To commemorate World Social Media Day, in an exclusive interaction with MediaBrief, Alka Vij (Director — Hashtag Orange); Chandan Bagwe (Founder & Managing Director — C Com Digital); Dhanya Mohan (Account Director, Strategy — TheSmallBigIdea); and Yash Chandiramani (Founder & Chief Strategist — Admatazz) speak about how social media has transformed brand marketing, consumer engagement, and product discovery. They also share which platforms are delivering the greatest value for their brands, the emerging consumer behaviours and trends shaping their strategies, and their perspectives on the evolving balance between influencer-led marketing and platform advertising. Read on.
T
he democratization of digital media has forced a radical restructuring of the traditional agency workflow. Today, campaign success is no longer defined by rigid, pre-planned quarters, but by an agency’s ability to decode live consumer data and build agile brand identities that thrive in a chaotic digital ecosystem.
Exploring how this shift has fundamentally reorganized their internal processes, Alka Vij, Director, Hashtag Orange, says, “Social media has fundamentally changed how brands earn attention and build trust. For companies operating in AI marketing, it has created a direct line to audiences that would have been difficult and expensive to reach through traditional channels.”
“The biggest shift has come from Gen Z,” says Vij. “This audience has grown up consuming content from creators, communities, and peers, which means they expect brands to communicate with transparency, relevance, and consistency. They engage with brands that contribute something useful or insightful rather than simply promote products. That has pushed marketers to focus less on one-way communication and more on creating conversations that people genuinely want to participate in.”
She adds, “Social media has also made marketing far more responsive. Every comment, share, and discussion offers immediate insight into how audiences perceive a message. For an AI marketing company, that feedback loop is invaluable because it helps us understand evolving consumer behaviour, simplify complex ideas, and continuously refine our communication based on real engagement rather than assumptions.”
“Marketing has shifted from campaign-led to conversation-led thanks to social media. Brands used to own the story. Now it’s the consumers,” says, Chandan Bagwe – Founder & Managing Director of C Com Digital.
“At C Com Digital,” Bagwe says, “this transition has made adaptability and authenticity much more crucial to us than merely pushing messaging. Brands can no longer afford to speak to consumers, they need to speak with them. Social media has also shortened the client journey. Content, community and commerce are becoming intricately intertwined as discovery, contemplation and purchase increasingly take place within the same ecosystem.”
Dhanya Mohan, Account Director, Strategy, TheSmallBigIdea, says, “Social media for brands has moved from just hygiene presence to an important revenue channel and a brand-building platform – some brands have even built entirely D2C businesses on it. But the bigger gap it filled, one no other medium could fill before, is affinity building at scale and frequency.
“It gives a brand the chance to show who it really is- the human side that a 30-second commercial, five lines of print copy, or an OOH hoarding could never convey. What once took years of consistent messaging to establish a brand’s true ethos can now be built faster and more efficiently through social media.
“At the same time,” Mohan says, “it’s a double-edged sword: social media has made consumers far more accessible, but it has also shortened attention spans and created a content overdose, making it increasingly hard to capture attention and land a message.”
One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing is that audiences, particularly Gen Z, have become far more selective about what they engage with… We’re also seeing the customer journey become much shorter. Consumers can discover a brand, research it, validate it through creators or community conversations, and make a purchase decision within the same platform. That has made social proof and meaningful engagement far more influential than traditional advertising alone: Alka Vij of Hashtag Orange
“The honest answer is that social media didn’t change what good marketing is supposed to do. It changed the economics of reach,” says Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist — Admatazz.
“Before social,” says, “reaching your audience at any meaningful scale required a print campaign, an outdoor burst, a TV buy. You did it in concentrated windows and then waited. Social media added something genuinely new: the ability to attempt to reach your audience every single day. Not every attempt lands equally. Some become well-travelled, occasionally viral. Most land somewhere between mild and moderate. But the cumulative effect of that daily presence, that daily attempt, is what changes the game. You are compounding reach over time in a way that was simply not possible before, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional media.
“At Admatazz,” he says, “that’s how we think about social for our clients: not as a content treadmill, but as a daily opportunity to put your brand in front of the right people. The medium changed. The job of building mental availability didn’t.”
Mapping Platform Strengths to Strategic Goals
While orchestrating a multi-channel strategy is now a baseline requirement for any agency, selecting the right platform mix depends heavily on a client’s specific business vertical and target audience. Breaking down the core platforms currently anchoring their media planning and why these specific channels yield the highest return on investment for their clients, Alka Vij, Director, Hashtag Orange, says, “There isn’t a single platform that defines our marketing strategy. Different platforms serve different objectives, and the strongest outcomes come from using each one for its strengths. For us, LinkedIn and Instagram currently play the most important roles.”
“LinkedIn,” she says, “is where credibility is built. It gives us the opportunity to share industry perspectives, showcase expertise, and engage with decision-makers who are actively looking for insights into marketing, AI, and business growth.
She continues, “In a category where trust is essential, thoughtful content consistently delivers stronger long-term value than simply increasing visibility through paid campaigns. Instagram serves a different purpose. It allows brands to express personality, simplify complex ideas through visual storytelling, and stay connected with cultural conversations.
“Together,” Vij says, these platforms help us build both authority and relevance across different stages of the customer journey.”
Chandan Bagwe, Founder & Managing Director, C Com Digital, says, “There is no single winner anymore because every platform serves a different consumer intent. However, Instagram continues to be one of the most influential platforms because it combines storytelling, creator culture, and commerce in a very powerful way.
He continues, “At the same time, LinkedIn has become indispensable for building authority and meaningful conversations in the B2B ecosystem. The true opportunity for businesses is not in chasing platforms but in understanding where their audience is spending attention and how they act there.”
“Which platform to use depends entirely on the brand’s objective,” says Dhanya Mohan, Account Director, Strategy, TheSmallBigIdea. “Facebook works well for paid conversion, Instagram does both conversion and top of funnel through reach and engagement. YouTube remains a very strong reach medium, especially for mass brands looking to penetrate Tier 2/3 markets. Objectives can range from affinity to sales to community building, and depending on which one we’re chasing, we lean on different platforms and track different KPIs.”
Marketing has shifted from campaign-led to conversation-led thanks to social media. Brands used to own the story. Now it’s the consumers… Brands can no longer afford to speak to consumers, they need to speak with them. Social media has also shortened the client journey. Content, community and commerce are becoming intricately intertwined as discovery, contemplation and purchase increasingly take place within the same ecosystem: Chandan Bagwe of C Com Digital
Echoing similar sentiments, Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist, Admatazz, says, “It depends entirely on the client’s category and consumer, and anyone who gives you a universal answer to this question is selling something.”
“That said,” he says, “for most of our clients, Instagram remains the most important platform because it sits at the intersection of brand and performance. It’s where you can build visual identity, tell stories, run product discovery, and convert, sometimes within the same scroll.
Chandiramani continues, “YouTube matters enormously for categories where consideration is high and the consumer needs more time with the brand before deciding. For BFSI clients especially, long-form content on YouTube has driven meaningful trust-building that Instagram alone can’t replicate. The honest framing is this: the right platform is the one where your category buyer spends time and where you can reach them with the least friction.”
Decoding Modern Consumer Behaviors and Trends
For modern agencies, the real challenge lies in separating fleeting digital fads from deeply rooted behavioral shifts. In an era of content fatigue, keeping a client’s brand relevant requires a sharp understanding of how audiences consume information, protect their attention, and validate purchasing decisions online.
Unpacking the quiet trends and behavioral changes currently reshaping their strategic counsel, Alka Vij, Director, Hashtag Orange, says, “One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing is that audiences, particularly Gen Z, have become far more selective about what they engage with. The rapid growth of AI-generated content has increased the volume of content across platforms, but it has also made originality, credibility, and human perspective more valuable than ever. People can quickly identify content that lacks substance, which means quality now carries more weight than quantity.
He adds, “We’re also seeing the customer journey become much shorter. Consumers can discover a brand, research it, validate it through creators or community conversations, and make a purchase decision within the same platform. That has made social proof and meaningful engagement far more influential than traditional advertising alone.”
“For brands in AI marketing,” Vij says, “these shifts reinforce the need to create content that educates as much as it promotes. Simplifying complex ideas, sharing practical insights, and building consistent credibility are becoming increasingly important in how brands earn attention and maintain it.
Chandan Bagwe, Founder and Managing Director of C Com Digital, says, “Today marketing is being transformed by three developments. First, consumers are rejecting heavily produced advertising in favour of more authentic, creator-led content. Second, short form video is the language of the internet now, so speed and relevancy are crucial. Third, social media is becoming a discovery engine for clients, often in place of traditional search.
“So what does this mean for brands?,” Bagwe says, “In simple terms it’s harder to get noticed and relevancy is more important than reach now.”
Dhanya Mohan, Account Director, Strategy, TheSmallBigIdea, says, “One trend we’re seeing consistently across categories: people are moving away from public commenting toward more personal interactions- DMs, saves, and shares. We treat this as one of the most important metrics on social today. The goal is to make content entertaining, informative, or relatable enough that people want to save it for later or share it with a friend.“
Facebook works well for paid conversion, Instagram does both conversion and top of funnel through reach and engagement. YouTube remains a very strong reach medium, especially for mass brands looking to penetrate Tier 2/3 markets. Objectives can range from affinity to sales to community building, and depending on which one we’re chasing, we lean on different platforms and track different KPIs: Dhanya Mohan of TheSmallBigIdea
Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist — Admatazz, says, “The trend I pay most attention to is the one most people are getting wrong: the collapse of the distinction between content and advertising.”
Elaborating on this, Chandiramani says, “Everyone is chasing authenticity, which in practice has become an excuse to make low-quality ads dressed up as user-generated content. We’ve written publicly about this. Fake UGC doesn’t build brands. It builds nothing, because there’s no distinctive asset in the frame, no consistent brand cue, and no memory structure being reinforced.
He contiues, “The consumer behaviour that’s actually shaping our strategy is something quieter: people are getting better at ignoring things that don’t immediately signal value. That means your brand cues need to be front-loaded, your creative needs to be genuinely interesting rather than just native-looking, and your consistency across touchpoints needs to be airtight. Short-form video is the dominant format and that’s not changing. But the quality bar for what earns attention within that format is rising, not falling.”
Balancing Human Advocacy with Paid Scale
For agencies tasked with maximizing client budgets, the choice between performance advertising and creator partnerships is rarely binary. The real challenge lies in auditing whether an algorithmically optimized ad or a trusted human recommendation will move the needle faster for a specific business vertical.
Evaluating where the strongest returns actually manifest in a crowded digital marketplace, Alka Vij, Director, Hashtag Orange, says, “The answer depends on the business objective, but if the goal is to build trust and influence buying decisions, influencer-led marketing is delivering stronger returns for many brands today. Consumers, particularly Gen Z, are more likely to engage with recommendations from creators they already follow because those endorsements feel more credible than conventional advertising when the partnership is authentic and relevant.”
She adds, “Platform advertising continues to play an essential role by delivering scale, precise audience targeting, retargeting, and measurable performance. It remains one of the most effective ways to convert demand once awareness has been established. The most successful brands are integrating both approaches instead of treating them as competing channels.
“Influencer content creates authenticity and social proof, while platform advertising extends the reach of high-performing content and improves conversion efficiency. AI is making this combination even more effective by helping marketers identify the right creators, understand audience behaviour, and optimise campaigns based on real-time performance,” says Vij.
“It’s not influencer-led marketing versus platform advertising anymore; the real winners are brands who mix both well,” says Chandan Bagwe, Founder & Managing Director, C Com Digital.
“Influencers provide trust and cultural relevance, platform ads give scale and precision. In our experience, creator content powered by paid media generates much higher engagement and conversion than either tactic alone.
He adds, “The future belongs to firms that recognize that consumers don’t want to be marketed to, they want suggestions from voices they trust.”
Explaining her approach to this scenario, Dhanya Mohan, Account Director – Strategy, TheSmallBigIdea, says, “Building a ‘humane’ brand – one that’s loved, with a community that believes not just in the product but in what the brand stands for – is a major factor in long-term survival in a market cluttered with discounts, competitors, and volatility. Community building, therefore, is social media’s biggest advantage, something no other medium offered before and it pays off for brands over the long run, even when it doesn’t show up quantitatively in a monthly report.”
Sharing her views on the ongoing debate between influencer-led marketing and platform advertising, Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist, Admatazz, says, “Neither is universally stronger. The question is what job you’re asking each to do. Platform advertising is more controllable, more measurable, and better for reach at scale. If you need to build broad mental availability across your category, paid media on the right platforms is more reliable than any influencer campaign.
“Influencer marketing, when it works, does something paid ads struggle with: it borrows trust. A recommendation from someone the audience has chosen to follow carries a different kind of weight than an ad served by an algorithm. But the operative word is trust, and most influencer marketing today is squandering it. When every creator is promoting five brands a week, the borrowed trust depreciates fast.
“Our view is that influencer marketing works best for specific, targeted moments: product launches, category education, or reaching a niche audience that paid media can’t efficiently access. Platform advertising works better for sustained brand building and performance at scale,” adds Chandiramani.
The honest answer is that social media didn’t change what good marketing is supposed to do. It changed the economics of reach… Social media added something genuinely new: the ability to attempt to reach your audience every single day. Not every attempt lands equally… But the cumulative effect of that daily presence, that daily attempt, is what changes the game. You are compounding reach over time in a way that was simply not possible before, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional media: Yash Chandiramani of Admatazz
The Alternate Reality: Marketing Without Social Feeds
Strip away the instant metrics, viral loops, and digital distribution, and agencies are forced back to the heavy lifting of traditional media planning and physical footprints. This theoretical reset highlights just how much heavy lifting social media does for emerging businesses and compressed conversion funnels.
Imagining how they would build brand equity, guide product discovery, and sustain consumer interest for their clients if the digital ecosystem vanished overnight, Alka Vij, Director, Hashtag Orange, says, “Without social media, product discovery would depend far more on traditional media, industry events, search, partnerships, and direct sales efforts. Those channels remain valuable, but they are slower, more expensive, and offer fewer opportunities for continuous interaction with audiences.
“For companies in AI marketing, social media has become an important channel for education,” says Vij. ” It allows us to explain emerging technologies, respond to questions, showcase real-world applications, and build credibility through ongoing conversations instead of isolated campaigns. That is particularly valuable when introducing new ideas or helping businesses understand rapidly evolving technologies.”
Vij adds, “The impact would be even greater when engaging Gen Z, a generation that increasingly discovers, evaluates, and validates brands through creators, communities, and peer conversations. Without those interactions, building trust would require significantly more time and investment. Social media has made marketing more immediate, more measurable, and far more collaborative between brands and their audiences.”
Chandan Bagwe, Founder & Managing Director, C Com Digital, says, “Without social media, marketing would be far more costly and much less participatory. Brands would mainly rely on traditional media, search, and offline methods to generate exposure, but they would lose the opportunity to develop communities and get real-time feedback.”
He adds, “Social media has leveled the playing field in terms of developing brands. It has opened the door for even the fledgling enterprises to compete with the bigger players, not just on spending but with inventiveness and consistency. That’s possibly its largest influence.”
Dhanya Mohan, Account Director, Strategy, TheSmallBigIdea, says, “For measurable, bottom-of-funnel returns – conversions, reach, engagement – influencer-led marketing tends to outperform, and is often the approach for driving sales and awareness across categories. That said, platform-specific brand content is equally critical for three things: brand perception, community building, and affinity building.”
“We’d be doing a version of what good marketers were doing in 2004: television for reach, print for considered categories, events and word of mouth for community, and search for intent. The fundamentals wouldn’t change because they never do,” says Yash Chandiramani, Founder & Chief Strategist, Admatazz.
He continues, “What social media actually gave us is compressed feedback loops and lower barriers to entry. A brand with a modest budget can now reach millions and test creative in real time. That’s genuinely democratising.”
Chandiramani wraps up by saying, “The brands that would have survived without social media are the same ones that are winning with it: the ones with clear positioning, strong distinctive assets, and a real understanding of their category buyer. Without it, product discovery would be slower, more expensive, and more dependent on distribution muscle. Customer engagement would happen through CRM, events, and call centres. And marketing would look a lot more like media planning than content strategy. Not worse, just different.”
