There cannot be a one-size-fits-all communication: Shivani Behl, Plum

The IMPACT Digital Influencer Conference held on November 30 saw a special presentation by Shivani Behl, CMO, Pureplay Skin Sciences (Plum) who spoke about the role of social media influencers in the success of the brand. Behl also shared insights on the challenges and marketing strategy of the personal care brand.

Speaking about the values that the brand is rooted in since 2014, she named customer delight, respect, transparency, and sustainability as its mainstay. The new-age brand has a multi-channel presence in India and claims to be India's first D2C-only brand in 2014. It also lays claim to being among the top 5 skincare brands at Nykaa, among the top 3 fastest growing brands on Amazon, while also being among the top 5 brands at most retailers.

The brand’s omnichannel presence contributes to approximately 17% of its overall revenue today, Behl shared, while its retail presence (started 2017) has grown to over 300 towns in India, with 1,300+ manned outlets, nearly 13,000 unassisted ones, and 10 Exclusive Brand Outlets (EBOs).

The D2C-first brand faced a multitude of challenges initially, shared Behl disclosing a few pain points such as diverse consumer sets with extremely different habits & attitudes, morphing consumption funnel, rapidly evolving attitudes towards products, education and price points. She also listed a high level of clutter & competition, high retailer power, and consumer fatigue with over-communication and targeting as some of the trials the brand went through.

Talking about the diversity of their audience, she asserted, “There cannot be a one-size-fits-all product or communication.” Sharing the building blocks of the brand, Behl stressed on Awareness, Education and Credibility.

Elaborating on the overall Influencer Strategy used by the brand, Behl said that long-term consistent communication across touchpoints right from launch helped the brand. The campaign running consistently for over a year helped establish good brand recall and maintained a healthy mix of different types of influencers across Instagram & YouTube. The brand’s Paid influencers included 70% Macro (1 Lakh + followers), 10% Celeb (1 Mn+ followers), 20% Micro (<1 lakh followers), and
1000+ barter Influencers for more reach and buzz creation over a period of 12 months.

Behl also shed some light on the target audience of the new age brand: 18-35-year-old female audience, with basic knowledge of the skincare market, belongs to Tier 1 & 2 cities and largely uses digital mediums like social media for awareness and education about the category.

The brand’s Vitamin C range's success was followed by onboarding their first brand ambassador Mithila Palkar for the range to further expand its reach and benefit awareness in 2022. The digital ad with the actor too was met with success. Talking about the Campaign performance, Belh said, “We over-achieved all our planned metrics for the campaign especially the CPV (Cost per View) and CPE (Cost per Engagement). Vitamin C Serum to date continues to be one of our highest selling SKUs with the campaign still ongoing as a result of its strong equity and ROI.” She listed active engagement with their affiliate network of over 2000 influencers as one of the reasons.

Behl also shared some of the learnings from its journey. She stressed on the importance of having the right Vernacular mix in an influencer campaign. It's also vital to recognise what's in for the consumer by keeping an eye on trends and the right KPIs, she said. Consistency in the choice of influencers and long-term play of relevant content were some of the other takeaways.