Social Media Case Study: How Peperone is Building itself as a Brand for Today’s Girls

While today most brands are still going taking the celebrity endorsement route, Peperone, a ladies handbag brand from Delhi decided to employ a different approach. In a campaign created and conceptualized by Brandlogist Communications, they decided to position themselves as 'a brand for real girls'. In a conversation with Saurabh Parmar, CEO, Brandlogist Communications said,

Our idea was to create Peperone as a brand for real girls. It’s not a bag advertised by a celebrity who is being paid to endorse it but girls should be buying it because people in their age group like it, to tell their friend, 'Babe, you absolutely gotta get it!'

To do this, Brandlogist used social media with a clever integration of offline to get people involved. They launched a campaign to select 6 girls for Peperone’s yearly look-book but unlike most 'model hunt' kind of campaigns, the focus was not on a contest but they actually went offline and identified real influencers in the college community who would connect with the brand. Elaborating on this Roma Joshi, Brand Manager said

The clear insight was that today’s girl does only connect with a Kareena or a Deepika; they could also connect to an Arundhati Roy or a Kiran Bedi. The idea was to identify and engage the different character sketches which a girl could connect with and these girls with their own unique sense of style are being chosen as our brand ambassadors.

Figure 1: The different character types created by Peperone to connect with the 16-29 TG girls in metros. She added,

Also they will not just be a pretty face posing on the look book. We plan on making them Style Advisors for Peperone i.e. seeking their thoughts on new products, styles they like and maybe even specific aspects such as the utility-quotient of a bag (like a separate compartment for keys for us women, since we keep losing keys in the bottomless pits of our handbags). It's a living focus group that is actually attached to the brand.

On social media the brand has taken a really authentic and conversational approach which has connected with women. Saurabh commented,

We actually got bloggers to review the product without a blogger outreach campaign. How many times have you heard that happening for a previously unknown brand? And remember here, our media budgets were really minimal

Figure 2: Blogger Reviews Along with the action on social, they have integrated the campaign to the real world by going in campuses interacting with the target group, getting reviews and putting up posters in premier institutions prompting participation thereby driving traffic to the Facebook page. Figure 3: Posters in Colleges & the subsequent response

As a fashion brand they are also using Pinterest. They are trying to tap into the community with interesting boards dedicated to things like DIYs, Bag essentials, Vintage bags to the current trends worldwide, they have created a platform for a conversation.