The Beauty and Fashion Industry is seeing an upswing with the Indian Festive Season at its peak for Diwali. From innovative product launches to trending marketing strategies, brands are utilizing every chance and approach to capitalize on the thriving market. On the sidelines of this, MediaBrief caught up with Gopal Asthana, CEO of Tata CLiQ; Shaily Mehrotra, Founder of Fixderma; and Vidushi Goyal, VP Marketing at Honasa Consumer Limited, to learn about their expectations for the festive season, the strategies their companies are leveraging, and their unique approach to marketing. Read on.

Being a high consumption time for fashion and beauty products, the industry is confident about an upsurge in sales. Vidushi Goyal, VP Marketing, Honasa Consumer Limited, shares, “We are quite optimistic about this quarter, given that consumer sentiment is resurging, and the latest industry reports promise an upsurge in consumer demand during the festive period.”

Shaily Mehrotra, CEO and Founder, Fixderma, notes, “We are expecting a spike in sale of skincare combos and kits as the consumers have become more aware and aligned towards skincare gifting.”

Tata CLiQ observes high demand in trends across their lifestyle vertical with a strong consumer preference for fashion apparel and footwear. Gopal Asthana, CEO, Tata CLiQ shares, “This festive season, we are anticipating a substantial increase in business compared to the previous festive cycle. As a customer-centric organisation, our goal is not only to meet the demands of our customers but also to provide a seamless and magical shopping experience.”

Marketing Strategy and Campaign Creatives

Festive campaigns allow for heightened engagement and provide a boost in sales. Brands leverage this time to emerge as front runners with creative marketing campaigns. 

Sharing Tata CLiQ’s marketing strategy for the festive season, Gopal Asthana shares, “We have been actively working on building an influencer-first approach on our social media to drive relevancy and intent amongst potential shoppers. We plan to double down on it during the festive season with the added lens of localising influencers.”

Vidushi Goyal says that Honasa, keeping in mind that the festive season is coinciding with winter in most of India, is focusing on “the right categories both from a festive as well as a winter perspective. The campaigns are being timed and targeted accordingly. The media approach, especially digital media, is to leverage ‘content X channel X region’ to reach the right consumer with the right messaging and products.” 

With the festive season being a time of events and appearances, it is important to keep skin looking healthy and glowing. Leveraging this, Fixderma plays to their strengths with their marketing campaign. 

Shaily Mehrotra shares “Our strategy is to focus on and create visibility for acne, melasma and hydration solutions. Through our influencer marketing campaigns, we are becoming a relatable part of the user’s everyday skincare and wellness essentials like footcare.”

Media Mix

“Our media split is more digital heavy. We are increasingly also seeing high growth in the cord-cutters segment and an increase in connected TV viewing. This data point helps us bring more efficiency into our media choices as well as helps us target the right audience through the right choice of media. Increasingly, social platforms are able to offer more contextual message-building and targeting options, which further are being leveraged based on categories and season,” reveals Vidushi Goyal on Honasa’s media mix.

Since “Consumers are gravitating more and more from traditional to new-age channels for the discovery of fashion products and trends,” Tata CLiQ is strengthening social media reach with their influencer campaigns.

Additionally, “We are leveraging our personalisation engine (across consumer attributes and browsing behaviour) to drive retention and conversion,” says Asthana. 

Fixderma is using “highly consumable formats like Instagram reels, youtube shorts, podcasts, live chats,” reveals Shaily Mehrotra.  

“We are using brand and relevant hashtags to ensure visibility at relevant spots. When it comes to social media, we are using it to the best of its capacity for the festive campaigns. Our festive content is focusing on the communication pillars-How, why, who,” Mehrotra added. 

On Staying Fresh and Relevant

To stand out from the crowds and move away from overused marketing  methods, “We are experimenting with AI-based creative and communication across multiple consumer touch points,” discloses Gopal Asthana about Tata CLiQ’s efforts.

Shaily Mehrotra says that Fixderma is unique in their approach from other skincare or beauty brands because “We have never pushed beauty, fairness, flawless complexion but we always focus on real skin issues and how real people should deal with it.”

Despite not using OOH or trends like CGI, “This is why our campaigns stand out as we carry out our messages through KOLs-Dermatologists, skincare experts, aestheticians and people with real skin issues and their journey to the treatment,” comments Mehrotra.

Vidushi Goyal says, “To stand out and build marketing on point, we have focused on being sharper in our targeting strategy with the right message (in some cases contextual builds) and the right product offering. This helps us reach the most relevant consumers with a message they are most likely to engage with.”