Creators & influencers have given us the foundation: Mrunmay Mehta, WOW Skincare

exchange4media hosted the 6th edition of India Brand Conclave recently. Among the many industry heads who shared key insights on building brands was Mrunmay Mehta, COO, WOW Skincare. He spoke on 'Building Brands with Digital DNA'.

"Discovery through online media, access through omnichannel distribution, largely e-commerce and designed for agile fast fail innovation is the way we design WOW Skin Science,” Mehta said.

He shared how WOW has evolved as a brand over the years with the help of digital platforms. “We are living through the third transitional era and seeing media consumption pattern change dramatically. A consumer sitting in Ghaziabad is as aware of what’s happening in Brazil or the US in terms of trends on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram. India itself is a vibrant creator community and has the lowest per capita consumption of beauty and personal care and that reflects in the way new channels have grown, whether it be Nykaa, Amazon or Flipkart and Wow is present everywhere. We believe that we will see an emergence of a new clutch of FMCG brands.”

Talking about the journey of WOW skin science, “WOW is online forward, we are born out of the digital platforms, whether it be media or commerce. In the brief 5 years, we have created an array of category bestsellers and when I say best sellers, I mean it online. Whether it be beauty and personal care or health and personal care, we are in both. WOW life science is a brand that sells more towards health and then beauty is WOW skin science. We are present across all offline and online beauty and in the US, we are listed in the Walmart across 3000 stores, and we sell across a couple of chains there as well apart from amazon.com. This is a very big channel for us,” he said.

Mehta further discussed how marketing works in today’s times. “There is more awareness, consideration and trials. Those basics don’t change. At the same time, the way we reach to a relevant set of consumers, changes dramatically. Today we are able to reach probably more consumers through Facebook or YouTube than we could theoretically through TV. It was the kind the consumers that we wanted to go to are more available on Facebook or Google than they are on TV. We see a lot more increase of penetration of digital media giving us a larger addressable consumer cohort,” he said.

He also explained the role of a creator in branding and marketing. “We work with hundreds of creators and influencers right from our inception. They really have given us the foundation on which the brand has credibility.”

Concluding his session Mehta said, “Innovation is a big part of where we are. We are able to handle a much higher complexity because our supply chain doesn’t work the same way and, therefore, if you look at it from a brand lens the ability to be able to innovate quickly, try out ideas and then weed out the failures in an accelerated manner is a crucial capability that you have. Lastly, we are really grateful for the ability to sell to the consumers directly. D2C gives you signals, it gives you the ability to look at insights, data from a much more granular manner than looking at a broad straight play approach. That’s where we leverage our D2C platforms in a big way."