MUMBAI: Furniture and home products marketplace pepperfry.com has unveiled a new marketing campaign to launch the pre-festive “Why Wait For Diwali Sale”.
Through this campaign, Pepperfry encourages customers to gear up for the festive season in advance by shopping the sale and availing discounts of up to 50 per cent off on just about everything on Pepperfry.
Diwali is typically seen as the time to refresh, renew and rejuvenate. Consumers tend to put-off their high-value purchases, like furniture, till Diwali in order to cash in on festive promotional offers and price offs. Pepperfry aims to tap these consumers, by giving them compelling reasons to shop now. The key message of this campaign revolves around driving interest to the “Why wait for Diwali Sale” and encourages consumers to shop for furniture and home products right now.
The new campaign revisits the brand’s core consumer promise of always providing unbeatable value, through great prices and amazing discounts. As the category leader, Pepperfry has been passing on the benefits derived by working directly with 10,000 home and furniture manufacturers to the consumers, thereby acting as an ally in their purchase cycle.
As a brand that has been ahead of the curve with its standout marketing strategy and communication, the new television commercial takes a highly stylistic, grand Broadway-esque approach to spice up the furniture and home ware category in India.
The campaign comprises one creative execution with 30 and 15 second edits that will be aired across key television channels like Colors, Star Movies, Sony, Movies Now, etc., multiplexes across 5 cities, digital and social media. It has also been adapted for radio for top five markets.
The total outlay for the month-long campaign is Rs 12 crore and will reach 10 million Indian households.
The film conceptualised by Law and Kenneth Saatchi and Saatchi, has a spirited, exaggerated vibe that is hard to miss.
Pepperfry chief marketing officer Kashyap Vadapalli says, “Pepperfry is known for single-handedly expanding the organised furniture category in India both online and offline. As consumers evolve beyond the hygiene factors like service and delivery we want to give them more reasons to shop by adding excitement to their furniture shopping experience with interesting designs, lots of variety and great value. Therefore, the tone and manner of our new commercial is vibrant with a theatrical approach which is very different from Pepperfry’s previous campaigns. With this campaign we want to trigger interesting conversations around the brand and the category.”
MUMBAI: Eight years ago, the concept of buying home furniture online seemed nothing more than an impossible task and worth a laugh or two. But today, things have changed drastically and buying furniture online seems so much more convenient and time saving than making rounds of multiple stores and choosing from the limited options each of them have.
Furniture is one of those few categories in e-commerce wherein quality triumphs over discounts. People are willing to spend a few extra bucks for better quality.
Even today, 90 per cent of India’s furniture sector continues to remain unorganised. Of the organised, only one per cent is online as per estimates. According to a report by Redseer Consulting, the home furniture industry in India was worth $25 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow to $35 billion by 2020 of which, the online section will be worth $700 million.
Launched in 2012, Pepperfry was one of the earliest entrants in the online furniture selling business. The company initially started off by selling furniture, home decor, furnishing, kitchen utilities, fashion and jewellery all under one roof. But after a year’s time, it decided to drop fashion and jewellery and keep its core to furniture.
Pepperfry, which commands a 65 per cent share of India’s organised furniture market, has its target audience in metros and mini metros. Urban youth, newer cities, complexes and migrant professionals are Pepperfry’s core customers. The majority of its sale comes from Bengaluru. Additionally, Pune, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai are also the company’s largest markets. In terms of sale, Pune is bigger than Chennai, Gurgaon is as big as Delhi, Bengaluru is bigger than Delhi and Mumbai combined.
Catering to a large number of young customers, the brand communication must be in their preferred medium – digital. Pepperfry CMO and head of new business Kashyap Vadapalli says that increasingly people are becoming extremely comfortable buying furniture on-the-go (on mobile devices) which wasn’t the case earlier as they preferred shopping only via desktops and laptops.
Digital will also change the way we shop going forward and enhance the entire shopping experience. Technology is reshaping the way we look and shop today. Brands across sectors are experimenting with technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to give a better shopping experience to consumers. Vadapalli affirms that over the next couple of years, we will see a lot of innovation in online furniture space. Pepperfry is investing in enhancing the AR capabilities on phone and if that happens, customers can judge the images much better, they can rotate the images much better and that will help them in taking smart decisions. The company is also looking at investing in VR to set up zones where people can try on different looks and set ups in a virtual fashion.
Although Swedish furniture major IKEA is using these technologies in the US, the renewed shopping model is still fairly new for the Indian audience and the technology back here in India hasn’t been perfected yet. He says that the technology is a little rough in India but it is improving very quickly. Pepperfry has looked at a lot of VR options but the images are very grainy and shifting between looks is a task. Vadapalli thinks it should take only six to 12 months for Indians to perfect the glitch and once it happens, consumers in India will prefer shopping only online.
While quality wins over discounts for urban consumers, the situation in rural areas is far from this. Although the digital penetration in smaller towns is increasing, the concept of buying furniture is still unpopular. This is mainly because touch and feel are still prominent in smaller pockets of the society and people still prefer going to their carpenters or brick and mortar store. Pepperfry doesn’t consider rural as its market as 90 per cent of its business comes from 27 cities that it already functions in but believes rural to be its growth market five years down the line.
Although one of the earliest entrants in the Indian market, Pepperfry today faces stiff completion from other players including FabFurnish, Urban Ladder and a new sub-segment in the category: rental furniture companies like Furlenco and Rentmojo. Pepperfry delivers to 150 cities using its own vehicles across the country, which is the highest reach in this segment. Its competitor Urban Ladder is present in over 100 cities, whereas FabFurnish’s specialised logistics service FabOne is available in seven cities, although the company uses third-party logistics firms to cover more than 100 cities.
After six years in existence, Pepperfry has launched 10 house brands that contribute 50 per cent to its business, 27 Pepperfry studios across 15 major metros and mini metros in the country and is planning to launch 12 more. Vadapalli states that modular furniture is the fastest growing category for Pepperfry today and while furniture drives maximum sales from the entire bouquet, all other categories are expected to grow faster in the next 12 months.
Pepperfry roughly spends anything between Rs 80 and 100 crore annually on its marketing which is split 50-50 between digital and offline (television). He adds, “Digital has always been our core focus and TV only comes in for big campaigns and it provides a business uplift. When we run a TV campaign, we see the traffic going up within an hour. We know TV works and so we will use it strategically, while digital is our continuous bread and butter.”
Although the company does not export to other counties right now, Vadapalli considers it to be a definite plan and idea for the future.
In today’s time, creating brand awareness is one of the key necessities for a successful brand image and Pepperfry has been a part of few branded content on digital platforms and will continue to do brand integration and create branded content.
In the second half of 2018, Pepperfry is all set with its huge campaign around non-furniture categories including kitchen and home decor. Vadapalli says that this campaign will be a major push for its sales.
Some new ad films from the campaign were launched on 14 April 2018.
GOA: They say the advertising sector is for hardcore creative people and by working round the clock all year, one needs an escape from it now and then. Goafest is one such adverting event that brings together all the creative minds in the industry to celebrate, sit back and enjoy three days in the beaches of Baga!
The 13th edition of Goafest hosted by The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) in association with The Advertising Club commenced yesterday.
Captains of the industry MK Anand, Vikram Tanna, Nakul Chopra, Vikram Sakhuja, Ashish Bhasin, Ajay Kakkar and Jaideep Gandhi lit the ceremonial light.
Pepperfry CMO and head of new business Kashyap Vadapalli began the session by speaking about the brand’s own growth story. The company wanted to promote Indian artisans and craftsmen and build honesty and transparency in the company. Today, Pepperfry has streamlined its business, and taken supply, mixed with technology, to the Indian consuming class. “We worked towards standardising the entire category. Since we were very close to manufacturers, it helped us bring value to the Indian consumer,” said Vadapalli.
He mentioned that Pepperfry has launched 10 house brands that contribute to 50 per cent of their business, 27 studios across 15 cities in the country and is planning to launch 12 more. The key learning from Kashyap’s session was to constantly evolve and listen to the consumers and their needs.
Next up, was a man who came swathed in a saffron loincloth, a.k.a Baba Ramdev – the mind behind India’s largest swadeshi (domestic) FMCG brand Patanjali. After starting classic style with a gayatri mantra, he dived deep, full Hindi, into how everything, from knowledge, emotions, actions, expertise, experience, skills, innovation, research, resource, and even waste converts to wealth.
Even though he had humble beginnings from an agriculture background, he was never scared to dream of a prosperous country, even for the poor, and the biggest financial powerhouse. “I only had one question: What can I do about this country? From farming to retailing, I haven’t studied anything, but the world is enough to teach me lessons. When you come face to face with reality, it teaches you lessons no conventional course can teach,” said Ramdev.
An avid rebellion of MNCs that he is, Ramdev mentioned that he made Patanjali a Rs 500 crore brand without any major investment in advertising as opposed to MNCs who believe in creating a fairy tale picture while selling every product. He said, “We don’t believe in having glamourous ads as we want our products to speak for themselves and only highlight the product’s benefits or ingredients.” He also announced that with the growing profit rate of Patanjali, the company will double its turnover in 2019.
Peppered with laughter, yoga, life lessons, jokes and harsh doses of reality, he shared the essence of his being: Jo karo, usko pura karo, 100 per cent daalo apna. Usko beech me mat choro, which translates to – Whatever you do, do it whole-heartedly. Give your 100 per cent and don’t leave anything mid-way. He also stressed that companies should not focus on cost cutting as it leads to delivering poor quality products which will result in a great fall for the company sooner or later. Companies also need to have an open mind about implementing newer technologies into their systems since the world is going digital and technological advancement is the need of the hour today.
While he encouraged everyone to take risks, he also said, “Whatever you do, do it without ego. Give it all. There is nothing called destiny.” Without any inhibitions, he also added that while some people depended on hard work, some relied on destiny and some believed in cheating. “I believe in universal justice. If you cheat, you might grow for 10 years tops. What will you do after that? Same is the rule for destiny. Work on your work; not on Gods.”
During his session, Ramdev also publicly announced that Patanjali will venture into selling liquid milk and other dairy products by next year. He also confidently declared that the company will also launch kids-wear, activewear, accessories and fashion clothing for men and women by 2021. He concluded his session by publicly announcing that Patanjali will also launch its own mineral water very soon and the company has already started work in that area.
MUMBAI: Pepperfry.com has launched a marketing campaign ahead of the upcoming festive shopping season of Diwali. This campaign is focused on the value that Pepperfry is delivering for consumers this year via the “Happy Diwali Sale.”
The campaign has been built on the insight that – the festive season is when Indians shop to fulfill multiple aspirations. This is a period, wherein one shops not only for themselves, but also to gift to loved ones, friends and colleagues. The underlying Diwali spirit is that of spreading warmth and joy and a frequent physical manifestation of the same is when consumers upgrade their own lives by acquiring significant lifestyle enhancers like – durables and apparel, it also translates into the gifting that they do to their near and dear.
But these spending aspirations compete with each other and with obligations such as EMIs and Insurance payments etc.
The happy Diwali sale is supported with no-cost EMI and other wallet-friendly features like cash-backs.
The focus of the communication is on the aspirations that consumers have, for themselves and how they compete with other priorities. The Pepperfry ‘Happy Diwali sales’ helps them to fulfill their aspirations by providing value. This is embodied in the film as “Iss Diwali ummeidon ko badhne dijiye”. (This Diwali, let your aspirations soar).
The campaign consists of two films which depict two different couples and narrates the story of their Diwali aspirations. One couple is portrayed by Rajkumar Rao and Patraleekha Paul and and the other by Mrunal Thakur and Gaurav Venkatesh. Each film brings out the competing priorities that the couple are faced with and shows how the Pepperfry Happy Diwali Sale helps them to get what they want this Diwali by providing good value.
The campaign will be promoted across a bouquet of English entertainment, movies, English infotainment, and select Hindi HD/SD channels/properties. It will be supported by outdoor and radio in key cities. The total outlay for the campaign is Rs 150 million. In addition to TV, the sale message is also being promoted across digital and social platforms like Google, YouTube, Facebook.
Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said, “The festive season is when our low prices are especially relevant to shoppers as they seek to fulfil their needs. These 30 days are also the key furniture buying period from a seasonality perspective and our sale and the campaign are targeted to provide us with a business-growth win.”
MUMBAI: Pepperfry.com has come up with a new marketing campaign to celebrate its fifth anniversary. It is giving discount of up to 50 per cent plus 10 per cent cashback to consumers.
The campaign is being aired across entertainment, English infotainment, movies, and lifestyle channels and select Hindi GEC HD channels/properties and regional channels. The total outlay for the campaign is Rs 5 crore. The campaign is also being run across digital and social platforms.
Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said that they were proud to be one of the few start-ups that had gone from strength to strength.
MUMBAI: Pepperfry.com has come up with a new marketing campaign to celebrate its fifth anniversary. It is giving discount of up to 50 per cent plus 10 per cent cashback to consumers.
The campaign is being aired across entertainment, English infotainment, movies, and lifestyle channels and select Hindi GEC HD channels/properties and regional channels. The total outlay for the campaign is Rs 5 crore. The campaign is also being run across digital and social platforms.
Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said that they were proud to be one of the few start-ups that had gone from strength to strength.
MUMBAI: Pepperfry has taken on the task of expanding the online furniture category through a new 360 degree marketing campaign.
The campaign comprises three creative executions which will be aired on television, across digital video channels and in multiplexes. This 360 degree campaign will also include outdoor, a bouquet of digital media including Search, display and Social channels. Pepperfry’s outlay on this campaign is expected to be above Rs10 Crore.
Commenting on the objective of this campaign, Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said “Our goal is to help 20 Million customers create beautiful homes by 2020. In these last few years, Pepperfry has reached a tipping point amongst early adopters and via this campaign we will expand the market by going up the product life cycle curve to address the early majority of shoppers.”
Talking about the insight and idea, Law & Kenneth Saatchi and Saatchi VP Debarjyo Nandi explained, “There are several of us who believe that getting furniture made at home will give us more control and get us exactly what we want. The problem is most of us are not sure of what we really want and what we are really getting into. The noise, dust, displacement, delays and budget overflows make it an even more painful process. Pepperfry is the easier and simpler solution to getting your furniture on-time, at a fixed price and the design and finish you want.”
The customer insight behind Pepperfry’s new 360degree marketing campaign reflects furniture made at home brings with it the physical inconvenience, time escalations, budget overruns and a lack of design/functional fidelity. Through this campaign Pepperfry seeks to educate customers about these potential pitfalls and provides them with an alternate choice of buying furniture through a seamless and Happy Pepperfry experience.
MUMBAI: Pepperfry has taken on the task of expanding the online furniture category through a new 360 degree marketing campaign.
The campaign comprises three creative executions which will be aired on television, across digital video channels and in multiplexes. This 360 degree campaign will also include outdoor, a bouquet of digital media including Search, display and Social channels. Pepperfry’s outlay on this campaign is expected to be above Rs10 Crore.
Commenting on the objective of this campaign, Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said “Our goal is to help 20 Million customers create beautiful homes by 2020. In these last few years, Pepperfry has reached a tipping point amongst early adopters and via this campaign we will expand the market by going up the product life cycle curve to address the early majority of shoppers.”
Talking about the insight and idea, Law & Kenneth Saatchi and Saatchi VP Debarjyo Nandi explained, “There are several of us who believe that getting furniture made at home will give us more control and get us exactly what we want. The problem is most of us are not sure of what we really want and what we are really getting into. The noise, dust, displacement, delays and budget overflows make it an even more painful process. Pepperfry is the easier and simpler solution to getting your furniture on-time, at a fixed price and the design and finish you want.”
The customer insight behind Pepperfry’s new 360degree marketing campaign reflects furniture made at home brings with it the physical inconvenience, time escalations, budget overruns and a lack of design/functional fidelity. Through this campaign Pepperfry seeks to educate customers about these potential pitfalls and provides them with an alternate choice of buying furniture through a seamless and Happy Pepperfry experience.
MUMBAI: For one of India’s premier festivals Diwali, Pepperfry has planned an ad campaign with a clutter-breaking message that builds on this Diwali spirit.
The campaign has been conceptualised by L&K Saatchi & Saatchi. The ad builds on the communication that unlike the transactional nature of every day interactions, in this festive season people have an opportunity to reflect on their behaviours and actions and their relationships with others.
Pepperfry used this insight to showcase that people can undertake ‘good actions’ to form an emotional bridge with others.
The coming together of the festive social context along with the individual transformation becomes a powerful catalyst for good action, which is what Pepperfry captures in the message “Iss Diwali Kuch Badal Ke Dekhiye.” The brand associates with the communication as a key enabler of good actions, thereby altering relationships positively.
The TV campaign is live across a bouquet of English infotainment, entertainment, movies, and lifestyle channels, select Hindi HD general entertainment channels (GECs) as well as some regional channels.
The message is also supported by in-cinema advertising across the top seven cities and outdoor in top four markets. It will also be propagated across the digital and social platforms like Google, YouTube and Facebook.
Pepperfry’s earlier campaigns have stressed on rational benefits like quality products and service level standards of free & efficient delivery and assembly along with the other core category triggers. Now, Pepperfry is establishing the emotional benefits of the transformation that its products can bring to people’s lives.
Talking about the TVC, L&K Saatchi and Saatchi executive creative director Kartik Smetaceksaid, “Diwali seemed like the perfect occasion for pepperfry.com to widen its ambit of communication and own a larger brand idea. That’s where the ‘Iss Diwali, kuch badal ke dekhiye’ campaign was born. The films seek to reinvent the role of furniture, which is not traditionally seen as a gifting item. By design, the stories are subtle and warm, keeping away from the dhoom and dhamaka of typical Diwali advertising, to instead capture the spirit of the festival.”
The storyline is inspired by real life situations that will encourage people to introspect and experience how shift in attitudes and thinking can lead us to make a difference via the ad’s core message.
L&K Saatchi & Saatchi senior vice president Debarjyo Nandi added, “This Diwali, Pepperfry has made a change. And its message is just that, ‘to make a change’ by reaching out to someone and spreading the happiness. In these TVCs we have used furniture as the trigger for this change.”
Pepperfry chief marketing officer Kashyap Vadapalli said, “In the past 18-24 months, brand Pepperfry has grown significantly and established itself as the number one destination for furniture and other home products in the country. We are now in a position to move beyond communicating just the features of a great furniture product or experience to establish Pepperfry as an agent of transformation. We’ve tapped into the Diwali festive spirit to make an appeal to the consumers to: ‘Iss Diwali Kuch Badal Ke Dekhiye.’”
Vadapalli further added, “We really want consumers to make a change and connect with the goodness within themselves, something that they don’t do in their busy daily routines, and then extend that connect to the brand because of the key role it can play in how this life enhancement can be manifested.”
MUMBAI: GroupM’s Motivator has bagged the media duties of online furniture and home products marketplace, Pepperfry.
The account of the Mumbai-based Pepperfry is estimated to be approximately Rs 80-100 crore.
As a part of the media mandate, Motivator will be responsible for managing the traditional and digital media planning activities for Pepperfry. The agency will be working closely with the team at Pepperfry to plan and implement pioneering campaigns tapping various communication channels including emerging media avenues.
The mandate to Motivator follows Pepperfry’s strategy to step jump the brand positioning in the minds of the consumers. The company recently raised $100 million from Goldman Sachs, Zodius Technology Fund, and existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments and Norwest Venture Partners.
Pepperfry CMO Kashyap Vadapalli said, “We are confident about Motivator’s ability to deliver innovative strategies to assist us in building a strong consumer brand. Their fresh approach towards media planning and the strong synergy with our plans makes it a cohesive partnership. We look forward to work with them.”
Motivator general manager Trishul Bhumkar added, “It’s an exciting challenge to change the way Indian consumers buy furniture and we are excited to be a part of this challenge. In continuance of working with client who expect business results rather than only media strategies, PepperFry is a great addition to the family. Motivator’s best foot is forward in this challenge.”
