DaMENSCH’s Deepti Karthik on breaking the trodden digital marketing rulebook

Started in 2018, DaMENSCH is a premium men’s fashion brand. Itrecently rolled out a quirky digital-first campaign – ‘The Innerwear Therapy’ with talented comedians Rohan Joshi, Adar Malik, Jordindians, and Nirmal Pillai. The series of three ad films are in line with the company’s mission to focus on the most neglected and challenging part of the male wardrobe – ‘The Innerwear’.

With a trend-setting concept - inception within these ad films see comedians reacting to watching themselves while playing a role in it. With an innovative product, DaMENSCH has made sure to step into an innovative storytelling format that simply builds on product strength without even showing the product once.

In conversation with Adgully, Deepti Karthik, Senior Vice President Marketing, DaMENSCH, and comedians Aadar Malik and Nirmal Pillai, elaborated on their innovative digital-first campaign ‘The Innerwear Therapy’. While Karthik shared insights from the campaign, Malik and Pillai elaborated on their journey working with the brand as comedians.

Smart storytelling & clutter-breaking execution: Deepti Karthik

What is the communication objective behind naming the campaign Innerwear Therapy?

‘The most comfortable man wears DaMENSCH’ – has been our war cry and that was the objective we wanted to drive via this campaign. Our innerwear is so comfortable, it’s not just innerwear it’s like therapy – was a creative leap that sets out to own “Comfort” for DaMENSCH in an exalted manner, given the word is table stakes in the category.

Our business objective was to acquire new customers and based on a consumer dipstick, we realised that within innerwear as a category beyond comfort, longevity, durability, and brand trust impact purchase behaviour. The mandate was specifically to talk to the discerning consumer through smart storytelling of features through clutter-breaking execution.

Was there any specific reason to collaborate with comedians for this specific campaign?

We target a premium audience and based on insights provided by Google, we stand to target an addressable market of 60 million consumers who are the top households in India. We have done an in-depth analysis of how the DaMENSCH audience belonging to this pool behaves and found a high affinity to comedy as a genre. The strategy with the campaign was to leverage the YouTube platform and hence, we worked with influencers within Comedy who have helped us reach our consumers meaningfully.

What are your expectations from the campaign and how relevant do you think it will be to your target audience?

We have witnessed a 12% relative lift in our brand scores from the campaign so far with an industry-first ad sequencing of three 45-seconder ads. With a completion rate of more than 50%, this ad has truly broken the trodden digital marketing rulebook.

How was Innerwear Therapy as a concept chosen for the campaign?

Our marketing objective was fourfold – firstly, to own the comfort proposition. Secondly, to focus on the durability of our products. Thirdly, to promote reviews, ratings, and consumer feedback. And last but not least, we wanted to promote the variety of our products as we boast the largest assortment within the innerwear category in India.

The Innerwear Therapy concept ticked the box on conveying and helping us own the comfort proposition, it’s a nod to how as a brand we favour alternative masculinity and would like to be the torchbearer of modern man’s mind map. While the campaign indexes on unconventional storytelling, it comes through on all the marketing objectives we had set out for us to achieve and hence was a unanimous choice.

Will the campaign Innerwear Therapy work with Indian consumers who see therapy as a taboo?

We have witnessed a 100% positive sentiment analysis on this campaign, we believe the audience we speak to welcomes the distinct communication style and appreciates the hyperbole that the creative team has employed.

Key to creating unique content: Aadar Malik & Nirmal Pillai

In your opinion what does DaMENSCH want to convey with the campaign - Innerwear Therapy?

Aadar Malik: For me, this campaign is all about self-love. I feel looking out for our own selves is often the last thing on our minds, so much so, that we don’t even pay attention to our own basic needs and comfort like innerwear in this haywire of everyday life. I think we all have stories from our college lives about wearing underwear with holes and using the same ones to the point that they actually evaporate! That’s how bad we are at taking care of ourselves and this campaign’s messaging is like a friend telling you “Hey!  You need to take care of yourself”. Even I learned the importance of investing in quality innerwear rather than just picking up the first thing I see quite late in my life and this ad is quite a twisted and clear eye opener.

What is unique about DaMENSCH that no other innerwear brands have?

Nirmal Pillai: Their products are actually very cool and really soft, stretchy, and odourless. Apart from that, they have put together a team that truly imbibes the element of the brand and was very fun to work with. Usually, with underwear brands, you just see them slapping their product on people and putting those pictures all around. DaMENSCH went for something different here, which is quite refreshing and potentially even trend-setting.

As a comedian, how do you work around the constant need of coming up with new material? As everyone has a unique creative process, what's yours?

Nirmal Pillai: My unique creative process is freaking out over a deadline. Consistency is something that is absolutely essential for any creative. I try to push myself to post one Reel every two days or every three days. So, when that internal clock is ticking, I freak out, lose my head, and come up with something and that is my process. The constant need to come up with new material is the entire job of a comedian. Somebody is sitting there and coding, content is our job and I honestly enjoy coming up with cool stuff.

Aadar Malik: I think that the key to creating unique content is to wholeheartedly enjoy the process. I genuinely have fun writing new material because it’s like giving yourself the freedom to create, fight that voice in your head that’s afraid of failure, and even go on stage to fail publically. Moreover, the excitement of keeping at it and constantly working on perfecting something that you came up with from scratch to finally reaching the feeling of being happy with what you have written is the best thing in the world for me. My process is writing and just keep writing draft after draft. There are comedy songs that I have made that were released and performed to an audience after they reached their 8th draft. I don’t even take the material to the audience until I am absolutely happy with it, but that does take a lot of chiselling.