Recounting the methodology of creating a social media presence that can garner the engagement of a popular meme page, and sustaining the promotional elements with a chucklesome approach, here we comprehend the Bewakoof social media strategy.
In conversation with Prabhkiran Singh, Founder CEO, Bewakoof.com, we deep dive into the brand's collaboration with actress Sanya Malhotra, the content marketing play ingrained in the social media strategy of the brand.
The D2C fashion brand is on its way to clocking INR 2,000 Cr sales by 2025 and has raised a total funding of INR 170 Cr, including the latest round led by InvestCorp, IvyCap, and Spring Marketing Capital. The growth trajectory going forward would be led by investing in marketing, branding, technology, and talent acquisition. Here we focus on the social media marketing tactics that accelerate the brand's growth.
Bewakoof X Sanya Malhotra
Expressing the brand ethos through a lively personality, and popular appeal formed with a flourishing professional graph, Sanya Malhotra is presently the celebrity communicating the Bewkoof ideology "Boring kapdo mein abhi bhi ho atke, phone uthao, and try something Hatke".
"We believe that Sanya Malhotra appeals to the millennials and GenZ audiences is fiercely independent and has a point of view on the world. She makes for a perfect choice to represent the brand", shares Prabhkiran.
The actress with a substantial social media following that's over 2 Mn on Instagram and Facebook each, features in a series of 30-seconder social media campaigns along with content extensions distributed on short-video hubs such as Reels.
‘Ab Thodi Bewakoofi Toh Banti Hai’ has been the primary campaign featuring her where she's also seen in banter with the Indian Matchmaker Seema Taparia from Mumbai, along with the current ongoing series by the brand 'Color Of The Month', where she introduces the seasonal palette.
The Hatke matchmaking Ft. Sanya Malhotra & Seema Taparia
Color of the month is a campaign where the brand introduces a new color across product categories and launches the line of products on the first of every month. The monthly property that highlights color forecasting, a practice adopted by several fashion houses globally, was launched over 18 months ago.
The campaign comes forth each month with the launch video, followed by a sale announcement and amplification. Bewakoof has been one of the first brands in India to culminate in color forecasting, and the property is one of the largest drivers of sales at Bewakoof with over a lakh customers queuing up virtually to order the product range between 1st to 3rd, the sale period.
Color Of The Month - Peppy Pink
Spring Marketing Capital is the agency involved in the scripts of the campaign. "The brief was to look for an extension of our ‘Ab Thodi Bewakoofi Toh Banti Hai’ campaign that we had done with Rajkummar Rao in May and how it would fit well with Sanya Malhotra this time", mentions Prabhkiran. It has also been well-received by the audience. The campaign has reached out to 25 Mn users digitally with total video views having crossed 48 Mn in the last 3 months (since the launch).
The Bewakoof Social Media Strategy
The content marketing play by Bewakoof has been built on the foundation of humor and relatability - memes, witty take on trends, and relatable lingo form the core of the brand's social media personality.
The brand's social media presence is packed with relatable memes, comedic sketches, long format content series by Bewakoof Studio, crossovers of internet personalities or popular web series, a line-up of interviews with popular personalities, and snackable Reels. "Bewakoof was built on social media, and content marketing and memes have been a key strategy for us," states Prabhkiran.
Memes have been a fundamental part of the brand's social media presence. The usage of memes by the brand has been equal parts recreational and commercial. While brand integration into these memes such as a sale announcement has also been a part of the content marketing strategy, a substantial chunk does not take a promotional approach with no mention of brand or products.
Explaining the commercial approach to this element of the strategy and how does it translate into sales or maintains engagement, Prabhikiran states, "In line with our brand philosophy of adding lightheartedness to life, we create and post content that is relatable and is around contemporary humor. This has built an organic following for the brand of 4.4 Mn fans on Facebook and 1.5 Mn fans on Instagram".
He further outlines the path to an efficient social media strategy and states brands don't just have to stay up to date with trending topics, but also new features released or a new app or platform that users are consuming. Bringing originality and being on the lookout for such trends with product promotion wherever possible increases the productivity of content marketing.
While the core objective of the social media strategy is to primarily drive brand awareness and engagement for the brand, the content also drives brand awareness and recall for the brand, especially in the smaller towns, which adds a commercial element to the social media strategy, increasing the probability of promotional posts translating into sales.
The brand has been known to have a dash of tongue-in-cheek humor in the tonality of communication, explaining the process of filtration of content that can sustain in a hypersensitive social environment, Prabhkiran says the intent remains to illustrate a lighthearted take, and the content is reviewed internally before being distributed to any of the marketing channels.
"But in the rare occasion of things going sideways, we take it case to case and evaluate if we should hold our ground or apologize for something that we shouldn’t have done" he adds.
Inlfluencer Collaborations
Presently the brand is bolstering a mix of mass and micro-influencer strategy, while the current media mix allocates less than 10% of the total marketing spend on influencer marketing, Prabhkiran mentions the brand realizes its potential, has garnered good results, and plans to scale influencer marketing investments.
"Learning wise, we’ve realized influencer marketing on YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook have a lot of potentials as well; earlier we used to focus only on Instagram influencers, he adds".
Festive Season
The festive season has been known to be a significant period for the fashion and apparel industry, with a significant chunk of ad spends dispensed to make the most of the high-purchase period. But Bewakoof is going a step further and is in the process of rebranding with a new look, logo, tagline along with a new set of celebrities that will endorse Bewakoof.
Prabhkiran adds that the rebranding will be backed by top-funnel marketing investments, a set of collections, and new launches that would help drive growth and help reach out to new audiences. The October-December quarter will also be the period with scaled-up investments in influencer marketing.
Trends In Fashion & eCommerce
The three major trends foreseen by Prabhkiran are:
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