Inside: Paragon ’s attempt to reach millennial with #WhatsYourStimulus

Age-old brand Paragon decided to go the millenial-way with its latest campaign #WhatsYourStimulus. The agency-brand duo speaks to Social Samosa sharing interesting BTS around the campaign.

In the year 1975 with a production capacity of 1500 pairs a day, Paragon made its humble entry into the Indian market. The official website of the age-old footwear brand also mentions that it was in 1982 that after gaining popularity in its home state of Kerala, Paragon began its journey to the other Indian states.

A couple of years ago when Paragon launched a corporate video campaign summing up its iconic journey, the brand took us a trip down the memory lane evoking nostalgia. From that first blue and white slippers that need no introduction in an Indian household the joy of choosing the school shoes for a new year, the video captured them all.

Today, in an age where millennials hope to make their passion their profession, Paragon harps on how one's stimulus has to be reinforced every day. With its latest #WhatsYourStimulus campaign featuring leading digital content artists in the country, Paragon aimed at establishing its latest collection - Stimulus as a stand-alone young footwear brand. The core theme of the campaign is to emphasize the importance of finding your passion and following it with all your heart.

#WhatsYourStimulus - Insight

With #WhatsYourStimulus, Paragon aims to shed light on the importance of finding one’s Stimulus in everyday endeavors with comfortable footwear.

According to Navin Thomas, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Paragon, the campaign aims to give budding content creators and go-getters a platform to showcase their passion. “In an age where millennials turn to social media to express themselves, this is a great opportunity for them to showcase their passion with something as little as a 30-second video. We as a brand want to resonate with our target audience and hence the campaign conceptualization,” he added.

The Brief

The campaign is conceptualized by Bangalore based eCommerce
& creative agency, TenoviaSolutions, and features artists who found
their Stimulus in music and fitness.

The original brief shared was
to create a buzz around the youth-centric brand of Paragon called Stimulus. The
youth of today, as early adopters, are the potential loyalists of tomorrow and
the brand Stimulus is the first port of entry for our customers.

“Our main challenge was how do
we cut through the clutter in today's digital world with a strong campaign idea
and hook the user enough to spur their creativity.,” shared Murali Balan, CEO of the eCommerce and Tenovia
Solutions.

Campaign
Objective

The objective behind #WhatsYourStimulus is to create a buzz and recall of the brand Stimulus amongst the youth of today, while also resonating with their tastes and drivers. As a young and fun footwear brand, Stimulus aims to be the staple footwear brand for its target audience. 

The Creative Thought process

Balan asserted that the agency
had the most creative brains come together to put some really fun and
outlandish ideas on the table. “Being a young organization ourselves, we were
able to relate to what the end-users may want to see, and thus
#WhatsYourStimulus came about,” he added.

Relying on numbers and research
- there was also an in-depth understanding of who the audience is and marrying
data with creativity was a delightful challenge for the team.  

From
conceptualization to the
execution

Selecting
influencers for the #WhatsYourStimulus meant bringing in people with stories the
brand’s target audiences would instantly connect to.

After zeroing down on influencers who are experts in their niche and could create a narrative that would resonate well with the consumers, the brand-agency duo created two video campaigns with Akash Prabhu and Rinosh George.

Akash is an upcoming actor and a fitness enthusiast while Rinosh is a celebrated rapper having his own fanbase on YouTube. In association with its offline partners, the makers were able to come up with a set of videos that go on different media channels including Facebook, Instagram among others.

Paragon has also tied-up with micro-influencers to collaborate and create original content around Stimulus.

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The microsite exclusively created for the campaign was conceived keeping the design sensibility of its audience in mind, with an opening introduction by Paragon’s brand ambassador Hrithik Roshan coaxing the audience to shoot an ad for the campaign.  

Going
the millennial-marketing way

The
campaign was crafted to mainly cater to millennials - the most prominent
demographic on the internet. According to Future
Cast, 80% of
millennials follow brands for entertainment and about 40% of millennials want
to participate in co-creation. Paragon claims to have crafted the campaign to
seamlessly blend entertainment and co-creation.

Millennials
are known as content creators and about 46% of millennials post original photos
and videos online. Stimulus being a youth-centric brand needed this kind of a
kickstart.

Thomas highlighted that with
#WhatsYourStimulus, Paragon Footwear is mainly looking to garner the attention
of content creators, students at fashion institutes, media agencies, bloggers
and vloggers. He observed, “There's a fair bit of research that has gone into
studying the target profile and their social consumption patterns before
designing the campaign theme”.

Paragon’s strategy to stay relevant and sustainable over the years has been to put its customers at the heart of everything it does.  

“We hear everything they have to say and cater to them accordingly, and that we believe is why we have managed to stay ahead of the competition and today is the largest footwear manufacturer in the country,” mentioned Thomas.

Marching
the Digital route

Evolving with time and keeping up with trends has helped Paragon stay ahead of the curve. In association with its digital agency, Tenovia Solutions, claims to have had successfully leveraged digital platforms in tune with the audience's behavior.

Also, according to the company, its investments in analytics to fine-tune marketing by customer segmentation and focus on driving customer lifetime value have been yielded great results.