Social Media Strategy Review: Maybelline India

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

Introduction

Maybelline New York has achieved a legendary status in the field of cosmetics. "Maybe She's Born With It. Maybe It's Maybelline" is the brand's tagline and it continues to be recognised around the world. It entered the Indian market in the year 1998 with technically advanced products and since then it has been leading the cosmetic industry.

Overall Strategy

Maybelline is localizing its brand communication. I find it focussing on the details by taking a grass root level approach. It has inferred the taste of Indian females and it has indeed built up on it with terrific ideas!

Most of the online conversations happening around Maybelline are generated on Facebook. It’s YouTube, blog and Twitter Community also play a powerful role.

What makes their community a success? Let’s have a look.

Platform-wise strategy

Facebook

Maybelline has created a huge brand community around itself. It has more than 2.6 million fans and its engagement rate is as high as 13%. Fans have been exchanging ideas, sharing make up tips, chit chatting about the products they prefer. Maybelline has a huge potential to obtain sharp insights from its brand community. It is trying to strengthen the common bond that connects its loyalists with the brand.

They say, understanding women is like smelling the colour 9. But, this brand is on the right track!

It is focusing more on user generated content by encouraging fans to share a picture of their collection, which they later use to create brand stories.

Maybelline has been doing a great job at monitoring all the comments and page posts. See the image below where they have replied to one of the comments explaining how to differentiate between a fake and an original Kajal.

I have hardly seen brands with big communities that reply to their fans' comments. They solely push out updates and are absolutely unapproachable. Kudos to Maybelline for keeping an eye on all these comments and making an extra effort to reply to them!

I have observed that generic posts on its wall fetch more engagement than updates about Maybelline. Maybe generic content with a little branding will work very well for the brand.

Twitter

Maybelline New York India has more than 7k followers on Twitter and they have been constantly running interesting contests on Twitter. I like the way how they have been sparking conversations with their followers.

But being candid on Twitter is nice, being spammy is NOT. Sometimes their Twitter contests are spammy and they are encouraging their followers to do the same.

They ask their participants to start the tweet with the hashtag, only then their tweets will be considered in the contest. Well, it is little known, that if you start a tweet with an @name, then only the people who follow you, and people who follow the person you replied to will see the tweet.

If you begin your tweet with the hashtag, everyone in your timeline will be able to see it. Some people keep on falling in the trap.

Would you prefer pissing off your followers with such contest tweets?

@mysticsrishti Only tweets starting with #ThingsCheekyGirlsSay will be considered as winners.

— Maybelline New York (@MaybellineIndia)

Here's another example:

Twitter guidelines clearly say: Discourage posting the same Tweet repeatedly Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality. Please don’t set rules to encourage lots of duplicate updates (like saying, “whoever retweets this the most wins”).

Maybelline has been trying to engage with a lot of online influencers. They also had a twitter chat with Alia Bhatt who endorses Maybelline India.

Hi @GulPanag please DM us your address, we would like to send across a hamper! :) — Maybelline New York (@MaybellineIndia)

 

YouTube

Maybelline's YouTube content helps users with the best ways to use their products. They have been uploading make-up tutorials, TVCs, different types of looks, tips and behind the scenes. Their video content has been consumed by 5,189,664 viewers and 5,270 subscribers.

Pinterest

Maybelline India has jumped in to reserve its space on Pinterest without yet posting any content.  Pinterest’s main audience is female and I was a little disappointed that I didn't see a strong presence from one of the biggest cosmetics brand. Whereas Lakme India is one of the early adopters who is already using Pinterest as a perfect media tool!

Blog

Instaglam.in is Maybelline India's newest launch. It is a blog that enables girls to stay updated with the latest in makeup and fashion trends from around the globe, her one stop destination for all her answers. Fashion bloggers and influencers have also been contributing to the blog.

Content on their blog really stands out and it is notably generating sales leads. (see the image below)Maybelline has an impressive presence on Instagram and Google Plus as well.

Other Campaignns

Maybelline had invited millions of Facebook fans to contribute to a one-of-its-kind ‘KISS’ song. They invited fans to contribute to a ‘KISS’ song using an application to crowd source all the kisses. Finally they created a Baby Lips KISS song music video featuring Alia Bhatt and promoted it in the online and offline space. You can also give a missed call to 022 3301 0001 if you want to listen to the Kiss Song.

Later even after several months, they are running Twitter contests around the kiss song. The hashtag was #Call02233010001

@Anushka_Lal #Call02233010001 with 5 of your friends, and 1 lucky girl will win a MNY diary! Excited? Start calling! — Maybelline New York (@MaybellineIndia)

What I really like about Maybelline India's contests is that they extend and integrate all their campaigns across platforms to complete the whole loop and to make the most out of it. Integration is giving them enhanced results.

Here is one more example of their campaign extension. Initially, fans were asked to share what “doesn't last long enough.” There was pun intended. Girls talked about everything under the sun from new shoes to guy jerks, holidays, college friends, sales not lasting long enough.

It was a nice user generated campaign that was used to create buzz around Maybelline's Super Stay lipstick. This campaign was further extended using all the responses that were received. Tweets generated were incorporated in a Facebook contest that made personalized postcards. See the image below, how Maybelline is making use of its user generated content and extending the campaign further.

Comparison with competitor

Revlon India has a smaller community as compared to Maybelline. I do not see any extra efforts by Revlon on Facebook as well as on Twitter in trying to engage with its community. Revlon India is hardly engaging itself in conversations or running any Twitter campaigns. Just like Maybelline, Revlon has a series of video tutorials on Youtube. They have been doing a lot of Vine videos lately . They ran a campaign on Revlon Colorstay Ultimate Suede Lipstick and made Vine videos out of it.

At the time of writing this, I could not see any recent social media campaigns by Revlon India.

Comments on Strategy

My only feedback to Maybelline India is, avoid spammy Twitter contests. Otherwise, Maybelline India's social media strategy is really impressive! It has got the hang of running fool-proof social media campaigns and they continue to be unique and engaging. They are using integrated ways to engage their fans; as a result, there is consistency in their brand message across a number of channels.

Today, customers are turning to Social Media because of its real-time nature and they expect a response instantly. Maybelline too is on the double in responding its community.

Lately, they have been investing a lot of effort in content and their attempt has already started paying off. I am sure that Maybelline's India's blog will help the brand to make it happen.

Let’s face it, like every brand, Maybelline too has some negative sentiments surrounding it and there’s no way to escape negative reviews. But Maybelline is addressing them. In fact, they are turning to be more quite powerful in the brand's favor.

Expert View

Integrated campaigns are an interesting approach since the communication remains consistent. However, it is necessary for brands to understand that each platform has a different set of target audience and the campaign needs to be tweaked at every platform. However, Maybelline is an inspiring brand for integrated campaign as it gives them a strong edge over their competitors.

The brand has been experimental on social media, yet has come out with flying colours for most campaigns. The KISS song featuring Alia Bhatt was one of the most popular campaigns which created a strong recall value.

The gradual shift of focus among marketers from short term benefits on social media to long term planning is finally happening. Maybelline has been one of those few brands that have adopted this theory.

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

Analytics Support: Simplify360