Social Media Strategy Review: Vaseline India

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

Vaseline has always been synonymous with Winter for a majority of people. But the last few years have seen the brand undergo a change in its positioning. Today, it is no more a ‘winter-only’ product.

The skincare brand has come up with a variety of products in the last few years and, as its Facebook page proclaims, it is now branding itself as a skincare advisor as well.

With so much of transition happening in the offline world, has all of this been translated well on social media as well?

Overall Review

I reviewed Vaseline India’s performance for the period between 20th November to 19th December, 2013 and was a little disappointed.

The brand has its presence only on Facebook and YouTube and can do a lot better than what it is currently doing w.r.t content. All its content revolves around ‘great skin’. Predictably, the audience is primarily women.

The brand is also not doing much by leveraging the potential of its brand amabassador, Saina Nehwal.

Platform-wise Strategy

Facebook

Years ago, Vaseline was famous for its Petroleum Jelly. Back then, it used to be a useful commodity but a boring one at that. But today, the brand is more vibrant and youthful.

The same is being reflected in its social media content as well. The creatives are eye-catching and the copy is interesting too. The content is doing a great job in terms of positioning it as a great skincare brand.

But what it lacks is focus. The frequency of updates is wavering and the content falls short of conveying its position as a ‘skincare advisor’. Most of the content is self promotional and I couldn’t find any 'advice' within the period studied.

But I liked the #LipsDontLie theme. It is catchy, quirky and absolutely share-worthy. It is the only kind of content that seems to be driving the engagement; which otherwise is nothing impressive enough to talk about.

Only 1% of the fans are engaging with its message and that too in the form of likes, the page sees very few comments.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Moreover, the engagement was primarily driven by an update on 3rd December which got a huge traction. It’s difficult to say if it was a promoted post or not, but it did shoot up the engagement score for the entire page which otherwise sees a lackluster engagement.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

The engagement level might be a letdown but the sentiments on the page are impressive to say the least. The community has a lot of satisfied members and there is hardly any negativity.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

This goes on to show that the brand has a strong influence on its audience and it is some thing that it should actively leverage its branding.

Twitter

Surprisingly, Vaseline India as a brand is not on Twitter. It’s Twitter presence is led by @CozLipsDontLie which aims to promote it’s lip care arm.

The account has been active since December 2nd and it is too early for me to review it since there isn’t enough data at hand. But I am impressed with the way they have approached their Twitter content strategy. The tweets are interesting, fun and quirky. Now they need to focus upon being more consistent with their Tweeting.

They should also follow it up with more conversational tweets that engage their target audience. Influencer relations and hashtag campaigns are other aspects that they can look at, at a later stage.

YouTube

This is where I wanted Vaseline India to do great work. Video is a great way for beauty and skincare brands to position their thought leadership by imparting insightful knowledge.

But all I see are TVCs and promotional videos. The 30 day period saw it promoting its Vaseline Stories campaign using 6 videos but none of them were value adding, insightful or share-worthy.

Comparison with Competitor

While I am disappointed with Vaseline’s social media presence, it is faring much better in comparison with its competitor, Nivea.

Nivea has posted nothing on Facebook in the last 30 days and only 1 tweet on Twitter. There was no activity on YouTube either. Thus, Vaseline trumps Nivea in all the aspects of consumer engagement.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

But it’s nice to see Nivea having a Twitter profile with a good community size. They can get active any time and start leveraging it.

Feedback

Become a Thought Leader

Instead of pushing self-promotional content, establishing itself as a skincare advisor will be a great way for Vaseline to generate buzz amongst its audience. Insightful content will maximize sharing and increase engagement as well.

Use Videos

Vaseline should actively create videos for the insightful content I mentioned above.Video consumption has been on a rise in recent times and it only makes sense for the brand to leverage it.

Twitter

Having a presence on Twitter is a must! It is a great channel to engage in conversations and get customer insights. I would strongly suggest Vaseline India to get on Twitter.

Expert View

As social media is moving towards a more paid model rather than a free model, more and more brands are resorting to purely brand-speak posts. I am not saying that brand-speak posts shouldn’t be updated but there has to be a reason atleast to engage the user. It just can't be content about the brand.

If your sole purpose is broadcasting then banner ads may end up giving you better results than social media. Social media has to be leveraged for its USP and that is engagement. Just likes on posts don’t cut it anymore and one has to get people talking and sharing.

This is where the brand has a lot of ground to cover.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Digital & Social Media Agency.

Analytics support: Simplify360