We gravitate towards digital-first, while exploring flyers, OOH, and in-store branding: Shankar Prasad, Plum

Plum, a science-first, vegan beauty brand established in 2014, recently launched its new Niacinamide range through the ‘Chemistry That’s Just Bright’ campaign. Featuring three playful short films, the campaign introduces Plum’s Niacinamide & Rice Water skincare lineup, designed to deliver what it calls bright, hydrated, and visibly radiant skin. The products—2% Niacinamide and Rice Water Simply Bright Face Wash, 10% Niacinamide Face Serum with Rice Water, and 2% Niacinamide and Rice Water Gel Cream—take centre stage in these ad films that celebrate everyday self-care moments.

Plum’s campaign aims to reflect its commitment to making skincare feel personal and joyful. From morning routines to nighttime rituals and carefree days with friends, the films encapsulate the magic of finding a skincare companion that feels real. Each scene looks to highlight the confidence and glow that Plum’s formulations bring to its users.

Medianews4u.com caught up with Plum founder, CEO Shankar Prasad

Q. From a marketing perspective what were the priorities and goals for Plum in 2024 to push products like the men’s brand Phy? To what extent were they achieved?

Plum’s core is science-driven, 100% vegan skincare. We also make select SKUs in haircare and makeup that is skin-first. We have Plum BodyLovin’ as a sub-brand that does fragrant body care like no one else. With PHY, we have a bunch of very exciting products, but it’s not a big area of focus for us.

Q. In FY’22, the brand generated revenue of Rs 250 crore. For this fiscal what is the expectation and which are the key markets that are driving growth?

We do not give out revenue guidance, but suffice it to say that we have been consistently focused on the right inputs and right metrics for the business, and growth is a natural outcome of that process.

For us, D2C still continues to be a strong driver of growth seeing a lot of investment, followed by our assisted sales channel in retail. We’ve also grown exceptionally in the North region this year.

Q. Less than half of Plum’s revenue comes from the top eight cities. So, a lot of the marketing focus is on the tier two and three towns and cities. What tactics were employed to target consumers more effectively in a very competitive category?

The spread of digital has democratized access to information, and commerce, across the country. The credit for the geographical spread of most new-gen brands goes to social media, influencers and to e-commerce channels.

Having said that, being a D2C brand, we engage directly with our customers to understand their motivations, needs and pain points, and build that into our product and brand design, so that we appeal to the aspiring skincare user regardless of where she’s located.

Q. Were experimentation and premiumisation important themes in 2024 for Plum and the beauty category?

Yes. People are looking for better experiences, and are unwilling to settle for second-best. Equally, they are quite keen to be “in line” with or ahead of, trends, which take hardly a few days to spread around the world, thanks to digital. And so it’s important for us as a brand to continue to listen to what our customers are saying, and give them a superior experience every single time.

Q. During the festive season what sales trends are being seen in the beauty category and for Plum compared with last year?

While we continue to maintain an upward trajectory, festive season by itself has been a mixed bag for us this year. Some channels have done well, some haven’t.

Some categories have, some haven’t. We are still going through the data to see what has worked and incorporate those learnings for the future. Just to clarify, we’ve still grown very well over last year, and so this evaluation is against the very high expectations that we had going in to the festive season.

Q. How did the idea for the ‘Chemistry That’s Just Bright’ campaign come about? What are the various facets to it?

From Day One, Plum has had a cherished relationship with its customers, aka Plumsters. No line captures this relationship better than “we have chemistry”, which we unveiled a couple of months ago.

Combine that with the fact that over five million units of our niacinamide skincare range have been sold, and chiefly because people see the “bright side” of things thanks to the goodness in the formulation, and you have “Chemistry That’s Just Bright” spring to life!

Q. What was the media mix for Plum in 2024? Was it more digital focussed?

As a digital-first brand, digital media is where we naturally gravitate towards and that is still the major share of our advertising. Having said that, with our expanding retail footprint, we have been experimenting with other media such as flyers, OOH and in-store branding to balance the mix. It’s too early to tell where we will land in terms of the ratio of digital to non-digital.

Q. Quick commerce platforms expanded their offerings significantly in 2024. How did Plum and the beauty category benefit from this in 2024?

We’ve been growing on these platforms slightly ahead of the category growth, which itself is in healthy triple-digits (as it’s still early days of adoption). Here too, there’s a lot of discovery and experimentation afoot, and we are working with the key platforms to fine-tune our offerings (e.g., pack sizes, combos etc) in line with specific requirements.

Q. Consumers are going to retail media during the festive season for product information. Could you talk about Plum’s presence on these platforms to leverage this trend?

Whether it is online or offline retail, we have partnered with retailers to launch new products, educate customers about our existing products, and also to drive overall brand visibility.

We have been calibrating our spends carefully at various stages of the funnel to better achieve our marketing objectives. It’s also passe to think about retail channels purely as “bottom of the funnel”. There’s a lot happening here in terms of customer engagement that merits a closer look from a budget allocation point of view.

Q. FCB/SIX India bagged the digital media mandate for Plum this year. What is the mandate and so far, how has the relationship been?

The mandate is simple. FCB/SIX has a cockpit view of things, or rather, an ATC view of things because they see so many planes flying. There’s no way we can bring all that visibility and data to decision-making by ourselves.

So they tell us where the incremental rupee needs to be spent, and as it’s a continually evolving space with emerging priorities at our end, too, it needs frequent review and reset to make sure we’re tracking to where we need to track overall. They’ve managed to bring in the agility and data orientation needed on something like this, but every day is a new day!

Q. On-ground what kinds of experiential marketing activities did Plum do in 2024? What role do these play in brand building and driving conversions?

We’ve been trying a bunch of ideas around our exclusive stores, such as sampling, contests, meet the team etc. Similarly, our on-ground teams did a great job of activating around local festivals like Pujo. These drive brand recall, relatability and also reduce the barrier to trials.

Q. Rashmika Mandanna is an investor. What does she bring to the table?

Rashmika brought in relatability and recall to the brand when she was on board as the face of the brand. She is right now only a financial investor and is not operationally involved.