Pepperfry’s festive marketing strategy blends online and offline experiences, says Mahip Dwivedi

As the festive season approaches, consumers often finalise their big-ticket household purchases — like furniture — by August, leading to a typical slowdown in buying activity that stretches until Diwali or Dussehra.

In the highly competitive furniture sector, marketing strategies often become fragmented, with multiple brands pushing similar sales during this period, all vying for consumer attention.

To differentiate itself from the clutter, Indian furniture and home décor brand, Pepperfry, turns towards an integrated marketing approach, aiming for not just visibility but also providing consumers with relevant offerings, according to Mahip Dwivedi, VP & Head of Marketing, Pepperfry. 

This year, the e-commerce brand aims to bring consumers to its stores with the campaign ‘PehleTryAtPepperfry’. 

The campaign emphasises the importance of making informed decisions by trying products firsthand, encouraging consumers to experience furniture in Pepperfry's stores before purchasing. The campaign is brought to life through three video ads that humorously depict scenarios where decisions made on a whim, such as getting a haircut, planning marital decisions, and organising trips, could end in disappointments, drawing a parallel to the need for a thoughtful approach when buying furniture.

Dwivedi notes that the brand’s focus during the festive season is ensuring footfall in the store first. The recent campaign aims to make shopping for furniture a personal experience by connecting to consumers' need to try a product before purchasing it. 

In a bid to encourage consumers to experience their products in stores; the brand has previously utilised OOH, driving eyeballs.

 In 2022, the brand had reached out to consumers through an OOH campaign wherein brand ambassadors Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan appeared on memes. The outdoor hoardings featuring memes from the actors’ previous movies were aimed at driving attention. 

This was supported by an ad film with the two actors, who are amused with the use of apt memes to promote the brands products. 

While the brand’s offline strategy involves curating experiences and driving eyeballs, its online strategy focuses on ensuring the consumer knows that the product they are purchasing can be trusted upon. In 2016, when consumers were still hesitant about online furniture shopping, the brand targeted them, attempting to encourage furniture buying through online channels. This was driven by a study that stated that consumers are unsure if the product that they receive will be exactly as it looked like. 

The brand’s campaign, ‘What You See Is What You Get’, released during the festive period, highlighted how it provides detailed product imagery letting consumers zoom in and out, and how consumers can easily return products if they are not to their liking.

By aligning its online and offline efforts, the brand not only drives footfall to its stores but also ensures that consumers are confident in their purchases, whether made in-store or online. Dwivedi in a conversation with Social Samosa, talks about the brand’s marketing strategy for the festive season, its focus on data-driven insights, the channels it utilises and more. 

Edited Excerpts:

How critical is the festive period for Pepperfry, and what unique marketing strategies are you implementing this year to engage consumers?

Pepperfry deals with a large ecosystem where we don't have a branded ecosystem, and it's a marketplace bringing in various brands along with private labels. The festive season is very critical for us. We plan for an integrated marketing approach, where we not only aim for visibility and eyeballs but also show people relevant offerings. This applies to both new and existing audiences. 

We leverage the data we already have on what our consumers have purchased before, so we know what they might want to buy during the festive season. It's crucial for people to close their purchases during this period because, after August, there are times when people stop buying, and this continues until Diwali or Dussehra. 

Our strategy focuses on relevant messaging across different channels, ensuring that we present everything under one roof. This is how we plan to approach the upcoming festive season.

Which marketing mediums will Pepperfry be focusing on the most during the festive season, and which ones have proven to be the most effective in the past?

Digital is predominantly the most effective medium when it comes to reach, frequency, and maintaining top-of-mind awareness (TOM). When it comes to cohorting, we also rely on native advertising, push notifications, and email. We analyse data to create journeys for our customers, ensuring that they are aware of our offers and that we cover all PIN codes in India. 

How are you leveraging marketing technology to enhance consumer outreach and engagement at Pepperfry?

We have a well-planned strategy that involves creating various customer cohorts to understand what each customer is likely to buy. This allows for cross-selling, upselling, and nudging customers to maintain a steady interest across the group. We use channels like WhatsApp marketing, push notifications, and email, but we are careful not to spam customers. Correct cohorting ensures that we reach out to them with relevant information without disturbing or irritating them. First-party data plays a key role in this strategy, helping us engage with our customers effectively.

Can you elaborate on the differences between Pepperfry's offline and online strategies during the festive season?

It's a mix of offline and online strategies, but the treatment of both channels is different. Offline, the conversion rate is higher due to the human touch, where sales representatives in stores can help customers find what fits their homes best, especially since this is furniture we are talking about. While online, there are often doubts about the quality of the furniture. Many customers browse online, visit the store to check the quality, and then place their order online. 

Our focus during the festive season is ensuring footfall in the store first. We work on OOH, and hyper-local strategies and we plan events and in-store activities like Lucky Draw for offline customers. 

On the other hand, reaching out to consumers online would be very different where we actually plan enough traffic and ensure that all your online buyers are aware of our relevance during the festive period through our freedom sale. 

The treatment of both the channels is different but the messaging would remain the same across. 

Your extensive experience in digital and performance marketing at companies like Tyke, Flipkart, and BigBasket has certainly shaped your approach. Can you share some key learnings from these roles that influence your strategy at Pepperfry?

I come with a strong background in digital performance and branding. Campaign optimization, deep data analysis, and maintaining Martech stacks is something that I bring to the table and this is crucial for us. 

Everything we spend today needs to be measured, from campaign efficiency to data analysis across the funnel. Understanding what consumers are doing in the middle of the funnel and ensuring they are nudged appropriately without getting lost in the process is key. 

Each of these aspects needs to be addressed and requires different campaigns and data sets, making it one of the most important contributions I bring to the table.