D2C’s New Media Playbook

by · Inc42

SUMMARY

  • As customer acquisition costs soar, new-age consumer brands are building content engines and media ecosystems to own attention instead of renting it
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Everybody wants to own the media, and the country’s fastest-growing new-age consumer brands are no exception. 

Faced with rising customer acquisition costs, ad fatigue and diminishing returns from performance marketing, brands are increasingly asking a simple question: why keep renting attention when you can own it?

Historically, this strategy has played out through acquisitions. Mensa Brands’ (now BRND.ME) acquisition of MensXP, iDiva and Hypp, Nykaa’s Little Black Book, and Honasa’s buying of Momspresso are some of the key examples, which weren’t merely inorganic expansion moves aimed at boosting revenue but bets to own consumer attention and build direct relationships with audiences. 

Several digital-first consumer brands are today doing the same by building their own media capabilities or investing heavily in original content to build communities around their products. 

Bombay Shaving Company is a case in point. The men’s grooming startup has scaled 100Days.co, a platform founded in 2021 as a growth initiative for portfolio brands. It has since evolved into a full-stack digital commerce platform that also produces content in-house to help established consumer brands build and scale their D2C businesses.

Similarly, notable brands, including athleisure startup Blissclub, healthy snacking company The Whole Truth and audio wearables startup boAt, are endeavouring to create content either by owning a studio or joining hands with content creators to shoot podcasts, short films or conduct spot interviews.

So, why are brands investing so aggressively in media? Let’s find out in this edition of The Checkout.

The Race To Own Consumer Attention

According to Rajeswar Rao, the vice-president of B2C and digital marketing at Clovia, an innerwear brand, customer acquisition today is different from what it was even five years ago.