Upasana Kaura
The festival season tends to be a barometer for consumer sentiments and spends, setting the stage for frenzied bouts of promotional activities by marketeers. Brands across are rousing with innovative campaigns and products offers to match the consumer sentiment and partake in the festive celebrations.
Linen Club is no different. This brand from the Aditya Birla Group recently unveiled a unique campaign called Homecoming – to mark the annual celebration of Onam “to reciprocate the love Kerala has bestowed on the brand over the years”.
The campaign showcases a heartfelt homecoming of family and friends to their roots based on the age-old tale of the King Mahabali and a celebration of the folk artforms of Kerala to bring in the New Year, with Mala Parvathy and George Kora enacting the video story.
The largest retail chain in linen in India, Linen Club has a network of 200 + exclusive brand stores and 7000+ multi-brand outlets across the country. Available at e-commerce platforms such as Myntra, Ajio, Nykaa, Amazon etc, it has now also launched its D2C website. In conversation with Life & More, Satyaki Ghosh, CEO, Domestic Textiles (Grasim Industries) Aditya Birla Group tells us more:
How does the company plan to elevate the brand’s positioning with their latest Onam campaign?
The campaign brings alive the authentic aesthetics of Onam & the expertise and expanse of Linen Club with a showcase of wide palate of fabrics and apparel that the brand offers. The song Thiruvonamullil Nirayenam is a unique endeavour by a fashion brand like us to present a local folk melody and join their customers as they enjoy the festive season.
Please share your social media strategies and engagement ideology.
Linen is a very niche category. As popular as it is in few parts of the country, the awareness at an overall level is limited. As category leaders, it is Linen Club’s continuous endeavour to further strengthen and grow and recruit a new base into the category. Hence our social media strategy is to both educate about linen while keeping the audience engaged through interesting content and trending formats. Through our social media, we also connect with a younger audience, and hence to opportunities to speak more on trends and linen fitting occasions is more.
What are the marketing innovations adopted by Linen Club to reach the target audience?
Linen Club’s passion, authenticity and expertise in creating the best linen fabrics and apparel is apparent in the campaign focused towards Onam. It displays the variety and the robust portfolio of products the brand offers. Linen Club and Linen Club Studio offer premium linen fabrics and ready-to-wear apparel like shirts, jackets, trousers, kurtas, mundus, etc respectively to match the spirit of the festivity. In the past two years, to keep pace with ever evolving consumer needs, Linen Club has launched several first of their kind innovations in the category, such as our wrinkle-resistant range, stain resistant range and more, to add more dimensions to Linen wearability experience.
What is the strategy helping the brand advance in retail space?
We are excited to demonstrate the wide palette of colours, categories, designs & textures we offer in pure Linen. Combined with consummate craftsmanship using cutting edge European technology we ensure best in class sustainable Linen products in both tailored as well as ready-to-wear category. The driving factors of the brands advancement in the retail space is its unique combination of characteristics that it portrays and the loyal consumer base it boosts off has helped the brands reach greater horizons.
How do brands break the cultural and regional barriers and encouraging inclusivity?
Brands shoulder the responsibility of playing a key role in creating a more equitable society at the grassroot level. To create awareness and acceptance of an inclusive society, brands need to work towards breaking down barriers and increase access. The intent of the brand needs to be bonafide, therefore, brands must introspect and re-evaluate whether the campaigns they build are truly symbolic of the brand’s core values and whether they are empowering the consumer. The way brands can inspire trust in their target audience is when they lead by example and others will follow suit and this can be done with an honest, immersive 360-degree narrative enhancing the brand reputation. It should be more about participation, a celebration of being alive, being active, and being encouraged to be better. A brand is a direct manifestation of the values the company represents, and at the core of those values must lie empathy and an ethical value system.
What are your future plans?
Considering the increasing adoption of linen in the market, we will focus on increasing our penetration in south and build the North region more. We are also continuously focusing on the apparel part of the business as the demand for apparels in growing with the younger audience.
