Lingerie brand, Enamor has navigated through the past pandemic year, by enhancing consumer shopping experiences online, rooting its communication on digital platforms and carrying forward its ‘fabulous’ positioning in its everyday collections. Sandra Daniels, Vice President, Marketing at Enamor discusses the brand’s recent #FabulousEveryday campaign, its rapid growth in e-commerce and more….
Q] Your latest campaign, #FabulousEveryday carries forward the brand’s ‘fabulous’ messaging from the past few years. Tell us a bit about the latest campaign and what makes it different from the previous ones.
When we launched, we were primarily a fashion brand in a lingerie market that was filled with basics and cottons. Enamor was the first brand in India to start the conversation about looking ‘beautiful inside’ and emphasising the importance of a good fit when it came to bras. We were the ones to bring in the element of fashion to bras. Our advertising was about women who were vibrant, youthful, confident and full of life. The idea was to position bras as a fashion accessory that makes you look and feel fabulous. We started the ‘fabulous as I am’ messaging back in 2013 and that has resonated with consumers. So we have stayed consistent with that core message over the years. In 2017, we released an ad that said it doesn’t matter what shape or size you are, you’re fabulous just as you are. The prime objective was to ensure greater inclusivity in our product range and our messaging. This year, with the latest campaign, the focus was to bring the concept of fabulous into everyday wear lingerie. That’s exactly what we have done through the film – we have married the brand’s DNA of ‘fabulous’ with everyday bras. The campaign, if you’ve seen it, showcases fabulous styles in everyday wear and not just boring blacks, greys or whites. We’ve made everyday lingerie look fabulous!
Q] What kind of response have you seen towards the campaign?
The campaign is running extremely well, and you can see the needle move on Amazon, Myntra and across e-commerce. We are now the number one brand on Amazon, and our awareness and our consideration scores are really high. We saw 29 lakh visitors on our website after the campaign rolled out, which was huge. We have managed to build a very aspirational everyday, which is something the campaign stands for.
Q] Take us through the brand’s approach in terms of advertising and communication during this pandemic.
A lot of what we do now is rooted in Digital. Our approach is to follow the consumers and adapt according to where they are. While TV is still a high reach medium, we cannot overlook the increasing role that Digital plays today. On Digital too, we were entrenched in the ‘fabulous as I am’ messaging during the pandemic and lockdown, but our conversations were focused on wellness and staying healthy. While we are not keeping the conversation solely on our products or on selling, we still ensure we have a product hook – for example during the lockdown, we focused a lot on WFH and brought in our loungewear or athleisure collection, emphasising the importance of being comfortable while working at home. Also given that consumers were spending lots of time at home, it was a good opportunity for us as a brand to talk about lingerie, its wash care, choosing the right lingerie, etc.
Q] With consumers spending more time at home, what are the consumption trends you’ve observed? Are you seeing a greater demand for products like athleisure?
We’re in fact seeing a lot of demand for lounge wear and now during summer, we see a lot of demand for shorts, track pants and t-shirts. During the winter, post Diwali last year, we saw more demand for athleisure as people started moving out and exercising after spending months of lockdown. We are seeing these categories do so much better this past year, and in the year to come, we expect athleisure to contribute to at least 20% of our business. That number is huge, because Enamor is essentially a bra brand and bras are our core product.
Q] Which are the brands you see as competition in the premium/fashion space in the Indian market?
The differentiator for our brand is the portfolio – we have an everyday range, where we compete with the likes of Jockey. Jockey is pretty much like a ‘goliath’ in the everyday lingerie space. Then of course, we have the premium and the fashion range where we compete with brands like Triumph, Wacoal and Amante. Our differentiation is that we are the only brand that scales from core products to fashion wear.
Q] How did the closure of physical retail stores impact your offline business? How challenging is it to recreate the in-store customer experience online?
We always encourage consumers to get themselves fitted and pick the right bra based on their lifestyle and other considerations. The best way for them to do that is at our Enamor stores and so you’re right – it was a challenge to help consumers get the right fit through our online store. So we worked a lot on our e-comm pages to enhance the consumer experience there. We had videos to help consumers measure themselves and wear their bra correctly. These are things our consultants would do in a store, and while we started doing these things to help our consumers better, it is still a journey. At the end of the day however, there is little you can do to replicate touch and feel of the product, which is so important in a category like lingerie. It’s a lot of work to make the product come alive online. We’ve definitely grown a lot in e-comm. So from a 5% to 10% contribution, this year we’re expecting e-comm to contribute about 30% to our business.
