[Strategy Review] A look through Spykar's social media play

The article crawls through, Spykar's social media strategy - taking lessons from the rights and wrongs done by the brand.

It was the 80s when denim trend picked, evolving into the rage it is, today. Pegged at INR 30, 000 Crore today, the Indian denim industry has been growing 15 per cent annually from last five years. The industry is dominated by players such as Wrangler, Lee, Spykar, Flying Machine, and many more, ranging from affordable to luxury range.

The heat of the competition, is directly reflected on social media, as the brands battle with varied objectives. Spykar, a noted player, aims to double its sale this year (INR 700 Crore). The key objective of the denim brand, from social media is to connect with the youth and promote sales across all channels.

“Idea is to leverage the digital space to grow the brand, add influencers to the kitty and promote sales across all our channels by effective use of the medium,” shared Sanjay Vakharia, COO, Spykar Lifetstyle.

Overview

From a bird’s eye view, Spykar’s social media communication is more product centric – the hooks are intended to redirect users towards a purchase or store visit. In spite of the direct tone, their social pages garner decent traction, to say the least. Spykar is also more campaign oriented as opposed to moment marketing.

“Our strategy is to stay connected with good content, which would resonate well with them, start them talking about the Brand and reach a larger audience thereby. The beauty of this medium is we can target very sharply,” Vakharia added.

Facebook

Spykar crossed the 4 lakh likes mark in November this year. The brand’s Facebook page functions on certain recurring content hooks and properties, in addition to campaigns or tie ups. For instance, Spykar heavy spoke about their tie up with Global Citizen when recently got Coldplay to perform in India.

The brand initiated, #SpykarXGlobalCitizenIndia, wherein they urged the users to share creative images or videos of themselves in lights. Additionally, Spykar spent heavily on posts with CTAs to buying and earning passes. Most of their communication was to the point and banked on the Coldplay craze in the country.

Spykar invested in Facebook advertising to make the most out of their Global Citizen partnership, resulting in the number of likes ranging from a couple hundreds to thousands.

Spykar’s official blog, is a regular source of content on their Facebook page. The page is further adorned by #OOTD posts, trends, and styles – all creatives, speak of Spykar’s collection boldly. The brand also focusses on driving footfalls to their website – the brand often shares posts of their launches in smaller cities such as Ajmer, Valsad and DehradhunO, with strong CTAs.

The brand isn’t seen jumping the wagon (except for a standalone creative) with Diwali, Independence, and other such days, which are usually cluttered with brand campaigns.

The frequency of posts on Facebook differs according fluctuates depending on the ongoing theme; on an average Spykar is seen maintaining three days’ gap. Their responses are formally constructed; while the brand is responsive, the page does not create much engagement.

In terms of creatives, Spykar hasn’t divulged much from static high quality images of models dawning their collection. The last video on their Facebook page was a couple of months ago.

Twitter

Spykar has 3,558 followers on Twitter, which is nearing apt for a fashion brand. On the first look, Spykar’s content o Twitter isn’t much different from what they post on Facebook, except for the concise copies, which usually bank on common hashtags such as #OOTD and #Style.

#Style thrives within you! pic.twitter.com/7bxkkK3K95

— Spykar (@Spykarlifestyle) October 10, 2016

Additionally, Spykar tweets about their achievements at awards, shares pictures and happening of their outdoor activations and so on. With not much engagement on Twitter as well, the brand is seen replying to queries as and when directed to them.

Instagram

Spykar’s plight on Instagram too is much similar to that on Twitter. With a whooping number of 10.6k followers, the denim brand’s Instagram account is largely underutilised. Spykar is mainly seen re-posting the content it shares on Facebook and Twitter. The frequency of content on Instagram too is very less.

Nobody’s perfect. So don’t live-to-be one! #Spykar #PerfectlyImperfect

A photo posted by SPYKAR (@spykarofficial) on Oct 4, 2016 at 5:29am PDT

While they could be focussed on maintaining their brand voice across platforms, Instagram in particular misses out a lot, owing to the platform’s personal and playful nature.

YouTube

With 575 subscribers, Spykar’s presence on YouTube is extremely limited. Half of their videos were among the 10-part prank done by the brand on their audience. Additionally, there are videos of the brand’s achievements and activities at events such as CMAI fair.

The recent video by Spykar was about the Making of A Jeans – Handcrafted by Spykar, the video received over 35k videos and was published 8 months ago.

The Blue Film Festival

Spykar launched their award-winning campaign – The Blue Film Festival in 2015. The idea came from the name of their autumn winter collection titled, Blue Collection.

Instead of following any traditional form of promotion Spykar decided to promote the digital video catalogue of the Blue Collection in an entertaining manner that connects with its young and restless audience.

“We were quite sure that it will generate conversations about the idea and the brand and once they see the films and the execution they will get convinced with the idea, even our trade,” expressed Vakharia. “Thus, we capitalised on the other very well-known association of the colour blue i.e. blue films which are otherwise taboo but still the most widely, secretly popular form of entertainment worldwide.”

The Blue Film Festival was a tastefully developed digital video catalogue of their new Autumn Winter 15 collection, and has videos of Spykar’s products presented in an edgy and interesting manner. They were provocative and had an interesting play which indulged the audience and smartly presented the collection.

The campaign crossed over 40 Million outreach on digital in 5 days. Video views of 3lakh + and trended on the first position.

A look at the competition

The Indian denim industry is expected to be valued at INR 54,000 Crore in 2023. Spykar competes with number of national and international brands in this space. Homegrown denim brand, Flying Machine has over 10 lakh followers on Facebook.

Bollywood actor, Sushant Singh Rajput is the brand’s face and sports most of their creatives, leading to high volumes of engagement. Flying Machine also has a central theme of #TheNewCool, giving the brand’s communication a centralised approach.

Flying Machine too directly markets their new range of denims, sales, with strong CTAs towards creating a sale. Their Twitter handle is more engaging, and shares a mix repeated and exclusive content. Flying Machine has 1569 followers on Twitter.

Wrangler, an international player, and Spykar’s competitor has over 8 lakh fans on Facebook. The brand’s runs a number of parallel activities – a content, #BlackOnBlack, urging users to dress in their best black outfit and share the snaps, with gratification for the best outfits.

The brand, is also promoting their new range, Maxim, which has VJ Rannvijay as the face. Wrangler, is big on contests and prior to #BlackOnBlack, the brand initiated #DenimOnTheGo. Their Twitter handle features similar content to what they post on Facebook, but more engaging, re-tweeting and replying to their participants. Wrangler has 7063 followers on Twitter.

Conclusion

Spykar enjoys a strong following across all social media platforms, their social media strategy, however, doesn’t leverage this user base to its optimum level. The brand manages to maintain the momentum with consistent updates and content hooks.

The denim brand’s campaign centric approach limits the scope of engagement to the life of the initiative. Also, a friendlier and personalised approach can help Spykar garner the engagement it deserves with the massive following. With 10.6k followers, Instagram is goldmine that Spykar needs to explore now.

Overall, the brand has managed to attain social media success with consistent and well-charted efforts.