What Srinivasa Rao teaches about brand purpose

What has actually happened is the time taken from discovery to actual purchase that's actually kind of you know collapsed. What is your mantra for success? There are two. One is to kind of carefully listen right and then constantly adapt. I think listening is key to our business especially because with the fashion retail space and the customer is rapidly evolving so listening to the customer carefully is very very important and like because we are in the fashion space adapting becomes very important so carefully

listening and constantly adapting these are really mantras of success and this is what I've imbibed. So has there been an instance or few instances where feedback on social media because as a brand you guys are really active on social media as well given the category in which you kind of operate. So has there been an instance where you've actually adapted or tweaked an existing marketing strategy based on insights feedback that has come from social media?

One of the important lessons we learned right is for a brand Melange. It's an ethnic wear brand and the feedback that we actually had from social media essentially is that the the modern woman today is looking at ethnic wear very very differently right. So ethnic wear had a certain traditional kind of a baggage. Right. It was associated with compliance so to say right but the young woman of today actually you know was very very different right.

She actually was viewing ethnic wear a little differently and we could kind of pick this specific nuance and completely change the way we looked at a brand Melange right. So if you look at our brand Melange the line that we currently use is rethink ethnic right. And the way we now position Melange is for the young woman of today who is absolutely sure about herself and she does not shy away from wearing ethnic to let's say a party to a cafe with a friend or even even on a brunch right.

So today the context in which ethnic is actually used is very very different and brands traditionally have approached ethnic very very differently and based on feedback that we received from social media because we constituted a panel we had some organic feedback as well. All of that led us to kind of believe that the young woman of today is looking at ethnic very very differently and that's the feedback we imbibed into our brand Melange.

So you know talking about content marketing how do you think it's evolved when it comes to the fashion and lifestyle space literally. Also can you run us through what does the content funnel look like today in the you know to drive efficacies what it should look like ideally and how has it changed. So it's changed significantly right. So today what has actually happened is the time taken from discovery to actual purchase that's actually kind of you know collapsed. Right.

So therefore it's very very important for brands like us to ensure that the content is actually relevant. When I say content is relevant it's not just what you're actually seeking. If I'm actually putting out a product it better be available and available at the place of the customers choice. If she wants to buy the same dress that she likes online instantly it should be available or if she chooses to walk to a store and buy that specific dress it should be available and it should be available in her size.

That's the most important thing therefore the evolution of content is not just being relevant in terms of providing an answer to what she's actually seeking is to ensure that you go the distance to fulfill if she actually desires to buy a specific product because that's the most important you know part of ensuring content is not just relevant it's also productive for an organization. That's the big change.

We've seen an increase in influencer marketing talking about that as being part of content marketing but we've also seen a lot of influencer marketing campaigns that don't quite do it not in terms of being that effective. Yeah. Right. Having run some yourself. What are the some of the four points five points or what are some of the hygiene points for you like do's to ensure the success of an influencer marketing campaign.

The first thing that we need to especially because we are a fashion brand and we're not just one brand we're multiple brands so lifestyle is a mother brand and we also have our own portfolio of brands right so if it's ginger if it's melange if it's cold so each of these brands is important to us and so is lifestyle. So first is the choice of the influencer is he or she relevant to the brand is he or she able to represent the brand ethos well that's the first point right.

It doesn't matter how many followers he or she has that's the first is is the is the person able to represent my brand best that's the first right. Two is is there obviously then a reasonable amount of audience that he or she has because otherwise it's just an organic post right. So that's the second right. So first you start with the quality of the influencer and then you obviously check if the influencer is genuine has too many you know kind of followers that keep varying by the day in which case it may not be relevant set of audiences.

So that becomes very very important and for one of our brands ginger we've embarked on a program called the ginger ginger campus squad where you have a series of micro influencers who are straight out of college. Right. They're actually still studying but they are in it because they love the brand they love the collection and each of these has let's say 100 200 followers but they are stars in their own right right.

So for us it's very very important to kind of stay true to the brand and ensure that the influencers are genuine so that that really is the answer. So. So.