company has also partnered with the celebrated designers Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla by manufacturing juttis designed by them. 

Six months earlier, Needledust partnered with Swarovski crystals. “We are the first handicraft to have collaborated with Swarovski. So if anyone wants a piece of jewellery on their shoes, we also have that. With this partnership we have also for the first time launched customization services,” says Sangha. She further adds, “We like to believe that when you are purchasing Needledust, you are purchasing an heirloom.” 

New-Age Marketing

Needledust has a very active and aesthetic Instagram page with over 300,000 followers. Sangha believes that social media has played a vital role in Needledust’s success. “Social media or the new-age media is a massive tool for start-ups and people with new ideas. It lets you reach millions of people with zero to minimal cost,” says Sangha.

Sangha reveals she has received orders from countries such as Italy, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, China, Japan and Korea, among others. “It is not just the NRIs who order from us but the natives of these countries.”

She shares that some of her customers have been English wedding bridesmaid wearing juttis along with their gowns and dresses, and a Philipino bride wearing Needledust juttis with her white gown. “These stories are pretty incredible on an everyday basis,” says Sangha.

The Bollywood Connect

Needledust is enormously popular among Bollywood celebrities. A-list Bollywood ladies such as Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Sara Ali Khan, among others, are frequently spotted wearing them. Sangha says that Bollywood fashionista Sonam Kapoor was the first one to wear Needledust and from thereon, Needledust’s rendezvous with Bollywood has been growing organically. 

Needledust has provided its designs to big-budget Bollywood movies such as Padmavaat and Veere Di Wedding. Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone also chose Needledust for their wedding celebrations.

Sangha attributes the popularity of Needledust among various age groups to the versatility the designs. “Our designs are such that from an 18-year-old to a 50-year-old can find something that they like. That’s why you can spot an Ananya Pandey to a Bollywood veteran like Kajol wearing Needledust.”

Sangha says she never imagined she could be so passionate about something. “There is never one side to one person—you can be passionate about several things. I am very passionate about Needledust and I still like writing but my journalism career feels from another time altogether. Now, I can’t imagine my life without Needledust,” says Sangha.

This year Needledust will open two new retail showrooms, one in Delhi and the other in Mumbai. 

This article was written by Tahira Noor Khan and originally appeared in Entrepreneur

For example, current calls to ban smartphones from schools often forget that this isn’t the first time that students have been distracted in class. Similarly, issues of cyberbullying and online cheating are certainly not novel behaviours.

However, the rise of the “social media teacher” is a good example of how digital culture is causing shifts in education that very few experts might have predicted 20 years ago.

This recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald gives a good illustration of recent trends. It describes the rise of what might be termed the “teacher-influencer” – in particular the growing number of primary school teachers using Instagram to showcase their classrooms to a wider online audience.

Examples such as these highlight the phenomenon of a new generation of teachers who are now bona fide “micro-celebrities” within the world of education. In internet terms, these are “edu-famous” individuals with tens of thousands of followers.

The pressure to continue producing content, increasing one’s follower numbers, and maintain the illusion of being an “always-on” inspiration for others, is proving to be too much for some.

Regardless of their day jobs, these teachers are prominent personalities among the large number of educators who use Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to talk about teaching, swap advice and generally look for inspiration about their work.

As a result of pumping out teaching tips, reflections and resources online, such individuals might find themselves being asked to run professional development days for other schools, present at education conferences and trade shows, and increasingly being feted as a “thought leader” among their peers. The most successful might eventually end up running their own sideline consultancies, juggling lucrative speaking gigs, and perhaps even writing books and making regular media appearances.

At this point, it’s tempting to conclude that this is an interesting (but hardly surprising) reflection of current cohorts of teachers in their 20s and 30s who have grown up with digital technology. Yet, while these trends might sound harmless enough, such shifts in professional behaviour perhaps require more rigorous conversations about the ways in which digital culture is impacting on education.

For sure, there’s much about social media that can be praised as benefiting the teaching community. For example, social media undoubtedly allows individual teachers to gain a very powerful “voice” among their profession, and perhaps even gain the attention of those in powerful positions.

Similarly, social media is a place where some teachers are undoubtedly finding communities of like-minded colleagues, and making valuable connections with others around the world. These can be incredibly useful channels for getting ideas and keeping up to date with developments (what educators often like to term “professional learning”).

However, these trends aren’t wholly beneficial. In fact, there’s much here that could be said to be altering the character of teaching for the worse:

All this is not to argue that teachers take themselves off social media altogether. However, it does seem sensible that more attention is paid to the longer-term consequences of these trends. The variety of ways that teachers can now promote themselves through social media has so far developed “under the radar” of the education establishment. In many ways, this underground quality is what attracts millions of teachers to get involved.

However, many of the issues just outlined touch on significant concerns such as the commercialisation of public education, the exploitation of teachers, issues of over-work and burnout.

As such, these are trends that require some level of oversight from teaching unions, education departments and other professional associations. Social media will undoubtedly continue to grow as a significant part of many teachers’ professional lives. However, we need to make sure that these shifts are to everyone’s benefit.

This article was first published on Monash Lens. Read the original article