How does a brand have access to the consumer’s home, and get insights without spending a fortune on advertising and market research? Bedraj Tripathy, Senior General Manager, Marketing, Godrej Interio, tells us how the company managed to achieve this with its Upload and Transform campaign, and that it is looking to repeat the success again
Q] Please recount the first phase of Godrej Interio’s Upload and Transform campaign, and what are looking to implement in second phase.
We observed that a lot of consumers were not satisfied when furniture reaches their home, believing that the product looked better at the store. This is because of accentuations, but should customers accentuate at extra cost to get the same look as in a store?
We then decided to engage with customers in their home environment and started the whole concept with zero spends, running a small line on our existing advertising, saying if you want your home transformed, send us a picture of your home and a brief description online. We received 200 entries, of which five were chosen and we went and delivered to those homes. Our brief to the team was the amount spent on accentuation should be 10% or less of the price of the furniture and found that 9% was good enough. We took inputs from the family members and then transformed the place; simply put, Upload and Transform.
The campaign this year is digital and we have showcased the videos of the transformation to the media, especially in smaller towns. We have already received around 1,000 entries within a short span of time. Besides customer engagement, the campaign provides us complete market research, access to about 3,000 homes with customers telling us what their requirements are. With these inputs, we can create
products, even keeping regional tastes in mind. We have never had this kind of mass consumer research — I would have to spend over Rs 15 lakh for a similar survey, but here I am spending nothing, and getting direct inputs from the consumer. This is huge data that helps the sales team. When a customer walks in, a store attendant knows which products to pitch.
Q] What is your current media mix?
Outdoor, Print and Digital — these are the core, but we are using Digital for the current campaign. We don’t use TV often, and Radio is on and off throughout the year for engagement. The problem is that when you ask people what Godrej Interio stands for, they say furniture, but when you ask them to name a furniture brand, there is no reply. What we want to achieve is furniture equals Godrej Interio, and for that we need to go beyond sales point engagement.
This year, we hope to transform upto 50 homes and the cases from this year may be used as TVCs for the next season of this campaign, showcasing real transformations. Fifty homes mean a lot of pieces coming together, starting with research, the entire marketing cycle from product to sales, after-sales and finally content. So while I will continue to use PR and digital for brand building, I will use content from here for the TVC.
Q] With Digital being the focus, what are you doing on the Online Reputation Management front?
We don’t have a social media team as anyone who interacts with the consumer is part of social media and this includes my sales, marketing and service teams. We track all negative feedback and have brought down the time to close an issue to eight hours from 72 hours earlier. We aim to bring this down to a couple of hours.
Q] How has Godrej Interio benefited with the mother brand’s association with Aamir Khan? Has it translated into sales?
We have seen a jump in footfalls, but from an Interio perspective, we are leveraging him at different points, be it at the sales point, net or in any campaign. We have not done huge changes, but we are gaining market share, and even our customers are talking about our association with the actor.
Q] Does you communication vary for home and institutional products?
The platform we use — be it for home or office furniture — is transform your lives. However, transformation can be at different points: in an office, I can tell you that furniture will help improve productivity. We push differentiators such as wellness and the use of colour therapy. Institutional furniture is an important space as this provides 60% of our revenues.
Q] What’s your current presence across India? Looking ahead, what are your expansion plans and how do you view the Tier II and Tier III markets?
We have around 840 outlets across 140 cities in India, of which 450 are EBOs (exclusive brand outlets) and the rest MBOs (multi-brand outlets). In addition, we also have around 70 kitchen galleries. While 70% of growth today is from Tier I cities, in five years this will become 50:50 as the rate of growth in Tier II and Tier III cities is much higher. We are looking to add 85 more stores this year, most of which will be in Tier II and Tier III cities. The East is the largest market for us, and contributes about 40% of our revenues; West, North, South contribute about 20% each.
Q] What is the current market size and your market-share? How do you see the industry evolving in the future?
The organized retail sector is around Rs 6,000 crore and our share is around 20%, i.e., Rs 1,600 crore. In the last one year, while the rate of construction has continued to grow, the rate of absorption is decreasing; it is now around 8% vs 12% earlier. Looking ahead, home furniture as a category will grow and the growth of kitchen as a category will be phenomenal. People now change their furniture in four to six years (earlier it was 12 to 16 years), especially living room furniture. That’s where the growth comes in. The category has seen new players in the last few years and the share of the organized sector has increased to 15% from 10%. The money in the unorganized sector is huge and if I am able to tap even 1%, that’s big money.
Q] How has the Indian consumer’s choice evolved over the years? What are the emerging consumer trends?
International exposure has increased and this reflects in the designs as now consumers are asking for straight lines as against curves earlier. Home furniture used to have fixed colours, but now people are experimenting with colours and want their homes to be brighter. With shrinking spaces, people are looking at multi-usable furniture too. We have seen people become more conscious, a very small percentage asking about carbon footprint and what we are doing to offset it.
Q] What are the challenges faced by the brand?
For us, the biggest challenge is having a large range of products that specifically cater to different tastes across the country. The other challenge, like any retail outlet, is the cost per square feet versus profitability per square feet. All our stores are standalone stores and if a store is not profitable within six months, we shut it and we haven’t done that in the last two years.
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
