How purpose-driven marketing is creating strong brand loyalty for BIC Cello

BIC Cello, a leading pen brand in the country, has time and again come up with initiatives that support the vision of achieving sustainable development in India. It launched the ‘Write to Recycle’ initiative in February 2023 and targeted the youth in around 15 colleges across Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru. The initiative falls under the broader initiative of BIC Cello, which is ‘Write The Change You Want To See’, providing a platform for the youth to share their opinions with the world and express themselves freely, turning their ideas into real world actions.

‘Write to Recycle’ puts emphasis on the combined concepts of Recycling, Reusing and Reducing (RRR). Under this initiative, BIC Cello is asking the students to contribute their used pens, which are then turned into a usable bench. In this way, BIC Cello is staying true to its objective and vision of achieving sustainable development and spreading the message as well as awareness surrounding sustainability among the population, specially the youth who are its primary TG, so that they take more constructive actions in this regard.

In conversation with Adgully, Devanshi Dholakia, Marketing Lead, BIC Cello, speaks about the green initiatives of the company and how it has been able to involve the youth of the country in its endeavour to recycle, reuse and reduce, purpose-driven marketing, pivoting towards digital to engage with consumers and encourage them to shop online, and more.

Considering today’s day and age where there has been a significant shift towards online shopping and an increasingly emerging younger population inclined towards education and everything related to it, how is BIC Cello tapping into this opportunity?

Today’s youth is very much aware that education can be the right empowerment for them. Through this notion, BIC Cello has connected with the youth from the past. The biggest thing that we are doing is leveraging digital as a key medium to engage with these audiences who are our TG, connect with them, understand them better and keep building the brand connect with them. The other big part is that we have been the first brand in stationery which leveraged and entered the digital or e-commerce medium. We are one of the first stationery brands to go online and we started this journey 5 years ago. We started this journey because we saw the trend coming, we saw how e-commerce will become more and more relevant to the TG of BIC Cello, where earlier they were not so empowered to spend money without taking from their parents, to today where they have e-wallets with them – the power has shifted to them to spend and invest on brands.

Pivoting to digital to connect with the consumers, leveraging the e-commerce channels, being the first ones to be there, as well as actively listening to what the consumers are saying to ensure that the products that we bring and offer on our platform are also the right ones and the ones they are looking out for. I think these are a few things that we have adopted.

What are the changes in the consumer behaviour that you have observed in the stationery industry in the post- pandemic period? When it comes to stationery shopping, which is preferred more – online or offline?

With the rise in e-commerce channels, the consumer behaviour in a category which generally had low engagement has been noteworthy. Traditionally, we have been accustomed to picking up a pen and trying it out before we buy it. It’s a subconscious way to do it, even if I don’t evaluate the pen, the first thing one checks is that is it working or not and then someone buys it. The whole shift towards digital actually enabled better engagement with the consumers, where I can tell you two or more things about the product and how the product is superior or well suited for you. Whereas earlier we had to rely completely on the pack, which has limited communication space for the retailer. I think that’s an important shift in consumers and we are very happy to engage with them and give them more content on one of the most important tools that they use in everyday life.

The other thing is that consumers are now able to browse through products with a lot of variety, at their time and disposal with the entire shift towards e-commerce. They can now engage far more into content and make better decisions. I think that’s one shift in consumer behaviour, the second thing I would say is that while we are seeing a staggering growth in e-commerce, even for stationery or otherwise, still the traditional channel has the biggest impact on the stationery category, it is the most dominant channel as well. It is also a category of very high convenience.

In a country like India, retailers are present in every doorstep. For us, we have a complete retail channel of stationers, which makes it very conveniently present, as well as now we have a beautiful medium of e-commerce to connect with the consumers and talk more about our products, inform them far better about the tool they are choosing.

Could you elaborate on the ‘Write to Recycle’ initiative by BIC Cello? What is the story and objective behind the initiative ‘Write the Change You want To See’?

Butterflow is the largest brand in our portfolio. It is the No. 1 pen brand in the country and has been enjoying this position for years because consumers love the product. It is a product that has been widely present across the country as well as it delivers the promise of being the smoothest pen that people have used. With the years going into this, we saw the need to make this brand much closer to what the consumers believe in and what is the sentiment they hold today. In a country where every second person is of the age of 25 or lower, the amount of opinion or change that the youth can bring up is far more and their opinion matters as today’s consumer is very equipped and bold to follow the opinion they are having, to share the opinion that they have and even take action towards it. So, if they feel very strongly towards something, they do have the platform, the courage to express themselves and I think that’s why for a brand which is about enabling expression, such as Butterflow, it is just the right way to say that they can write the change they want to see.

I think that’s the genesis of the Butterflow brand positioning and what we envision the brand to be. And it was one of the key ways to bring this message forward to the consumers and connect with them via the ‘Write to Recycle’ campaign. As an industry, plastic is a basic material that we currently rely on, and the question was how could we contribute as market leaders to bring about this change and contribute towards this RRR sustainability, which is Reuse, Recycle and Reduce. So, we connected with 15 colleges across the country in 5 cities, where we created a complete engagement with consumers so that they get involved with the entire concept.

We engaged with them to share and know what is their idea of change, and what kind of change they want to see and hence, also pivoted towards this whole idea of recycling. And we created a wall of change, where all of them actively wrote down what are the things they look at in terms of the future.

We asked them to donate their used pens and then we recycled these collected plastic pens and created a bench, which was installed in their colleges, which is evident of the fact of how they have created a change and brought about this initiative of recycling and reusing, and creating something meaningful that can be used forward.

Through this entire campaign, we connected with 9,000 students across the country and it had a very good positive response. We saw consumers really see the meaning out of this. That’s the genesis of Write to Recycle and also Butterflow, which is continuing to build this space of Write the Change You Want To See.