Plum set to increase marketing spends by 60% in H2: Shankar Prasad
After being in business for 10 years, D2C beauty and personal care brand Plum Goodness is now shifting its focus from product-specific marketing to brand marketing. Its overall marketing spend for H2 2024, comprising mainly the festive season, is set to go up by 60% according to Shankar Prasad, CEO, Plum Goodness.
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“There are a lot of products to be spoken about, sold and grown bigger, which will continue to happen. But the brand needs to stand for something in everybody's mind. For that, we need to look at a variety of media, communication and avenues to get the message across,” Prasad told exchange4media in a recent interaction.
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The brand marketing focus is set to be amplified via various media channels, be it social media, marketplaces etc. He added that while digital is still a lot about deploying at the bottom of the funnel, around 25-30% is now being allotted to building brand awareness. “In an ideal scenario, I would like for this to be 70% and product specific, marketplace specific or offer specific communication to be 50%. But that's still some way away,” Prasad shared. Premiumisation, Competition and more Panning out and looking at how the past 10 years have shaped the beauty and personal care market, he pointed out that whichever metric one looks at, be it qualitative or quantitative, India is still a long way away from reaching the levels of consumption in this category that the rest of Asia or the rest of the world has. The beauty and personal care market in India is projected to generate a revenue of $31.51 billion in 2024. When compared globally, the United States leads in terms of revenue generation, with an estimated revenue of $100 billion in 2024, according to Statista. “I think the industry has grown in double digits through these 10 years, including during the COVID years or at least in high single digits, if not double digits through most of the year. Yet, whichever metric you look at, we are still between half and one-eighth of what the consumption is elsewhere,” Prasad added. While the relatively slow consumption growth is one trend persisting in the industry in India, premiumisation is also on the rise. Prasad explains that premium is no longer just paying extra money. It is about seeking better experiences and not hesitating to spend for the same. “And they're also willing to pay for the right value there, which is good news for brands like us because we don't want to and we can't compete at the mass end of the market,” he said. In terms of action in the market, Prasad noted that the competitive intensity is well-documented and has rather increased. “And that's because entry barriers have gone down quite significantly over the last few years. The size of the market allows for a lot many more players to coexist,” he further said. The rise in rural penetration and discoverability Speaking about the rural penetration and sales in tier 2 and 3 markets, Prasad mentioned that when Plum started a decade ago, the consumer base was largely urban and metro markets. Back then about 10-20% of consumers used to come from non top 20 cities. “But now it is vast, it is almost a homogenous market, thanks to the influence of social media and platforms like OTT,” he said. According to Prasad, discoverability is no longer a problem because people—irrespective of where they live—are on their devices. With the rise in disposable income, Plum has been seeing healthy traction outside of top cities. With the growth in consumer response from tier 2 & 3 markets, the brand’s influencer marketing plans are also evolving. For Plum, around 15-20% of influencer content is vernacular. “Also, many of our ads run specific targeting with specific languages,” he added. But as per Prasad, the reason why vernacular is just around 15% and not 50% is because ‘Hinglish’ (Hindi+English) or even a reel without a voiceover have started appealing to almost the whole of India. However, the differentiation exists when retail distribution comes into the picture. “Our retail distribution is present in most of the cities but the density is far higher in the larger towns and cities. And from that point of view, we should focus our media more on the top 10 cities that we are presenting,” Prasad said. YouTube vs Instagram - The preferred channel? When it comes to digital platforms and fetching maximum ROI, he shared that Instagram and YouTube are both working well enough. “The good part about YouTube is that it has a longer life than Instagram and has slightly more long tail benefits,” Prasad mentioned. The brand as of now is not as heavy on CTV advertising, owing to the big budgets. “But for a brand which is of our scale and with the ambition that we have, we will definitely be investing more and more into CTV going forward,” he added.
Tags : Shankar Prasad D2C Brands Beauty Brand Personal Care Products Plum