MUMBAI: The festive season has finally kicked in and brands have tightened their seats to make sure they don’t miss out on reaching any potential consumer. Its the time when you see lights, colours, festivity and a lot of ads around you. Be it on outdoor medium, television or digital. For any girl, no celebration is complete without a good pair of dress and a little red bold lipstick!
Think of weddings or festive Indian wear, and Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s famed fashion label is among the first ones to come to mind. Though owning a Sabyasachi saree or lehenga might be a dream for many, women around the country can now own a piece of Sabyasachi in their beauty kit. French personal care and beauty company L'Oréal Paris has tied up with the ace designer to launch a new collection of beauty products, specifically for festive season. This is one of a first where the French beauty label has collaborated with an Indian designer.
The L’Oréal Paris brand encompasses the four major beauty categories – hair color, cosmetics, hair care, and skin care – and includes such well-known brands as Excellence Crème, Total Repair 5 hair care, White Perfect, Fall Repair, Revitalift, Volume Million Lashes Mascara, Color Riche lipsticks, Superliners and True Match foundations among many others.
In India, the beauty care giant has top Bollywood celebrities including Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Deepika Padukone as Indian brand ambassadors.
The partnership seeks to showcase a beautiful blend of fashion and beauty inspired by the iconic cities of Paris and Kolkata.
The collaboration kicks off with a festive campaign focussing on strong eye and mouth makeup accents curated by Sabyasachi and shot on the streets of Paris, against the beautiful backdrop of the Eiffel Tower with L’Oréal Paris global brand ambassador Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
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The collection comprises of a range of 10 luxurious and intense lip colours, the quintessential black eye liner and a volumising mascara.
The announcement of the collaboration came from both Sabyasachi and the brand putting out thoughtful creatives on their social media respectively. This is the first of many more campaigns that the company has chalked out.
Indiantelevision.com caught up with L'Oréal Paris general manager Raagjeet Garg where he spoke about the collaboration, choice of Paris as the shoot location, way forward and more. Excerpts:
Over the past many years, L'Oréal Paris has partnered with various ace designers but this is the first time where the brand has an Indian name on board. How did you pin it down to Sabyasachi?
Yes, over the years, L'Oréal Paris has associated with a lot of international designers but this time, we wanted to look for an Indian designer who would align perfectly with what L'Oréal Paris stands for and also is a power house by himself. We looked around on when do people tend to buy cosmetics the most and tend to get ready and that’s when festive theme came in. Who comes to your mind when you hear the word festive? Sabyasachi was the perfect choice! He has an iconic design house and his brand values are exactly like ours. He is premium and a master when it comes it design thinking.
How long did it take for you to lock in Sabyasachi and roll out with the new line of products?
I think it’s been a year because from the time we first met him to now has been a journey of us understanding each other’s brand, deciding what kind of make up and look do we want to create, deciding who should be the face of the brand and shooting the actual campaign.
Why did you choose Paris? Why not focus on showcasing the Indian architecture and location since the collection is about festivals?
We have shot campaigns in India in the past. For this particular campaign, when you have two strong brands, it’s important that both the brands’ value come together. The shoot location perfectly showcased our international collection and Sabyasachi’s saree and gown.
L'Oréal has some strong female actors as the face of the brand. Why Aishwarya?
Well, it’s just the start of our campaign…
So, will there be more names added to the list for this campaign?
At this point, all I can say is that we are really happy to have Aishwarya on board. When it comes to festive make up that we really wanted to build, the Indian women really looks up to Aishwarya. That’s why we thought of starting off the campaign with her.
Sabyasachi broke the campaign on Instagram. Will this be a digital-first campaign?
We deliberately launched it on digital first because we knew our customers are digital savvy who should be the first ones to know about the campaign. Now that we have launched it on digital, we will take it forward on television, print and outdoor.
Speaking of Out Of Home (OOH), Loreal Paris has been spending a lot of OOH. Is that going to be a focus for this particular range as well?
L'Oréal Clay is a mass product where the reach was super important. Given the weather right now, the product actually speaks about what people are actually facing in the city. This particular campaign is all about engagement and we felt that it should be digital-first. Even though we will use outdoor extensively for this one as well, it will primarily be on digital.
The product range starts at Rs 600 which is kind of mid-premium to premium. Are you targeting the urban consumer for this?
Absolutely! As a company, we are still young and the idea is to target consumers in tier I and tier II cities as well. Owning a Sabyasachi product might be a dream for many there. This is a chance for them to be a part of the Sabyasachi family.
What’s your online v/s offline divide in terms of revenue?
I think we are pretty balanced when it comes to the sale from both channels and our objective is to build both the channels.
Will you be also using influencer marketing for this campaign?
Yes, to a large extend. Even though technically Sabyasachi and Aishwarya Rai are two of the biggest influencers in the country, we would still use other influencers to promote the products.
