Youva sees a huge scope on social media to engage with their audience: Abhijit Sanyal

Digital penetration has been growing exponentially, as more and more households find it imperative for children’s classes, WFH – and thus, frequent virtual meetings, and online purchases. According to a study by WARC, the growing popularity of ‘buy online for pickup in store’, which has seen over a quarter of adults in India (33%) using the service more, indicates flexibility and convenience will be a key consumer strategy in the future.

With education and offices transitioning to operate from home last year, stationery brands were severely impacted by the pandemic and the lockdowns. However, as offices and schools re-open, the market is now looking up as parents rush to get their back-to-school supplies.

Stationery brand Youva was one of the brands that move to make the most of a challenging period and actively engaged with its TG via various means. The brand launched a campaign, ‘Get Well Soon India’, which asked kids across the country to create a ‘Get Well Soon’ card for the country to motivate them during these unprecedented times.

The campaign delivered a message that defeating the novel coronavirus is our collective responsibility as a society and urges us to help India get well soon. It stresses the importance of wearing a face mask, washing or sanitising our hands as frequently as possible, not believing and spreading rumours and hearsay and participating in vaccination drives. The advertisement was designed and produced by ANTS Digital.

In this interaction with Adgully, Abhijit Sanyal, Chief Strategy Officer, Stationery Division at Navneet, speaks about the marketing strategy adopted for the ‘Get Well Soon India’ campaign, recovery and revival of stationery brands in FY2022, Brand Youva’s social media strategy to amp up its engagement with customers and more.

As everything shifted to digital last year, stationery brands reported a 60-70% fall in demand. How have you tackled these challenges? What is the scope for stationery brands in the new normal?

Last year was hard on a lot of businesses. Several stationery players faced these challenges. However, luckily, we did not experience such a big drop. Primarily because we emphasised on e-commerce and value-added features in our products.

We see a huge scope on social media and engage with our audience. Our emphasis being on credible and relatable communication helping our target audience to build a connection with our brand.

What has been your communication and media strategy in FY2021? Which new ideas have you introduced this year?

Our strategy has always been about making credible, relatable communication, with emphasis on value added features.

Despite this dynamic, ever-changing, and unpredictable marketplace, we have managed to produce visible and relevant content with subjects of great interest on different platforms to communicate our brand stories. Tutorial-based learning has become the New Normal, and our “Youva Originals” series teaches drawing and sketching tricks to children through artists and art teachers. We also rolled out the “Get Well Soon India” campaign communicating a few key pandemic related messages in a highly likeable manner. There are more activities planned for the coming days, we will announce the same as and when we launch them.

You have several competitors in your industry. In your opinion, what makes Youva stand out from your competitors?

Our products make us stand out – it is the sheer passion with which they are made, and the design features that are built in.

Could you please tell us about Youva’s overall social media strategy? How do you use different platforms? On which platform do you get the best engagement?

We aim to keep our social media platforms creative and informative for our target audience. Facebook and Instagram have worked very well for us. It gets us maximum engagements from our followers. YouTube has recently started delivering up to our expectations since we tweaked our strategy to build more engagement and recall for the brand.

How does the ‘Get Well Soon India’ campaign fit in your overall marketing strategy?

The campaign fits very well with our brand philosophy, which is ‘Think. Create’. We as a brand believe there is a creator in each of us. As mentioned earlier, our marketing strategy has always been an honest approach just like our products and through this campaign, ‘Get Well Soon India’, we are creating hope and a positive message. 

What was the objective and thought behind launching the ‘Get Well Soon India’ campaign? How is it helping the brand to grow and fortify its brand position?

We have developed this campaign as an innovative way of communicating a few key pandemic related messages in a highly likeable manner – through children. The idea was not to be preachy at all. And it resonates with Youva’s credo of Think-Create. Youva believes that there is a ‘creator’ in all of us – and this campaign is an exposition of how children can create an innovative way of highlighting key and pertinent social messages. The children use Youva products to design a ‘Get Well Soon India’ card – wishing the country a speedy recovery from the pandemic. The beauty and innocence expressed through their efforts – reverberates with the ‘honest approach’ of Youva – as epitomised in its products and communication.

We received over 200 videos of children and retailers from across the country in the first three weeks of the campaign, making it a huge success. It clearly shows the growth and impact it has created.

What has been your engagement strategy with the audiences? How has the great initiative leveraged on the media front?

These days, kids and even their parents prefer tutorial-based content that adds value to their life. Youva recently launched short cartoon tutorials, ‘Youva Originals’, a campaign for kids to enhance their creativity and learning. The campaign was a great success on social media. Kids came up with their parents for the short tutorial. This has been one of the strategies to engage with our audiences, and we will be rolling out many such activities.