Streax Professional recently launched its latest ad campaign for Argan Secrets Hair Colour. Starring Vaani Kapoor, also the current brand ambassador for Streax, and stylist Vipul Chudasama, the campaign aims to spread the message that it's time to embrace a new level of shine.

To make the product and campaign launch more experiential, the brand also hosted the 5th edition of the SPECTRUM Collection.

Sharing more on the campaign was Priyanka Puri, Sr. VP - Marketing, Hygienic Research Institute (parent company of Streax Professional). She spoke on how this range was meant for professionals under the umbrella of Streax Professional.

According to Puri, Streax Professional’s business model is equally split between B2C and B2B clients. “We are the largest Indian home-grown brand in the professional setup and then comes the retail side where we have Streax serums, shampoos, the entire range of colours and more. Hence, there is a balance which we do across the portfolio.”

Sharing the brand’s media mix, Puri said that the digital medium plays a large role for the brand and so they create a lot of educational content pieces for the product and the looks. The brand has been focusing on influencer collaborations because the idea is to create a pull from the consumer for the newly launched shades.

“We are democratising experiential marketing by making it a live show. We have already reached 8 lakh people. This year, the biggest shift is going to be more about democratising the experience via live shows,” Puri said.

Further, the brand is looking at creating a lot of digital content, which would be then seeded into digital platforms.

“Targeting the hair stylist community is our focus this year when it comes to influencer marketing. Chudasama and Shirin Merchant are our biggest influencers as of now. Till now, it was more education and plain vanilla digital marketing. This year, we are going to get into proper influencer marketing,” explained Puri.

Considering the brand already has two mega-influencers within the hairstylist community, the next level is about roping in micro and nano influencers just to get the reach to a sizable level.

As per her, Streax is looking at a balance of reach for the expert advocacy as well as the reach of the content, which Merchant and Chudasama will get it to the brand.

The hair colour industry has seen the emergence of several D2C brands but Puri opines that competition is always healthy because it keeps the brand on its toes. “Our DNA is quite like a D2C. We are the largest brand in the professional industry, but our DNA still works like a challenger code for us. Hence, for us, if some other D2C brand is getting a good innovation, it's good to learn from them as well in parallel. It gives us an opportunity for everybody to come and grow together because we are not a saturated country in this domain. The more the D2C, the better for us,” she said.

But to stay ahead of the curve, what matters is who is able to address the latest trends and Streax has a better understanding of those global trends since they have been in the industry now for nearly two decades, claimed Puri.

Speaking of demand from tier 2 and 3 cities, Puri revealed they are seeing a lot of penetration of experimentative colours, even from tier 1 and tier 2 towns and that is purely because of the internet itself since everything is now accessible. The reds and the blondes are definitely penetrating a lot to what it was earlier. There's still time for the greens and other colours to penetrate.

When it comes to Streax going across borders, it's a good place to be according to Puri but they really need to first juice out the Indian market and then think of global.

“The personality of the brand, overall ethos of the brand is completely made to be global and not only Indian. So, if I have to place it now, we definitely understand all the global trends and that's what works for us,” Puri explained.

With the festive and wedding season coming up, Puri believes India is all about August to December since it is a festive period and it is the time when you see experimentation going up. “You see all the new colours because people want to try them for weddings and functions.”