Social Media Strategy Review: Lakme

Lakmé, which got its name from a late 19th century French Opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, which is the French word for Goddess Lakshmi, has been in the business of sharing secrets of the mythical beauty of goddesses to Indian women. And in its attempt to diffuse the message to the mass, the cosmetic brand has used all kinds of marketing channels, including the now-popular digital media, led by social media platforms. To keep the focus sharp, in this article, we shall see how the brand has performed on social media leaving discussions on the rest of the channels for elsewhere.

Audience Analysis of Lakmé

Owing to the brand building exercise by Lakmé, the sentiments expressed by people (see second image), both male and female, is either positive or neutral. There is almost no negative emotion flowing for the brand, but what is surprising is the number of male followers of the brand. As is evident in the following image, slightly over 40% of social media fans of the cosmetic brand comprises of male. The gender distribution of Lakmé's fans could be a bit surprising, but not so its age distribution. The closer a person is to his/her prime the likelier is his/her chance of following the brand on social media- as you can see people between 21-30 make the largest chunk of its social media followers.

Overall Strategy Lakmé

Looking gorgeous and feeling beautiful seem to be the mantra that Lakmé follows on social media. The content it shares and the design of it talks not only about its products, fashion shows, and contests, but also about the little steps a woman (or a girl) can take to look gorgeous and be the object of much-coveted desire, as the brand sees it to be the driving agenda of all women, or at least its fans. We need to see in the following sections, what form this strategy takes when it comes to individual channels like Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

Lakmé on Facebook

With almost 19.25 lakhs Facebook fans, of which a little over 39,000 actively engages in discussion, Lakmé has a pretty strong Facebook presence. The brand has used a nice mix of image and video updates from its events, make up tips, and contest, which has helped it maximize its reach among Facebook Users (See image 1). When sharing tips the brand does add a call to action asking its followers to take a particular action. For example, in the following image, the brand has asked its fans and followers to "like" the post only if they are going to use the shared tips. 233 likes, 17 shares, and 8 comments are the testimony to how seriously fans take the tips shared by the brand (see the second image). Talking of the post updates, it is worth noting that Lakmé has made an apt use of hashtags, mentions, and links to important pages (see the image below), and the copy used in the posts may not be impressive, but it has secured some rather emotionally-charged comments. It could also be because of the reward announced for the winners (see the second image). It is these types of content pieces that have moved people to engage with the brand, though mostly it is in the form of likes rather than comments or shares (see the images below). The brand should work on improving the instances of share and comments on its posts, and that it can do by improving the quality of copy it uses in its updates.

Lakmé on Twitter

Like Facebook, Lakmé is also significantly active on Twitter, in recent times, even though the number of its total fans is barely 10 thousand. But that could be because of some wrong decision taken in the past. At the moment, the brand is going strong and causing some real conversation on the micro-blogging website. One example of which can be seen in the following tweet.

The hot hot summer is here ladies! Why don't you tell us what you do to #StunTheSun? Tell us now! — Lakmé India (@ILoveLakme) March 21, 2014

As hinted in the tweet above, the brand does not only follow the "use Twitter for contest" route alone, or to amplify the reach of its Facebook content. The social media team of Lakmé has been successful in causing some real conversation on its timeline via its updates, as you can see in the following tweet.

Morning lovelies! How about starting the day with a lovely quote! #LakmeQuote RT if you agree! #LakmeLipLove pic.twitter.com/q6yqhwCh1Y — Lakmé India (@ILoveLakme) March 20, 2014

On Twitter as well, the brand influences females more than males, which is quite understandable, considering the nature of the products it has to sell and the content it shares on the platform.

Comparison with competitor

Revlon is one of the closest competitors of Lakmé in the market, and on social media as well. The brand has a pretty strong presence on Facebook, but it is not as big as even half of the size of the brand we are studying. It has a fan base of a little over 8.5 lakhs, but per post engagement on the page is higher than that on Lakmé's despite the fact that the competitor prefers sharing product-promotion type updates unlike Lakmé, which shares various kinds of stuffs. Compare the second and third screenshot, as they illustrate the difference. Lakmé also has more positive emotion flowing on its social media pages than Revlon does (see the following image), which means, the studied brand may not a have higher per-post engagement, but its fans are more in love with the brand in comparison to its competitor who gets more likes and comments on the posts. Although the Twitter follower base of Revlon is almost double the size of that of Lakmé, the Klout score of the latter is a tad bit higher than that of the former, which may indicate the engagement of fans and followers with the page and the influence of the brand on the platform.

Lakmé Elsewhere on social media

The brand is also active on YouTube and Pinterest. It has more than 14,000 followers, with total video views of more than 82 lakhs, which is a respectable number in its own right. While many of its videos have not crossed a 1 lakh view count, some of them have recorded way beyond that. For example, the following DIY nail art video has been watched more than 2 lakh times, and the Kareena video posted below has been seen more than 9.5 lakhs times. On Pinterest, it has more than 744 followers. Here the cosmetic brand has created 49 boards to entice followers with attractive pins. Although 744 is not a number to be proud of but seeing the strength of the platform in India, it is not a number to complain about.

Conclusion

Lakmé has done a nice job on social media. It has registered a powerful presence on the platforms on which it is available. But I think it can do better if it streamlines its content and add some punch to its text, which is lacking.

Expert View

Lakme has managed to engage its primary target audience: girls and women, through various activities that seem to catch their fancy. It is surprising and pleasant to see that the brand has as many male fans and followers as their female counterparts, but they don’t seem to be interacting much with them. While the content shared by the brand is catchy, the tonality can be improved. A lively communication will definitely improve their engagement and help them connect better with their audience. Also, it can be observed that most of the engagement is in the form of mere likes. Lakme should think of a content plan which leads to an engagement beyond mere likes. The brand needs to be more conversational and publish updates that are share-able.

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

Analytics Support: Simplify360