Ariel, a laundry detergent and fabric care brand from Procter & Gamble, released an ad in which a father visited his daughter and found that she was struggling to find a balance between her professional and domestic duties. He was forced to rethink traditional gender roles and decided to share laundry chores with his wife. The commercial ended with a simple question: Why is laundry considered a mother's work? Uber India, a ridesharing company, recently raised a deeper question. Why should women let distance stop them from achieving their dreams? For better career opportunities, why can't women work from home?
There is always a side. Bengaluru's ridesharing app Ola, which is based in Bengaluru, promoted its affordable micro cabs at the same time as the Ariel commercial. Ola compared it to a woman who makes her husband spend more while they are out shopping. The ad was posted on YouTube and stated that it was too expensive to take your GF on a date. It was immediately criticized by netizens, and it was eventually removed.
If you go back to 1990s advertising and mainstream advertising, it is easy to see rampant gender stereotyping and social discrimination. This was even true for companies that targeted women-focused products. The same approach, which is unable to include and pushes unrealistic standards, continues to thrive in the third decade. UNICEF and Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media released a report titled Gender Bias in Advertising in India in April 2021.
The report revealed that while Indian commercials featured a lot of female characters, it was limited to certain roles such as being the caregiver for the family or promoting similar values to the consumers. While women were most often shown shopping, cleaning and cooking, men dominated the funny or intelligent roles.
We are not here to write a story about gender bias in advertising. Our goal is to examine the marketing strategies of women-focused direct-to-consumer brands (D2C), in order to determine if gender equity plays an important role in product promotion. It is clear that both traditional and new-age brands have a lot to do with the realities of the ground. It is often difficult for them to reach the female consumer segment, which is constantly breaking down silos and increasing in size and purchasing power.
Many companies have had to reevaluate their position and look at how they can engage with women customers, away from the traditional marketing ploys. After a backlash from the country against skin-lightening and colourism, Hindustan Unilever rebranded its flagship product Fair & Lovely.
Indian brands have made it a priority to target their female customers by focusing on them. This is due to the fact that they are more likely to be able buy and make decisions. According to The Wall Street Journal, Indian women have tripled their bank accounts between 2013 and 2019, while their disposable income has increased 63%. Credit Information Bureau of India (CIBIL), also reported a 62% increase in credit card use among women during 2013-19, compared to a 30% rise for men. The average CIBIL score for women is 734, while that of men is 726.
This data is combined with market projection data makes it easy to understand why brands are more interested in female power for their future growth. Inc42's 2021 D2C report, Decoding India's 100 Bn+ D2C Opportunities, reports that the total market size was $44.6 billion in FY21. Women-driven segments like fashion and FMCG contributed $17.8 billion and $6.1 billion, respectively.
Indian D2C brands that cater to women have developed new strategies and techniques to engage, retain and acquire their customers. This is due to the rapid changes in the consumer demographic. This is how brands promote their products to resonate with their target audience.
Breaking Through Barriers
This is difficult to do as women's stories are not often highlighted in advertising outside of the fashion and FMCG domains. Gender-neutral brands also fail to engage female customers. This is not a problem in India. Kearney, a US-based management consulting company, found that only 15% of women respondents are satisfied with brand promotion in segments like automotive, digital media and consumer packaged goods. This trend should be a wakeup call for Indian companies that target similar segments.
Kantar, a UK-based data analysis company, found that 76% of women worldwide believe the way adverts portray them is completely out of touch. While their needs are similar to those of other consumers, the history of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of women makes it necessary to rethink strategies in order to capture their imaginations and aspirations. Product promotion must be more inclusive and humane. One way to do that is by reducing the tone deafness in commercials.
While it can be difficult to get rid of stereotypes completely, D2C brands are enjoying the differentiation that their marketing campaigns have created. For example, Nykaa, a beauty and fashion unicorn bound for IPOs, launched her maiden TV campaign in 2018. It featured women from all walks of life, including a woman who is at the center of high-stakes situations, a mom with a high profile career, and scientists, pilots, and athletes. They came together to create a story of glory that focuses on women. They are true-life heroes (nykaa in Sanskrit) and believe beauty can have many faces. Nykaa, who became a unicorn in 2020, is now looking to raise $4.5 Bn through an IPO this year.
Think of the MyGlamm campaign, another D2C beauty brand. This TVC is different than the others because it uses a bright approach that appeals to millennial customers. The brand is a powerful one because it is inclusive and asks consumers what they want.
Although technology, data, and insights into the consumer mind play an important role in promoting women's potential and increasing product sales, there are many other ways to reach potential customers. This is an example. WebEngage and MoEngage are all marketing automation tools that help D2C brands to better target customers and achieve quantifiable results. Similar tech solutions can be used by businesses to collect extensive data about their female audience using a variety of identity parameters, including gender, age, race and religion. They can then identify their preferences and tailor their marketing campaigns to be inclusive.
These efforts are profitable from a business perspective. A study by ResearchGate published under the Journal of Marketing found that women are more loyal customers than men. They also require less retention efforts once they feel satisfied with the brand.
Build Communities through Meaningful Content
While breaking down barriers is a significant step towards inclusion, it is not the only one. It is important to recognize women's accomplishments in all spheres of life. But it is even more important to include them in a brand's long-term success. The goal is to create a community around the target audience in order to provide meaningful and seamless connectivity.
This process began in pieces, and then went through a transformation. Customers are as important to D2C businesses as any other business. To offset high customer acquisition costs companies initially chose free social media play. This allowed them to communicate brand narratives and ensure maximum reach for lead generation and conversion. Other opportunities arose soon enough.
Brands have discovered it appealing to harness the power of information to attract buyers intelligently. This is a good idea as women of today care as much about product information as they do about catchy slogans and clear messages. Many fashion, beauty, and personal care brands have begun publishing blogs and videos to increase product awareness, feature usage cases, share hacks, and create conversations about what's hot and what consumers are facing.
Amante, a D2C brand of lingerie, is an example. It has a blog that it posts about its products. The blog also provides content to educate consumers on innerwear. It is not of Indian origin. Amante is part MAS Brands, a subsidiary Sri Lanka's MAS Holdings.
Beauty Barn, a Kohima-based marketplace for skincare, has a similar marketing strategy. It engages consumers in conversation and focuses on various factors that affect skin health. This includes skin type, weather, sun exposure, hygiene, and eating habits. Customers can make better decisions when purchasing products by understanding the pros and cons.
These initiatives are a stark departure from the marketing approach in the 1990s and 2000s, when brands focused on information and enticing rather than on telling.
Brands such as FabAlley are taking their communities to new heights. The online fashion shop was established in 2012 and claims to have a 150K monthly order volume. It caters to a large customer base, primarily women. According to the company, it saw a 50% increase in revenue for FY21 over the previous year. This brand is a great example of how to create a community that serves a purpose.
FabAlley has decided to focus more on building community than aggressively driving sales, in light of the current pandemic. It has also offered special deals and giveaways to its customers.
Tanvi Malik, cofounder and CEO of FabAlley, said that the pandemic has forced them to rethink marketing. We have chosen a more personal approach. We discuss topics other than fashion when we engage with our customers. We explore many topics in order to spark conversation with our community, including Covid-19 resources and snippets about well-being. These include fitness and mental health, as well as slice-of-life bits, and fun takes on the new norm.
Brands have moved beyond stale social media posts and created full-fledged communities powered with content. This is a critical role in keeping customers happy and giving them a sense that they are part of something. MyGlamm's most recent campaign uses this inclusion strategy to gain traction.
Creating Convenience
Ecommerce marketplaces have been a boon to both established and emerging brands in India and overseas, helping them with sales, marketing and logistics. Brick-and-mortar stores are often shut down due to pandemics. Marketplaces have been used by global giants such as Nike, Apple, and Dell to increase sales. Customers prefer to shop there because they can quickly access a wide range of brands and get fast, hassle-free shipping.
Online marketplaces have seen rapid growth due to their convenience. A joint report by Deloitte India & Retailers Association of India estimates that India's online marketplaces will be worth $1.2 trillion by 2022.
D2C players such as Purplle and Nykaa have adopted the marketplace model to take advantage of this opportunity over the past few years. They now help new-to the-market and not-so-well-known D2C brands to create touchpoints on platforms to diversify their sales strategy, create an omnichannel presence, and do so by helping them.
It is creating a new marketing story, though indirectly. This is what you need to consider. These D2C brand-driven marketplaces will attract customers who are eager to explore the market and try out new products. They'll also be happy if they find 'new brands' that truly fulfill their needs. For the new businesses, they can leverage a pre-made omnichannel strategy (if they have physical stores), with the guidance of market leaders to allow them to enter a competitive market and implement a growth strategy. It will eventually be a win-win situation for everyone: customers looking for appealing brands, businesses reaching out to prospects with compelling narratives, and a D2C enablement ecosystem that emerges to drive growth stories.