Fashionably Digital…

With Lakmé Fashion Week creating a stir in the fashion and beauty world, Purnima Lamba, Head of Innovation at Lakmé, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. India, talks about leveraging digital and how premiumization has worked for Lakmé brands

BY IMPACT Staff
18th August 2014

With Lakmé Fashion Week creating a stir in the fashion and beauty world, Purnima Lamba, Head of Innovation at Lakmé, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. India, talks about leveraging digital and how premiumization has worked for Lakmé brands

Q] What are the new media and marketing solutions adopted by Lakmé to keep pace with evolving customer needs?

The most exciting medium for all brands at this moment is digital. As a country, we have a long way to go to reach the percentage of media spends on digital seen in some countries in the West. But young people in India are spending more time engaging with content on digital than they do on Television, so consumers have switched though brands are yet to make that switch. We are fast catching up on that account. Digital is the single biggest shift that we have made in media terms. The excitement as marketers is how to create content for digital which is relevant, exciting, and actually works for the medium rather than just slapping on any content that we have on other mediums.

Q] How do you use innovations to drive brand salience?

Because Lakmé is a brand that goes across salons, skin care and colour cosmetics, innovations play a slightly different role in each of those categories. Innovation is at the heart of the beauty brand because it is the first question that a consumer asks our beauty advisors when she comes to our counters, which is our primary retail point. Therefore, to have a monthly ‘what is new’ calendar is really important to open the conversation, as consumers lose interest very easily with so many counters lined next to one another. We have realized at Lakmé that we can really stretch that new piece of news and are able to engage the consumer far longer when we have new news.

Q] How has Lakmé Absolute worked towards your premiumization goal?

Absolute has been a huge step of change for the brand. When we launched it about 4-5 years ago, the intent was to compete with players in a more premium bracket. Lakmé did not play that market at that time, and we stepped into it with great ease. We realized the potential of Absolute to cater to a different segment of the market, with a completely different set of offerings.

Over the years Lakmé has introduced new faces to India, like Katrina Kaif or Aishwary Rai or even Rekha back in the day; they were Lakmé brand ambassadors before they became known beauty faces in India. But in today’s changed scenario, celebrities come on board mainly to break clutter. So Absolute was the first time that we used a Bollywood face to launch a Lakmé line and Kareena Kapoor came on board. We had a beautiful series of outdoor as well as indoor films shot with her, and showcased the Absolute mousse, which was the hero product of the line, as well as our lipsticks. The target audience for Absolute engages a lot with digital and Print, so we carve out Absolute campaigns differently from the core or the 9 to 5 line, and also use magazines and glossies.

Q] How have brand ambassadors supplemented the brand’s growth?

Kareena Kapoor has been a lucky charm for us because a lot of brands have used celebrities, but we may not have measured what celebrities add back to the brand. In this case, the Absolute launch was noticed and made a lasting impression in the minds of consumers and we believe Kareena has had a lot to do with that. Premiumization of Lakmé almost got bookmarked in a way with Kareena’s entry on the brand. Be it the marketing fraternity or the advertising world or our consumers on Absolute, people have played back to us that this has happened with Kareena coming on board.

Q] How does the brand fare on e-commerce platforms?

We are the largest beauty brand on all e-commerce platforms, like Flipkart, etc. We are excited to watch how this space grows. Apart from the media, the design of the media campaigns, the ultimate joy in digital is how quickly it can convert into an impulse purchase. And therefore we watch various shows in the West that set trends on fashion, have an immediate ‘I want to buy this look’ connect and that is where I see this world going in India too.

Going ahead, e-commerce will be a growing percentage of our sales. We are not connected to a lot of towns in terms of direct distribution, e-commerce is a very good conduit in filling that gap.

Q] How has the journey been with Lakmé Fashion Week and what marketing activities are planned for it?

We founded Lakmé Fashion Week because fashion and beauty work hand-in-hand, and trends that get set on the runway are ones that reflect in beauty collections. We have always had a series of lines launched at LFW and then they become either limited edition or stay depending on the products. This season, we are collaborating with bridal couturier Manish Malhotra. We brought Malhotra, make-up artiste Cory Walia and the Lakmé Absolute team together to create a Bridal Dream Team. It’s a first for Lakmé. We have done a lot of bridal activations at the counter, but no brand has done a big bridal staging of the expertise that goes behind it. There is a series of bridal-linked promotions starting with the launch of the Bridal Dream Team. Brides can use this styling advice and we can customize it for them. We have also created a 20 seconder TVC, which is another first for us. Talking about media, LFW has a lot of incredible digital tieups. We have Google hangouts for people like Miss Malini, etc., live Twitter feeds Facebook to showcase the trends. This time we also have a tie-up with a television partner for the first time.

Q] How does branded content like Be Beautiful work towards building the brand’s equity?

Various voices stand for reviews that consumers trust in the digital environment, and that is becoming important for us. With digital blogging and vlogging (video blogging) growing, the adoption of skin care and make-up as a regime grows exponentially when you have peer reviews rather than having the brand throw information at you all the time. We look out for key influencers. Earlier, it used to be celebrities but today bloggers are our new celebrities. It is really important for brands to make sure that bloggers know what’s new and have access to all the latest innovations.

Q] How would you define the USP of brand Lakmé?

Pro-stylist is the one word that I would like everybody to think when they think Lakmé and it comes together across the salon, skin-care and make-up portfolios.

Q] How does the brand approach smaller markets?

We offer a different set of products based on what a woman needs at a particular time, across socio-economic strata. A lot of the target audience at the core might actually be very infrequent users of make-up. Beauty is an aspirational category and everybody aspires to a higher rung. We make sure we have the right product available in the right town. Distribution plays a major role in Tier II and Tier III cities, and is the primary focus.

Q] What are some of the emerging trends for marketing in beauty and fashion?

The biggest macro trend in India would be the fact that more working women are joining our ranks. The moment you step out of the house into a scenario where you want to look presentable, grooming steps up and becomes a larger part of your life. Apart from that, every season has a different forecast based on fashion. With Lakmé Absolute, we always stay ahead of the trend forecast by introducing a new product, texture or shade.

ABOUT THE BRAND

Contemporary Indian beauty expert Lakmé offers a wide range of high end colour cosmetics, skincare products and beauty salons. In addition to leveraging Unilever’s worldwide expertise, Lakmé also partners with leading cosmetics houses Milan-based Intercos Italia, Schwann Stabilo Germany and Paris-based Fiabila. Combining international cosmetic technology with an in-depth understanding of the Indian woman’s needs, Lakmé aims to offer its consumers a comprehensive beauty experience through its products and services at the Lakmé Salons and Studios.

CMO FILE

Purnima Lamba is the Head of Innovation at Lakmé for Hindustan Unilever Ltd. India. After taking over the mantle in May 2012, she has been responsible for steering innovations on the Lakmé portfolio, and is an advisory board member for Lakmé Fashion Week. Prior to Lakmé, she was the Global Brand Director for Fair & Lovely and Regional Brand Director for Skincare, South Asia. Lamba joined Hindustan Unilever as a brand manager at Lakmé in 2001 after an M.Sc. in Management from the London School of Economics & Political Science.