Performance marketing has a structural ceiling: it converts interest that already exists, but it does not create the interest itself. That was the starting point for Episode 5 of JioStar Presents The Collective, which brought together D2C founders and marketers to ask whether brand building is the next serious growth lever for India’s direct-to-consumer brands.
The panel featured Akash Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO, Farmley; Saloni Anand, Co-Founder, Traya; Swagat Sarangi, Co-Founder, Smytten; Pradeep Krishnakumar, Co-Founder, Zouk; Konark Gaur, Chief Marketing Officer, Pilgrim; and Arun Iyer, Founder, Spring Marketing Capital. Journalist Delshad Irani moderated the conversation.
From being found to being preferred
The problem put to the panel is familiar to D2C marketers. Performance channels are efficient at harvesting shoppers who are already in-market, but they rarely plant desire in people who have not begun searching. As India’s D2C brands have scaled distribution, the discussion is shifting from capturing demand to generating it.
Leaders explored what it takes to move from being found to being preferred, where brand preference is built, and what role the large screen can play in that shift.
- Performance channels work best on existing demand; they rarely make a brand desirable to a new audience.
- Brand building creates demand before a shopper opens the search bar.
- High-attention, co-viewed environments may compress the funnel from discovery to purchase.
- The lean-back, story-friendly nature of the large screen suits brand-led narratives that performance ads often cannot carry.
Why the large screen matters
Much of the conversation centred on premium, co-viewed viewing. The episode examined whether family viewing adds trust and attention in ways that single-user, scroll-based placements cannot. Leaders suggested that such environments may shorten the path from first exposure to purchase—a meaningful shift for D2C teams that are used to months of multi-channel nurturing.
For our audience, the implication is strategic. D2C marketers have spent years optimising for last-click metrics. But when every player bids on the same high-intent signals, acquisition costs rise and differentiation falls. Brand building can expand the pool of future buyers and reduce that pressure.
What marketers can do
The episode is not a call to abandon performance marketing. It is a call to rebalance. D2C brands need an efficient bottom-funnel engine and a brand-building layer that creates future demand. A practical first step is to audit how much budget goes to demand capture versus demand creation, then test brand-led formats on large-screen platforms while measuring recall and intent alongside conversions.
The Collective is JioStar’s flagship thought leadership platform, and the episode is available on JioHotstar.
Source: MediaNews4U
