Q] What was the basis of Plum’s latest campaign?
Shampoo as a category is full of tall claims – glossy-looking hair in commercials that have a serious tone. It’s fairly formulaic in the way most hair product ads run—because of ingredient A, I get benefit B, and therefore you should buy brand C. That’s the logic that flows. When we started brainstorming on the concept, we felt that while we stand for goodness, we want to do it with a little bit of fun. I dare say that a lot of us in the team have a good sense of humour, and we tried to make this campaign as fun as our other campaigns. Then we got the idea to execute this with people wearing sunglasses because you have such shiny hair.
Q] What are the challenges of pulling off a strictly vegan brand, considering the price points and the abundance of cheaper options in the Indian market?
There are lots of brands and choices available in the market for those who are looking for vegan, and natural products. What I think works best for us is that we have been committed to being a vegan brand right from day one. We are India’s first 100% vegan beauty brand, and that’s something that we proudly wear on our sleeve. But from a consumer’s point of view, it doesn’t matter if you’re first or second, what matters is that you deliver on what you have promised. We put the product front and centre of what we do. When people look at Plum, they are assured of a certain value, performance, and delight. No matter which category, subcategory, price point, or point of sale we are talking about, we are trying to ensure that the brand experience and consumer experience are consistent. To quote Jeff Bezos here, ‘It’s better to obsess over the consumer than the competition.’
Q] Plum has opened several stores. How are they performing for the brand? Also, can you give a breakdown of your online sales versus offline sales?
I will divide our offline stores into two buckets – our own stores, and multi-brand outlets, including both general trade and modern trade. My store footprint is currently 27; hopefully, it will be 30 soon. By the end of December, we are looking to open 50 of these. They are present in both metros and as well as smaller towns and cities. Our presence is meaningful across 350 towns and cities in India, and that contributes to about 40% of our overall revenue. 60% still comes from online because we started off as an online-only brand.
Q] Last year, Plum revealed its ambition to double its revenue to Rs 500cr. Has the brand been able to achieve it?
We are not yet there, but we are on our way to achieving it. The rollout of our retail ecosystem is happening quite well and as per plan. We are strengthening our core portfolio on skincare, as it has done quite well in terms of both the active and performance-driven side, and the non-active-driven side of skincare. Healthcare is turning out to be a lever of growth. Last but not least, bath and body, and makeup, which are two very young categories, are helping us get a much younger cohort of consumers than skincare typically does. Therefore, we are leveraging these two categories to recruit younger consumers to the brand. The movement across categories is very healthy. All this will be accompanied by a massive push online, both in terms of content and marketplace participation that we need.
Q] Plum has retained Team Pumpkin for its performance marketing. Can you tell us how this partnership has benefited the brand?
Performance marketing is not something where you set the dial at a certain level, and then return to check the result after a month. It is something that happens every day. Therefore, the kind of agencies that we like to work with on performance marketing are those that are slightly more agile and hands-on with respect to what’s happening, and opportunities that should be capitalised on at that moment. When we were looking for an agency, I felt that Team Pumpkin fits that bill. We have stabilised and grown our D2C business with them. Today, you need a unique value proposition when the speed of delivery can’t be beaten. We’ve been investing a lot of time, energy, and thought into making the value proposition work for customers. To be frank, this is an answer that is still evolving, but so is performance marketing. Performance marketing is an important lever of growth for any brand in its growth stage. Working with Pumpkin has worked well for us in terms of growth on D2C.
