Don’t moan about advertising on LinkedIn, focus on ‘shares’, play the long game

Viren Noronha, co-founder of social-first agency The New Thing (TNT) does not want to be part of the clique which bemoans the state of advertising and marketing on LinkedIn every week, and he is obsessed with shares over any other social media metric.

Sibling to creative agency Talented, it is interesting to note that TNT’s staff comprises only creators. Noronha left his job at Swiggy to co-found this agency with PG Aditya and Gautam Reghunath; he has also led Tinder India’s social media work in his career.  

A couple of weeks ago, TNT celebrated its first anniversary and during those 12 months, it created work for brands like Flipkart, Google, Tinder, Myntra, and Netflix among others.

He spoke to us (afaqs!) about how brands want to change their approach to social media, why you should obsess over shares, why you should accept social media for what it is rather than moan about it, and why his team is filled only with creators.

Edited Excerpts.

TNT’s website says: “We make brands work for the internet. Not the other way around.” How have brands changed the way they approach the net and social media in the past 12 months?

I think more and more brands are ready to have the conversation on social media for two reasons.

One, there is this stagnation in the way we approach social media and social strategy. Since 2016-17, the scope of work talks about 30 posts a month and about how deliverables equate to the retainer amount you're supposed to get paid. It also talks about how you have to track 10-15 different metrics. Clients want a newer way of looking at things.

Second is the simple belief that nobody comes to social media to interact with your brand; they come to feel validated. At Tinder, we created dating content, not dating app content. At Swiggy, we created food culture content, not discounts and stuff.

There is scope to get more people to value this as an integral part of their scope as opposed to the deliverables every month.

Are we still chasing follower count or are we trying to chase shares? Chase shares. It's hard to be a one-man army trying to say this one thing but the minute Instagram’s CEO says, ‘Hey guys, shares are the most important’. Suddenly. everybody's like, ‘Yes, of course’.

The industry needs more people to be vocal about the right way of looking at social media which comes from being unafraid to have an uncomfortable discussion with the client on what works and what doesn't.

It must be hard to convince a non-internet-first brand whose leaders aren’t that open to change.

Without mincing words, let's be very honest, the brand manager who is making the decisions probably is not active on Instagram or on Twitter at all.

How do you explain to somebody who does not actively post on social what the right way to post on social is, but their opinion holds sway on what gets approved and not?

At TNT, we staff ourselves with creators and it all comes down to vocabulary. The creators have not only the vocabulary, but they have the credentials to be able to tell you what works and what doesn't. How will you refute someone who says, ‘I've tweeted this and got 5,000 likes.’ I think it'll work for your brand. The proof is in the pudding.

Having creators in the driver's seat when it comes to the branded content that we create definitely helps make that sort of shift.

Another thing, you can either be part of the larger diaspora that likes to b*%$h about advertising and marketing, and we see this on LinkedIn every third scroll, or you can be an agency that has accepted socially for what it is.

We are more than happy to handhold our clients through a transitionary period before we get to where we need to be, without having to rage post about them on LinkedIn.

I'll always say that advertising is the one industry that causes all of its own problems, and then likes to take to LinkedIn to moan about it.

From an Indian context, can you tell me what internet culture is?

I think Indian internet culture is built off topical moments. We leapfrog from moment to moment and the space between them is so less. You can build your entire social strategy purely on topical and moment marketing.

Is it common across India?

Yes. I think the internet is the only thing that is able to unite an entire country; again, behind a topical moment. The Indian internet definitely longs for moments that just bring everybody together, which is why there was so much uproar behind Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification at the Paris Olympics.

Whether people have an opinion or not, they're like, ‘Okay, this is now my chance to feel seen, heard, validated, it doesn't matter where I'm from, I will get my validation’. That's what I think is beautiful about operating in this space.

How do you convince a stubborn client to not participate in a moment because it doesn’t suit them?

I just remind them that the internet is never running out of moments. If it is not this one, there will be something a week from now to hop onto.

And I then asked them a simple question: ‘Do you remember what we posted three weeks ago?’ They don’t.

If you operate social from a post-by-post basis, you're playing the wrong game. It's the long game that you should get in. Ask any of the best brands that are killing it on social, ask any of the best creators, they won't be able to tell you what they posted two weeks ago.

So don't treat it like how you treat a print ad. Social is a compounding game. So not this moment, there's another moment that will come.

So, how do you measure effectiveness?

For me, it is simple. What are we trying to achieve with this page?  For example, with Flipkart, we have four million followers. I don't need to track followers anymore. What am I tracking? Shares.

I just want to create the most shareable content. We recently put out a post that I think has crossed more than 600,000 shares and 10.5 million likes (right above). As a consequence of just chasing shares, we've got 400,000 followers for Flipkart's page in the last four or five months.

So, I think having a clear goalpost and knowing what the one metric I'm tracking is the bedrock and the pillow and the cover and the cherry on top of your social media strategy.

You only have creators on your staff, how does that work?

I have a bevvy of skills at TNT. I think there are reel creators, there are people who are good at copy, there are people who are good at editing. I think old or traditional agency knowledge would tell you to throw bodies at an account, which is the wrong way to approach it.

I don't need to throw 12 people at it. I think that's the beauty of working with creators. Because if you match the right creator to the right task, they can actually shoulder that responsibility on their own.

How much money are brands spending on social?

I think brands are slowly starting to realize the merit of doing social. Look at it this way, before it breaks on the print, it breaks on the social which is a huge testament to how social done right can actually be a huge growth metric for your brand, for your brand love.

How much should they be spending? I think a lot more needs to go into qualitative social as opposed to quantitative posts per month. And that trickles down all the way to the kind of things that we say with procurement teams. Why do we need to justify quantity with cost? I don't think that that needs to be justified.

If you do it that way, then there are two posts in the month that I've done that have hit all of the metrics. Why do I need to design any more posts?

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or even Reddit; on which platform are brands these days?

Not every part of your brand should end up on the internet. I think you need to choose what part of your brand needs to be on the internet and what part of it does not.

If it makes sense for you to be on Reddit, by all means, give it a shot. But I think what's core is to figure out, what am I trying to get out of this page. I go back to another thing that we keep saying to clients, that is, just because you have x number of followers does not mean that every time you post, it by default goes to all of these followers. So, if it makes sense for your brand to be on it, try it.

Is there pressure to use technology like artificial intelligence in your work?

You may spend two crore on the latest piece of tech, and still lose engagement to a meme of a cat and then you have to answer the question of ROI. So, to me, I think everything is permitted and everything is fair as long as you have a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve.