To keep its brands relevant, Marico is tuning in to the cultural zeitgeist.

The company’s marketing strategy for its haircare range combines the demographic knowledge of its customers with cultural insights, often ignored in traditional marketing.

Koshy George, Chief Marketing Officer, Marico Ltd, says cultural insight is important, given that it is derived from the social environment that embraces both consumers and brands.

“We continue to tap into cultural insights for our brands, especially hair oil. The south has coconut oil, the north mustard oil. Cultural habits play a major role and we tapped into that for our new innovation with Hair & Care,” George told BusinessLine .

Cultural insight

The result: Hair & Care dry fruit oil with walnut and almond. The insight was borne out by the fact that “in the north, the key things mothers give their children to consume was walnut and badam for the proteins and vitamins. While it has benefits for the body, it also provides nourishment to the hair,” says George, adding the company is looking to tap into more cultural trends and regional insights to drive premiumisation.

The executive says cultural insights happen to be rooted in understanding the symbolic representations that exist within society and consumption. And engaging with culture helps brands reflect what matters to people, thereby creating relevance.

New campaign

For its core Hair & Care category, Marico decided to innovate and reach out to consumers with a new campaign. A vintage Dilip Kumar song and some cool hair moves brought the brand more than seven billion views, taking out-of-home (OOH) advertising to a completely new level.

Advertising major Madison World’s outdoor unit, Moms, used wind sensor technology for Hair & Care’s campaign #KhuleBaalBefikar. The campaign highlighted the product’s USP, which is ‘light and free open hair’ using tech-enabled innovation.

Digital screens were deployed at high traction sites at different Metro stations in Mumbai and bus shelters in Jaipur.

The gust of wind that accompanies the arrival of a train or bus activates the digital screens making a static image of the open hair of Shraddha Kapoor start fluttering in the breeze.

The result

Surprised commuters happily clicked pictures and took videos of the digital screens, engaging and bringing over seven billion views for Marico’s single product.

“We also used Tik Tok and had consumers send us some crazy hair move videos,” says George, who admits the company is targetting a different age group with its hair care range. “The millenial consumer wants a much lighter oil and we have to engage with them differently,” he adds.

Marico has been building an engagement proposition on different mediums. George says Hair & Care is “a young, fun brand for audiences who like to enjoy every moment. Consumers are always looking for entertaining content on new-age social media platforms and our media mix was devised scientifically keeping in mind newer formats that would help gain engagement.”

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