For over 135 years, Avon has always stood for women empowerment: Swati Jain

For 130 years Avon has stood for women: providing innovative, quality beauty products which are primarily sold to women, through women. Avon supports women’s empowerment, entrepreneurship and well-being and has donated over $1 billion to women’s causes through Avon and the Avon Foundation.

As part of their rebranding exercise, Avon recently launched a new campaign – #WatchMeNow – to further strengthen the core values of the brand. The campaign includes a bolder and more confident tone of voice with a new Avon logo that not only modernises the brand, but also reinforces its values.

#WatchMeNow reinforces Avon’s brand positioning that has its purpose at the centre – to empower women. Avon, which has been empowering women for over two decades now, has evolved its positioning to better reflect the Avon of today who stands up on what she believes in.

In an exclusive interview with Adgully, Swati Jain, Marketing Director, AVON India, speaks at length about the latest campaign, the company’s strong focus on women empowerment, as well as their long term marketing strategy for the Indian market.

Avon has always owned the position of Empowering Women as their value proposition for ages and some great initiatives have been done to encourage and recognise women across the globe. What’s the purpose of this film and could you elaborate on the creative thought and the end objective of the film?

For over 135 years, Avon has always stood for women empowerment. We started as a company that goes on to empower women and it continues to do that. We do it in two ways, which is essentially providing consumers extremely good quality, highly innovative, and great value for money products. At the same time, for the people who sell our products, we provide them flexible earning opportunities. So, both put together is the proposition that we have to offer to the consumers and target audience.

In addition to that, women empowerment is at our core, our products are largely women-centric and at the same time, our flexible earning proposition appeals to a lot of women. We have also taken it as an agenda that we speak out against all the issues that women face globally. Two such issues are breast cancer and domestic violence – and we take it very seriously, across the globe and in India. Therefore, women empowerment with great products, flexible earning opportunity, and us speaking at large against two massive issues that are faced by women is the core of Avon’s existence.

With this campaign, we aim to strengthen this core even more and at the same time, become even more relevant to the new generation of millennials and GenZ, who are purpose-driven and are looking for organisations that are purpose-driven. Today, when financial independence and economic challenges are significant, I think a lot of young people who are looking at our campaign would like to be associated with Avon as either a representative or consumers or both. This campaign is about celebration of women. I think this platform celebrates these women because everybody has their story to tell, and we want to celebrate each of these women telling their own stories as Watch Me Now.

Who are you targeting with this film? Could you elaborate on the profile of the audience to whom this film should reach? Any action that you are expecting post viewing the film by your audience?

This campaign should appeal to all women of all segments. This campaign is bold, advanced looking and it is a very inclusive communication platform that we have chosen, where we do not exclude any women from coming into Avon. But if you ask me that one segment that I would really like this film to appeal to, is the millennials and the GenZ, who at this time of the pandemic are looking for flexible earning opportunities and I think our new look will also connect well with the younger generation.

How do you plan to expose this film in the Indian market? What would be your overall media strategy for this campaign and will digital be your frontline media?

We are a digital-first organisation, and 90 per cent of our communication to our consumers and representatives happens digitally. Social media and other digital platforms are going to be our primary source for communication to our target audience and we want to make sure that the millennials and GenZ do change their behaviour and thinking towards Avon. We believe this medium has a natural affinity for that.

The pandemic has disrupted everyone and it has been tough for brands to reach their products to the end customer. How have you navigated the COVID situation and managed to reach your products to your customers on time and also addressed their pain points and customer grievances?

It is a continuous learning process that every organisation is going through. We are a relationship selling organisation, which essentially means personal interaction is critical to us. So, we had to move very fast as soon as the pandemic hit us and making sure that most of the relationship-building that happens with our representatives to their consumer and us move into a digital model. We have largely moved all our training programs and interactions digitally. In this pandemic, we trained over a lakh people only through virtual training, which is unique and an accomplishment, I would say. Products were not reaching consumers. Yes, that is true and that’s because there are common norms, there is a requirement of COVID-19 which has been changing over a period of time. We were as much impacted, but now things are settling down and we don’t see much of an issue happening ever since the lockdown opened. And at this minute, I can confidently say most of our consumers and reps you would talk to would say that they got their products on time. Moreover, we have an extremely loyal consumer base and they waited for their products to come, which really helped us.

Everyone is talking about the new normal. How is Avon planning to overcome the challenges as behavioural changes are likely to happen with the consumers? Any contingency plan or strategy drawn out to tackle the new normal?

It is not even new normal anymore. It is a normal life now, which has changed. At Avon, one thing we understood was that our portfolio needed some tweaks. We needed to get the products into our portfolio, which were important for this way of living, which we had not considered in the past. We included products like sanitizers, masks, and other hygiene products that we are working on. We are working hard to make sure that the portfolio is strong. The other normalcy about today’s time, for relationship selling business is to have more and more representatives who are digitally savvy. In addition to these, we were quick to up our game and adapt on the usage of our app, which is called AVON ON. The app is available on iOS as well as on Android platforms, where people can order the products online. We have also added a digital brochure, where people can actually do cart-based shopping on the brochure, which is a virtual brochure. These things are going to be the future of the business.

The festive season is a big opportunity for brands. How are you going to leverage the festive season? Have you planned any tactical campaign to woo the customers?

The festive season is really critical to us. We already saw good traction in the month of September. We are launching this campaign in the festive season because people need it most right now, especially the younger generation, who are looking for flexible income. This month we have launched a very good fragrance under our flagship brand, Little Black Dress. Next month, we are launching something extremely exciting in the cosmetics category and many more ranges. We wanted to make sure that all of this is woven in together. Also, next month is Breast Cancer Awareness month. So, for us, ‘Watch Me Now’ is not a campaign, but it is a journey that will bring in a lot of things that we have planned for the consumers and the brand during this festive season.

What is the next big initiative that Avon is planning to take in order to empower women in the Indian market? Any goal or mission chalked out for the same?

We want every woman to be associated with Avon. They inspire us and I hope we keep inspiring them through our products, campaigns, and service. We keep working on the women’s initiatives, like breast cancer, which is coming in October. In the month of May, when we realised that pandemic has led to another pandemic in people’s homes, which is increase in domestic violence, we tied up with three NGOs in the country and they are doing an amazing amount of groundwork to make women fight out the domestic violence. Through all our efforts, our only motive is to empower women.