Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Lingerie and nightwear brand Clovia's new digital campaign makes fun of the women's innerwear scenario in India even as it promotes it online.
A fairly new entrant in the nascent online lingerie category, Clovia, has released a new digital campaign about women innerwear taboos, that features copywriter-turned-comedian Neeti Palta. This is the brand's first audio visual campaign, that has been conceptualized in-house and produced by Creative Warehouse.
Says Pankaj Vermani, founder and CEO, Clovia, "We started with the thought that we will change the world, but the world is changing itself. Things have changed a lot in the past three years. Online lingerie as a category is growing at 55-60 per cent annually."
Explaining the reasons for this growth rate, he adds, "Internet penetration and privacy are the two reasons this platform has worked well." The preferences seem to be changing too. He adds, "Earlier, women preferred the basic blacks, whites and nudes but today, we see the colourful and fancy stuff getting really popular. And this change has come not only it big cities but in tier II and III towns as well. When shopping online, there is no fear of being judged for your preferences."
Pankaj is happy with the way things are turning out but the category he operates in still faces taboos. And he feels that Clovia's campaign will entertain the viewer, while creating a presence for the brand - a win-win situation."
Palta talks about her experience on working with the brand, "The idea that they had in mind blended very well with my thinking, hence it was a good fit. The content related back to the brand very naturally, which is why people will connect to it."
Clovia's competes with portals such as PrettySecrets and Bangaluru-based Zivame. Pankaj adds that 60 per cent of the website's sales come from tier II and III while half the traffic is via the mobile website. The overall lingerie segment is growing at the rate of 17-22 per cent per year, one of the highest in the apparel category.
Bra-vo?
Rohit Raj, co-founder, The Glitch, disagrees, "I find the campaign a Big 'Me too' of sorts of another campaign recently by FabAlley where they used Radhika Vaz. That one had much more risque content and kept in tune with the image of the the comedian." He continues saying, "The content is cleverly trying to communicate the various problems that the brand is solving and accomodating the nuances in the script. But the point is that the content itself is a little weak. It is like you have constrained the performer by giving them strict boundaries to operate within brand parameters. The greatest risk I feel to a brand is to sit on the fence. You are neither going all out to shock and awe, nor are you blatantly throwing the brand around. So in an attempt to tone things down and yet be cool, it fizzles out."