The footwear manufacturer VKC Group has recently launched a fashion brand- DeBongo, and has roped in Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador. The brand has launched a campaign ‘You Are You”. The group is working on a VR app to make the shopping experience more user-friendly.
Touted as an affordable sporty fashion brand, VKC Razak, Managing Director, VKC Group, believes that India has a huge potential for an affordable sporty-fashion brand that values the uniqueness of the user and raises their confidence every time they wear it.
“We want this brand to explore the potential of growing the confidence of every human being through contemporary fashion. We want the brand to highlight the fact that a beautiful India will be a collective of confident people,” he added.
The brand’s target consumers are primarily fashion-conscious youth and the ones who are young at heart.
“Eventually, it will be a Digital-First brand with the media skewed to the new media and digital media, but to start off, the brand will be using traditional media as well,” said Razak while speaking about the marketing plans for DeBongo.
In January 2022, VKC Group launched ‘ Shop Local’ campaign to woo customers to nearby shops and help local neighborhood businesses flourish. The campaign was aimed at energizing local shops and quelling the threat of online marketplaces eating up local businesses.
Speaking about the success of the campaign all over India, Razak said, “We want to help neighbourhood businesses by helping them to get customers to their shops. The ShopLocal idea is not just a campaign, we want this to be a movement – a local revolution in customer behavior if it can be. We want other brands to adopt it. We do not want to hold the ShopLocal idea to ourselves as it is one of the most powerful ideas that have emerged since COVID to support neighbourhood businesses. Let other brands also use it and spread the idea. “
Speaking about the changing consumer trends in the footwear sector in the Indian market, Razak said, “Customers are going in for convenience and contemporary fashion. Trends on the whole are also changing fast. Global fashion is becoming a local trend in no time because of social media and information technology.”
Elaborating on the overall marketing and advertising strategies of VKC Group, Razak said, “VKC has become known as a corporate brand with a high focus on value systems. We are extending the goodness quotient of our group by establishing the red energy ball named GoodSpot on our product identity on most of our products. We are focusing on brand positions that can be easily related to our audience. We believe in only one strategy for our business and we do not bifurcate strategy into product strategy, advertising strategy, operations strategy, and more.”
“We have actually catapulted the budget of the footwear industry in marketing by going in for jacket ads. And also by roping in the legend of Indian cinema, Amitabh Bachchan, as a brand ambassador for the first time in the footwear industry in his 50 year long career,” Razak concluded.
