Interview: We don’t look at influencers as a distribution platform alone: Gaurav Kackar, Jabong

Gaurav Kackar, Head of Brand, Jabong shares Jabongs' digital marketing strategy and trends in the e-commerce digital marketing segment. 

Indian e-retail segment is in one of the strongest positions ever with projections of the number of digital buyers in Asia Pacific to surpass the one billion mark in 2018. India's retail e-commerce CAGR is projected to reach 23 percent from 2016 to 2021.

As the e-commerce currents get stronger, so does the competition with ecommerce players dishing huge spends to grab a bigger chunk of the pie. Social Samosa gets in conversation with Gaurav Kackar, Head of Brand, Jabong understanding the brand’s digital marketing strategy.

From Jabong’s festive campaign to the e-commerce brand’s digital marketing strategy, Kackar shares his perspective.

Please take us through the digital leg of the ‘What’s In Festival’ campaign. What is your objective from the campaign? 

Digital is integral part of our overall marketing strategy as it enables us to drive highly targeted campaigns and drive social media conversations.

The ‘What’s In’ Festival campaign is a derivative of the consumer insights around the excitement and curiosity to know the global fashion trends. This festival celebrates the onset of the Autumn Winter season by launching the latest styles from the biggest brands on Jabong. The campaign was led by a digital film that aptly captures and highlights the season trends that are being launched by the brands. We firmly believe that knowing the latest in fashion empowers our customers, and our film does exactly that. The film has resonated very well with our consumers as we have already garnered more than 23 million views on You Tube alone so far.

It was a well-rounded campaign with ample support through display, collaborations and content. We collaborated with fashion authorities in the media - Vogue and Cosmopolitan-to create conversations around the new collection for high affinity reach. We also created engaging content to help our customer visualize the collection through influencer collaborations and social media activations. Making consumers part of the conversation is key for us so we had various contests that led to higher engagement.

As a brand what is your objective from social media marketing? How does What’s In Festival help in achieving it? 

As a brand, it’s important for us that our customers visualize what’s trending in the world of fashion. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide us with a great opportunity to not only do that, but also drive consumer engagement and quality conversations with our customers. Brands across the globe are trying new methodologies and ways to engage with their consumers and drive preference. One of the new indicatives is influencer marketing.

People resonate better with real people and their experiences.

Influencers and bloggers help us build that connect with a highly engaged set of followers.

As far as the What’s In festival is concerned, we have been able to bring forth the latest trends of the season to our customers in a way that appeals to them and made the process of their wardrobe refresh easier.

Also Read: Interview: Digital consists 16-18% of our total spends: Rahul Pansare, FCA India

Which social media platform yields the maximum leads for e-commerce platforms? Which platform has been the most helpful for Jabong? 

Each platform has its own strengths. Having said that, lead generation while is important but is not primary to our social media strategy. It is a byproduct of the conversations and content that is being generated by the brand.

For Jabong, the measurement metric for social media marketing leans more towards effective engagement with our customers through high-quality content and collaborations.

Please take us through your content plan for social media? What are the various hooks that help you engage with your users on a recurring basis? 

We have an integrated social media and content strategy for all our key campaigns and everyday conversations, which is a derivative of Jabong’s brand personality. We always drive conversations around the power of fashion and an individual that embraces that power in his/her own way. Our strategy has always been to identify platforms and people who have that overlap with the Jabong audience.

How often do you work with influencers? How has the experience been? Do you think Indian brands do justice to the concept of influencer marketing? 

I think, in India, we are still scratching the surface with influencer marketing. There is an opportunity to create some great content with them by engaging in deeper brand conversations. We work with influencers on a campaign-basis, depending on the communication theme.

We don’t look at influencers as a distribution platform alone and hence work though the ideas with them extensively before putting them out to the audiences.

Also, we go with both fashion and non-fashion influencers to drive interesting content around the campaigns. It’s important to find your customers at different places and being part of their choices. This not only helps us increase our reach by tapping other categories but also build differentiation.

Global ecommerce platforms have often created a loyal community of influencers to create constant engagement around the brand. Are Indian brands open to the concept of community marketing? 

That’s an interesting question and we have something in store that I can’t talk about right now. But, I would like to say that we definitely think that community marketing can do wonders for brands. Consistent communication around the brand experience helps build novelty for the brand and a loyal community of influencers can help build a strong consumer connect in a short period of time which can otherwise take years to build.

How would you describe your brand personality on social media? 

We have a consistent brand personality across offline and social mediums. As per consumer speak Jabong stands for being edgy, bold, experimental, stylish, premium and international. These are also some of the key communication elements of all our marketing campaigns.

What next for Jabong? Any interesting campaigns in the pipeline? 

At Jabong the wheels are always turning. The coming months will see a lineup of some exciting campaigns. We have the upcoming festive campaign towards the end of October to mark the onset of the festive season. We will then gear up for the 2^nd edition of the Showstopper Festival that’s lined up for mid-November. And, we will start the new year with a big bang of the Big Brand Sale scheduled for end of January.