Dipashree Das

With over 18 years of experience, Dipashree Das is a marketing leader who is positioned as the Head of Partner Marketing, APAC & ANZ, AmazonFuse at Amazon. She has worked with prominent brands such as Netflix, Amazon, NDTV, Singtel, and Unilever. 

Dipashree Das has bagged the following recognitions:

• Top 30 Women in Content Marketing 2022

• Asia's Woman Leader 2021 by CMO Asia

• Content Mogul APAC 2021

• e4M Play Streaming Media Awards 2021 for Best Marketing Campaign for Sacred Games S2 

• MMA Smarties 2020 Winner for Mobile Innovation

• LinkedIn Power Profile Singapore 2017

Content marketing journey

Dipashree’s content marketing career started in 2013 when she worked with Hindustan Unilever. She then tried her luck at journalism at NDTV and Channel News Asia. This is when Dipashree found the confluence of branding and content intriguing. 

After joining Singtel in 2013, Dipashree truly found her calling in content marketing, where she could finally marry content and marketing seamlessly. She says, “It opened my eyes to how storytelling and having a well-thought, scientific, really nuanced strategy at the core of your marketing strategy could make a huge difference to how you launch and scale a brand.” 

I firmly believe that all marketers are storytellers, at least the good ones are. If you cannot tell a story, I do not think that you have succeeded in selling your product.

Role of community in content marketing

According to Dipashree, brands should approach community building as a primary step of their marketing strategies. Doing so will not only drive immediate results but will also help create a loyal customer base.

She expands with a focus on how the COVID-19 pandemic revolutionized the sense of community. People come to the internet to search for something, they look at influencers for more information and then look for people with similar interests. This builds a sense of belonging, which comes from being part of a community. 

When you add a brand to this equation, it must leverage that community. Tap into it to fulfill their needs with your product or service. The need for belonging in a hyper-digitalized and increasingly polarized world is why there is a need for brand builders to quickly rally a brand. 

This is where most brands go wrong. They put people secondary. They think people come together because of the brand. They do not. They come together because of the common interest that binds them together. This is one of the primary tenets that we should always keep in mind. 

Secret ingredients of good content

Dipashree believes that the ideal content includes good storytelling. Marketers must not hesitate to take the creative risk and should ensure that the content is relevant and consistent. 

She finds that relevance and consistency are key factors in building a community as a marketer. While most brands want to tell a story, they forget to know who their customer is, their personas, their buying decision process, and so much more. So while storytelling is all very good, it must be strategized properly. 

There is so much fatigue around repetitive stories. If you want to build and scale a community, it is very important to tell interesting stories. Interesting stories do not just get told. There is always an element of creativity. And, creativity has risks involved.

Evolution and future of content marketing

Dipashree Das finds that content marketing has become sharper and more insightful. While data plays a significant role, she believes it must be used to draw insights into the audience’s expectations. This will lead to more nuanced community-building centered on the consumer.

If your content marketing plan is not consumer-centric, it is not going to work. 

Dipashree believes that consumers are shaping culture, and if a brand understands that culture, it will lead to more seamless content marketing. Businesses must be immersed in understanding the culture, listen to their customers, and inhabit their world to succeed.