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Strategy Reviews

More than medium selection it is critical to align to consumer behavior on different platforms: Sudhir Nair, Berger Paints

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Akanksha Nagar
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Sudhir Nair Berger Paints

How content and social media marketing can make a painting brand, a part of daily consumer conversations? Sudhir Nair from Berger Paints gives an insight into their marketing strategy.

Why should a paint brand be on social media? What do they talk about with consumers who do not need or use their products on a daily basis? How do they communicate with consumers and create a bond? For Berger Paints, social media marketing strategy is the primary base for Online Reputation Management (ORM) and is helping the brand build awareness and engage with its audiences.

From informing customers or even general audiences on the basic products, painting techniques, to promoting their own DIY content, the brand is betting big on shareable videos, instructional how-to tips, and styling trends.

Social Samosa, in conversation with Sudhir Nair, Senior General Manager, Marketing, Berger Paints, parses through the brand’s social media marketing strategy. With the right strategy and appropriate content, Berger Paints aims at garnering positive conversations around the brand.

While Facebook caters to the masses for building awareness, Twitter and especially, LinkedIn is for the more evolved audience where it is building on the brand’s credibility and integrity.

Berger Paints Marketing & Communication Strategy

At a broader level, Berger Paints aims to make all of its communications more personalized for the customers through CDP (Customer Data Platform).

“More than medium selection, it critical to align to the behavior of our consumers on different platforms. In the last two-three years advocacy is playing an increasingly crucial role in the consumers’ decision process and has got impetus during the pandemic. Hence this is a segment we are investing in further. Allocation is a function of the brand and the TG,” says Nair.

"YouTube (Google) and Facebook being the leaders in this industry enjoy the maximum pie for our vanilla paid campaigns,” he adds.

The brand is active on almost all major social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

“It is (social media) an extremely important platform that helps in brand awareness and engagement but also allows two-way communication, we get active feedback from our customers. It is the primary base of ORM and with the right strategy and appropriate content we aim to garner positive conversations around our brands,” Nair says.

“Facebook is more of a hygiene in its approach which caters to mass for building awareness whereas Twitter and LinkedIn are for the more evolved audience where it builds on brand’s credibility and integrity,” he adds.   

Facebook:

With the largest base of its followers on Facebook, the brand runs arrays of contests and challenges across multiple demographics. From uploading topical content to disseminating its various campaigns including #DaagLagneDo #SilkKaEhsaasChainKiSaans, the brand is engaging with its followers on multiple levels.

It mainly uploads the content in short-format videos and images and has its shop running on its Facebook page.

It also has a specially curated group- iPaint DIYers for art and craft enthusiasts.

Also read: Our overall marketing investment is about INR 100 cr for next 12 months: Kashyap Dalal, Simplilearn

Twitter

Other than sharing #DidYouKnow facts around the paints, the brand actively posts #ArtIsTherapy comic for its DIY iPaint range of products. The brand is all about sprucing up home interiors and creating content on the latest home decor trends. It runs timely quizzes and contests for more engagement and knowledge dissemination.

The brand effectively is utilizing this platform to share information on topics such as 'how often should one paint their home exteriors' and discussing Vaastu and FengShui tips for homes. Embracing the power of photos, it uploads tonnes of images.

LinkedIn

For consideration, performance marketing- B2C and B2B, Facebook, and LinkedIn are important pillars for the brand as the consumers are more comfortable interacting on these platforms. The brand via LinkedIn consistently reminds followers of its integrity and credibility through the lens of various products and accolades. It also puts forth short, captivating videos for #PaintYourImaginati.


The paint company with great endeavor engages with followers and takes them through various insights on how the organization functions via 'Life at Berger Paints India'.

It publishes content in multiple languages including Punjabi, Hindi, and English on multiple occasions. With its diverse profile on LinkedIn, it is captivating the interests of its followers across states and cities via regional contests and topical posts.

Instagram

Not only does the brand collaborate with celebrities, but has also been exploring influencer marketing as well for some time. From short format videos to Reels, it actively shares DIY ideas with its followers.

Its comic #ArtIsTherapy for iPaint range is quite a buzz among audiences. Apart from its main channel, the brand has two separate accounts for Berger Express Painting and Berger Homeshield. Berger maintains a colourful, bright profile and runs timely webinars featuring industry experts to discuss all things paints.

Asked if the brand intends to increase its marketing budget for these platforms, Nair shares that social media marketing would continue to remain one of the key consumer touchpoints for the brand.

“The endeavor would be to listen to our consumers, their experiences to create strong and relevant brands. The investments in digital and social media marketing would see a greater impetus in the coming years,” he adds.

Berger Paints Colourful Content Play

For Berger Paints, content is everything from blogs to videos to tonnes of aesthetically pleasing pictures.

Sharing its overall content marketing and branded content strategy, Nair says, “This is broadly divided into two segments- one where our happy customers become our evangelists and share their experience through videos and another where we educate our consumers about the best practices for each of our product offerings through blogs.”

Colours In Your Life Blog:

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The blog extensively talks about how to boost the home interiors, DIY techniques, tips and has the same running in the Hindi language as well.

Colour Magazine:
The brand also has a monthly digital magazine running which discusses the world surrounding colours and related information.

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Nair explains that depending upon the content (in terms of duration and the treatment) and whom it is targeted to the platforms/vehicles are selected.

YouTube

At the top of the Berger Paints Marketing funnel, YouTube works in tandem with Twitter for the brand. The two platforms are approached as an announcement medium to garner reach and engagement, efficiently. Berger has curated multiple playlists on its YouTube channel for its marketing campaigns, DIY kits, and customer reviews.

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The customers talk about their experiences with the brand services and take audiences through the interiors. It also actively uploads Shorts and challenges videos as well.

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It also uploads explanatory content videos around its products, enabling consumers to better understand the 'know-hows' in both Hindi and English.

Additionally, the brand recently partnered with Whisper Media for in-content marketing. Through this, Nair says, “Its in-content advertising enabled cut-through for our campaigns in the most popular shows in our target markets within a very short span of time. It would create stronger message recalls and brand awareness across campaigns.”

In terms of calculating the ROI, Nair feels there is no single way to calculate it. He adds, “Unless we want to go by the traditional approach of sales and investment, there is a psychological and behavioral angle as well.”

According to Nair, the best way to evaluate the ROI would be to see the improvement in search volume, organic traffic, session/page duration, and positive brand conversation because it shows the involvement and engagement of the consumer with the brand.

Humorous & Vernacular Connect:

For Berger Paints, the brand messaging revolves around the central user benefit that they offer to the consumer which in most cases tilts towards the functionality aspect. Given the nature of the brand, Nair says that in some cases the personality allows for humorous campaigns, like in the case of Easy Clean and Express painting or even #ArtIsTherapy comic posts.

Vernacular content is the next big thing especially when we have apps like ShareChat and likes, growing so rapidly. If the consumer prefers to interact proudly in their native language so why not the brands, says Nair.

Also read: Over 30% of our leads come from social media: Priyanka Salot, The Sleep Company

As a practice, the brand gets insights from its team and network partners of the respective regions to understand the consumer interactions, and this helps curate relevant vernacular content for its campaigns. 

Utilising Influencers

Content is the king in the digital world. The originality and relevance of the content eventually decide the attention span that a consumer would be giving to your content.

The brand has executed multiple interesting influencer marketing campaigns around its DIY brand, ‘i-Paint’.

In Nair’s words, influencer marketing is very crucial for its overall communication strategy and the brand is cognizant about its implication.

“It is very challenging to get these influencers who can cater to our customers- be it B2B or B2C because firstly, the creators are very limited. Secondly, not many are making branded content and this takes comparatively more time to execute because of the nature of the product. I mean not everybody will buy a paint (wall or wood) and start using it unless it’s a DIY,” he says.

Marketing Tips

Nair advises brands to go for tailored, platform-specific snackable, and vibrant content with precise RTBs (real-time bidding).

“Let the colours do the talking!” he says

Amid the rising toxicity and trolling of brands on social media platforms, he says it is sometimes difficult to predict the reaction from the consumer for any specific communication or campaign.

However, he advises brands to be slightly more diligent given the diversity of values and culture that exist in India.