Mumbai: Hotstuff Media Group has joined hands with Doctors for You (DFY), an Indian humanitarian organisation to help them with their overall communication strategy and campaigns with a focus on social media. The association is part of Hotstuff’s CSR activity to help DFY to reach a wider audience and create the impact required to fight Covid-19.
DFY focuses on providing medical care to vulnerable communities during crisis and non-crisis situations, emergency medical aid to people affected by a natural disaster, conflicts, and epidemics. Hotstuff helped DFY by creating powerful social impact stories through their social media assets.
“Storytelling can do more powerful things than persuasive content. What we did was nothing in comparison to what the DFY team did on the ground. Each life-saving incident becomes a powerful story that impacts people’s lives. I am particularly glad that Hotstuff could be of aid to DFY in reaching these stories to people so that they knew about DFY and could reach out to DFY when they required them and recommend them to all communities”, said Hotstuff Media Group CEO Arun Fernandes.
The Social Media assets of DFY were revived with creative & qualitative content to click with the right set of audience and gave them the desired visibility. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn were primarily utilized and engagements with the followers were created through Instagram Stories and posts. And the new audience was garnered with the help of Influencer engagement.
Macro Influencers and Celebrities such as Jhanvi Kapoor and Rannvijay Singha showed their support to DFY by sharing it on their Instagram handles. Online Fundraising events with comedians Atul Khatri and Amit Tandon were also a huge success.
Commenting on the work done by Hotstuff Doctors For You Founder Dr Ravikant Singh said, “The Covid19 crisis was unprecedented and our need for resources and volunteers grew stronger by the hour. Hotstuff, stepped in at the right moment to power our efforts with the right communication strategy and social media support that helped us garner a great response for our on-ground initiatives”.
MUMBAI: D:FY, a sports and lifestyle brand has launched a Women’s day campaign with the intent of breaking the stereotypes set for women. The campaign hits the chord with the empowering video that highlights the various shackles that women have broken free from.
The campaign has been conceptualised and executed by Jack in the Box Worldwide and is dedicated to the outstanding women who have flourished in the world of sports and have truly defied the odds.
MUMBAI: Marathons are passé! Walkathons seem to be the new sought after activity for every health and fitness enthusiast.
Riding on the walkathon wave, Skechers, an American performance and lifestyle footwear brand has announced its first edition of Skechers Performance Mumbai Walkathon.
The walkathon initiated/organised by Skechers India will take place on 7 October 2018 which also happens to be the World Walking Day. The motive behind initiating the walkathon is to educate people about the benefits of walking.
Skechers chief executive officer for South Asia Rahul Vira says, “Our dedication has always been to the enthusiasts of all levels, ranging from beginners in the sport to the elite athletes. Walking one mile a day can burn up to 100 calories. Something as simple as a daily brisk walk can help you live a healthier life. By bringing in a wide range of walking shoes we want to inspire people and invoke the need to be on the move and stay fit, through which people would experience walking from a different perspective altogether.”
Interestingly, Skechers also has a dedicated category for walking shoes and Vira thinks it’s a perfect synergy with Walkathon. “I wonder why nobody thought of doing it earlier where people would come together to just walk! Skechers has been the brand that created walking as a category and it just made perfect sense to align it with walkathon,” he said.
The sports company does not want to partner with any other brand or association for its walkathon and wants to rather do it all by itself.
Every brand needs a face in today’s day and age but the sports company does not believe in going through the same route. Although international singer Camila Cabello is Skechers’ global brand ambassador, the company is not looking at having an India brand ambassador anytime soon.
“We don’t have a set target audience and want to target everyone from the age of 5 to 65. Anyone who wants to buy a comfortable shoe or apparel is our consumer,” said Vira. “Initially when we entered the market, we were heavily present in the west but now have a presence across north, south and even mini metros and rural.”
Online is the go-to medium for every marketer out there as it helps a brand in reaching a mass audience and increases its distribution and sale. People love to shop online as it allows them to go through a large portfolio of products, saves them time and they get deals and discounts on the products.
However, it’s rare that you will find Skechers products on discount online. A pair of shoes that you buy online and offline will always cost you the same. Why is that you ask? Simply because the company does not believe in the online model and wants to keep out of the discounting game. Vira says, “Our presence online was limited but since we’ve made our terms clear about not wanting to discount, we have increased our presence online. That is because we don’t want price to be a deciding factor for consumers. We haven’t gone all out on e-commerce because it’s driven more towards discounting and we don’t want to do that.”
Skechers in India faces stiff competition from international giants Nike and Adidas that are amongst the top two brands in India followed by Puma and Reebok which are lower priced. Priced at a mid-premium range, Skechers may find it difficult to carve a niche for itself. Recently D:fy was launched in India with its mid-premium range of products. But with the increasing competition and entry of newer players in the market, it sure is an interesting space to watch out for.
MUMBAI: Affordability is every Indian’s first thought when purchasing anything. However, quality sports shoes tend to be high priced and the likes of Nike Air or Adidas Superstar are beyond the reach of normal people’s budgets.
Enter the latest entrant to try to make the impossible possible – D:FY (read: defy). Launched by fitness enthusiasts Prashant Desai and Rajiv Mehta, who are marathon runners themselves, it aims to make great sports gear accessible to the Indian makes with great technology and breath-taking looks.
For Desai and Mehta, the idea for D:FY seeded with a personal need to buy quality sports products at an affordable price as running was becoming expensive for them. “As runners, we had to buy products by global brands that are heavily priced which has always pinched us. There are enough brands available in the market but they don’t give enough quality products and technologies required to run well,” says Desai.
The company competes directly with Indian brands in the same category such as Action, Power, and Red Tape but aspires to compete with international brands including Sketchers, Nike, Adidas, Puma and Reebok in a year’s time. On this, Pradeep says, “We definitely aspire to compete with bigger players in the market. If you compare a product of D:FY’s which is priced at Rs 5500 with a competitor’s Rs 5500 product, ours is definitely way better in terms of technology. But most people compare apples to oranges whereas they should compare apples to apples.”
Backed by FMCG mogul Kishore Biyani along with Farhan Akhtar and ex-cricketer Anil Kumble, the company has Indian cricketer Hardik Pandya and actor Nidhi Agerwal as brand ambassadors.
The company wants to target a mass audience and hence has decided to price it at a sweet spot. D:FY footwear range targets Indian fitness sensibilities — walk, gym and multi-sport that starts from Rs 2200 whereas apparels start from as low as Rs 799.
Marketing the product efficiently is equally essential to ensure brand awareness and recall and this is where most companies get it wrong. Since digital is available at a much cheaper rate than television D:FY wants to advertise heavily on digital and BTL. It wants to reach consumers at as many touchpoints as possible but will refrain using television at the moment as it comes at an exorbitant cost.
The company is set to invest Rs 10 crore for advertising during the first year of its operations. An optimistic entrepreneur, Mehta says that they are extremely aggressive about their capital spending and will invest in outdoor, digital, BTL, radio and maybe in-cinema advertising along with influencer marketing.
The co-owners don’t want to be just another online brand but will look at ramping up the offline presence by opening stores where consumers can touch and feel the product before buying them.
D:FY is planning an aggressive physical presence with 22 store launches across nine cities of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Surat, Vadodara, Mohali, Bareily and Hubli by the end of September and plans to take this to 100 stores by 2022.
Online sales are equally important for any brand and especially if you are just starting out. Usually, brands partner with multiple e-commerce websites to sell the products which help them in reaching out to a large set of audience. But D:FY has tied up exclusively with Amazon to sell the merchandise which kind of narrow downs the scope of reaching a mass audience that shops online.
While the products will be available across all channels, the company does not want to sell the products at a discounted rate as it believes the price-point is pretty much justified.
Though major sales for the brand will come in from metros and mini metros, the co-founders want to reach the rural consumer as well. It will also face a stiff competition from local players that sell sports shoes for as low as Rs 200 and apparel at a mere Rs 100-200.
Where most manufacturers – national and international – are looking at shifting their manufacturing units to India in order to promote the government’s Make In India initiative, the duo wants to continue manufacturing the sports products in China. They will, however, bring the apparel manufacturing business to India which is also manufactured in China.
For 2020, the company has set huge targets where it will become more aggressive in terms of marketing and advertising the products, with an increased number of stores and SKUs. The sports brand targets to have revenue worth Rs 60 by the end of its first year’s operations.
The store has all the feels you get when you walk into a Nike or Adidas outlet. It will, however, be interesting to see if D:FY can create a niche for itself in an already cluttered market where Indians still prefer buying international products for the sake of quality.
