Targeting as per cohort is the marketing mantra for Myntra now: Sunder Balasubramanian

The online shopping industry has grown tremendously in the last few years especially fuelled by the pandemic when people had no other option but to order online. One of the many segments that grew at a large scale is the fashion & beauty sector, with many brands, e-commerce platforms and D2C platform entering the business. It’s interesting to see how these platforms are leveraging influencers and using them to their fullest potential. Myntra, being a new-age fashion platform, has also used the tool extensively.

Sunder Balasubramanian, the newly appointed Chief Marketing Officer spoke to us exclusively about what is the brand up to, the marketing strategies as well as how they are keeping up with various cohorts in a diverse country like India. 

Excerpts from the interview - 

How are you cutting through the clutter with the emergence of D2C brands?

The larger role that we are trying to play is to democratize fashion for consumers and one part of that is how you enable more consumers to be able to buy branded fashion versus unbranded fashion. In that larger journey, we believe that the more players will come, the more it will be beneficial for the consumers. 

We have been looking at different consumer cohorts and understand what they need from fashion and provide them consistently

You involve a lot of influencers, and there is a lot of conversation on influencers losing their credibility. How do you leverage this kind of marketing and keeping the credibility intact?

The consumers seek authenticity from brands as well as the platform and that authenticity translates in different ways, one of which is celebrity endorsement as they want to know what their favorite movie stars are wearing and that is their inspiration for fashion. Some other customers get their sense of inspiration from influencers that they follow on social media. So it depends upon the cohort and we would utilize the respective ones. The role influencer play in social commerce is to aid shoppers. We have seen our traffic per live session continuously increase over the months and this is how we utilize influencers on our platform.

There is a lot of conversation about marketers not being able to understand the Gen Z cohort, what is your mantra to stay relevant for them?

I think as a marketer we go through this with every cohort. When millennials got defined, we had a similar situation about how we really understand them. As a cohort, Gen Z will continue to play an important role across all brands of all sizes. They are a cohort that are more uniform across the world and it is important to tap them, they are a quote for exceedingly fluid. While they may be rooted in India, they have an eye out on what's happening around the world so it's very important to tap into that aspiration of theirs. 

Over the years what we have seen is that as long as you keep understanding their different needs and wants and you're able to vary that with the service that you provide it's the match made in heaven. A very strong part of our business comes from the Gen Z cohort, this is a cohort that is normally not very sticky, they flirt with their choices so we have been fortunate that they are sticking with us. The cohort looks for authenticity and I think that's where our social commerce please comes in, able to offer that authenticity without being very pushy, they relate to it and they find value in it. 

Myntra has been doing a lot of association with celebrities, how are you going to leverage more with this?

It has been only three months since I joined and it’s been a big learning for me as it's the category that demands and requires a lot.  When you ask people and consumers how they make their fashion choice, a very interesting start is what my favorite celebrities wear and what brands are they associated with. I can't see celebrities, and the category link is as stronger as it is for fashion where the consumers are looking for celebrities. 

And that's why we are using celebrities to bring out those stories for us with this new campaign 'be extraordinary everyday'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L19mqT7xCE&ab_channel=Myntra

What are the three main marketing strategies that Myntra is going to use?

The marketing mantra is to always be in sync with what the consumer is doing.  One of the other things that we do is tap into trends be it on social media or commerce. I really believe that commerce and content as a large bucket are going to be the future for both from a fashion perspective or even otherwise. One of the strategies that Myntra uses is to continue to

unlock more different growth opportunities. One example is the about daily fashion where people look out for looking stylish every day. Another example of this growth opportunity is workwear which has increased, there is a much more increase in casual work wear and that's where we are seeing 100% growth. 

Since tier 2 and 3 cities are becoming deeper pocket business regions, how are you going to capitalize on them?

For Myntra, we have always had a very broad-based approach for consumer cohorts across the country. We get more than 45% of our big and important junk from tier 2 and 3 cities. 

It gets customized to what each of them is looking out for when we go out targeting consumers from the cohorts. For example, the influencer that I use for Gen Z is probably different from what I use for ethnics versus what is used for South versus what is used for North. So we customize it as per the cohort. And this is what helps us get the loyalty and engagement that we have.

What are the new innovations that you are coming up with? 

An important part of a customer's journey is to be able to aid discovery. Technology is helping and making the shopping process simpler for consumers. We have a sizing algorithm as well as an AI-based skin analyzer for consumers. We are working towards more technology in the future.

How can brands make sure that they are not coming across as forced on occasions like Women’s day?

There are many occasions in the country as well as festivals and these occasions become points of consumption which a lot of brands ride on and there is a commercial angle to it. I think from a longer-term perspective the world lens I use, are these opportunities for the brand to be truly more inclusive. If that is something you can leverage and provide and become a brand I think a brand can become better and serves a better purpose. Let's take an example, Women's day is not about making one brand video for that day it's about through the year how can you make sure that as an audience men, women and all kinds of cohorts that we have in this country are inclusive in the brand offering. If that is the larger piece you do, then on specific occasions you can go out and put the brand video and what you want to do. 

As a brand builder, I would take the lesson of inclusivity and build that as the philosophy of the brand. 

What is going to be the media mix of the brand?

It goes back to the consumer cohort which will allow you as a brand to make an impact on the target audience there are certain cohorts in the country where the TV will make more sense, whereas there a certain specific part where digital will make more sense. It boils down to who are you reaching and therefore that automatically helps you to make the choice. If a brand is unprepared about who they are going after, it becomes a question of grappling with A versus B but when there is clarity of this the brand is able to provide a solution for them and it is quite a sample to break down the medium that we need to use to reach to the consumers. 

We use different channels like TV, influencers, commerce, and notifications on our app to cater to different consumer cohorts. For example, with Gen Z, I will use digital more and in digital also you can break it down to influences versus push videos.