Exclusive | Digital is great for engagement: VML Qais's Tripti Lochan

Shiseido, a 12 year old name in India in department stores like Shopper’s Stop etc, on April, 2014, launched one of Shiseido’s masstige brands ‘Za’, which is a skincare line. VML Qais has been tasked with developing a 360-degree digital strategy for this new launch in India. This brand is specifically targeted at metropolitan women and the products will only be available in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

To kick off the launch, VML Qais set up the brand website and Facebook page and conceptualized the Take on Any Moment application to achieve the following objectives like Creating Awareness about Za, Build a Facebook community and communicate the brand philosophy and to drive trials for the products.

Adgully caught up with Tripti Lochan, CEO, VML Qais Asia to know more about the launch and the campaign

The brief given was to create awareness for a brand launch – ZA. "The brand lends itself to digital extremely well as it’s targeted at the urban metropolitan woman and she is online, through multiple devices through the day”, she said.

When asked about 3 most innovative things that they devised and adopted for promoting Za in India, Lochan said, “More than innovation, we were looking at using tactics that rode off our fan base to increase reach”.
Elaborating more on that she state some interesting tactics, which were:

Take on Any Moment Application – this application prompted users to pick friends that they are closest too. Thereby ensuring that the message of the app and the product was seen by 3 additional people for every one that engaged with the app. This let us not only build in the message of the brand but helped us organically spread the reach of the campaign

Comment based contests – we ran a few contests like #girlsnightout and #coffeedate which had users tagging their friends in comments. Again, this helped us increase the organic spread of the campaign

Leveraging Partners – Za partnered with Fabbag and Grazia to run events. As part of this, we got them to run contests on their facebook page which had them coming to the Za page to engage in some way.

"These initiatives let then leverage the communities of these established brands to spread our message," she said.

In a country like India, where beauty concerns go beyond metros, on asking about what steps were taken from end to make the campaign more inclusive of women from other non-metro towns and cities as well, she mentioned that, “Za is a metropolitan brand and is only available in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Hence, this campaign was specifically targeted to them."

When asked how according to her is this sector utilising the digital medium in India viz a viz its international counterparts? Lochan said, "For Revlon we are partnering them in the entire region – APAC.  And without any doubts the work we are doing in India is best-in-class for Revlon.  This is primarily because our work is based on insights, and our client is open to trying-learning-experimenting.  With some of the other markets, we find that sometimes clients are more conservative.  Surprisingly, India clients are not trying to change by small steps – they want to make giant leaps."

A strong believer of the fact that the spends on digital advertising are smaller compared to global markets, but she feels that this trend will be changing really soon. “Clients in India have just started realising the potential and impact of digital.  As they see success, they will change digital allocations”, she added.

Looking at the growing acceptance of the digital medium every marketer sees it as the most useful medium. So on asking about how according to her digital platform score against traditional platforms when it comes to advertising of beauty-related products, she stated, "Each platform has its own unique use.  They don’t necessarily have to be pitted against each other.  TV, for example, is absolutely a must for awareness in geographies beyond metros. Digital is great for engagement, especially when targeted at the Tier 1 & 2 metros."

Mobile is ubiquitous and key across the spectrum. "Having said this, we are seeing tremendous success in the ability of the digital platform to help create differentiation. When you have a category where brand ambassadors are used widely – and you have finite budgets – digital is a huge leveller," Lochan mentioned.

In terms of clientele they have been working with ICICI Bank – wherein they just helped launch the first social bank in Asia for ICICI, with a revamp of the entire banking experience. They also created Pockets for ICICI Bank – a mobile and Facebook App targeted at youth that has functionality that appeals to the youth. Some of our other clients are Revlon, Mahindra Holidays, Dell, and 3M.

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