Mumbai: One of India’s oldest conglomerates, the Godrej Group, curated and launched its very own Experiential Marketing IP, the Godrej L’Affaire in 2017. Godrej L’Affaire is all set for its fourth season to be held in Mumbai on Saturday, February 22 at Godrej One, Vikhroli.
Bhumi Pednekar, Shweta Bachchan Nanda, Monisha Jaising, Shantanu Moitra, Sushant Divgikr, Karanvir Bohra, among others will headline its fourth season. This year, Godrej L’Affaire is themed on ‘New Beginnings: Going Back to Roots’ to showcase India’s unparalleled legacy and rich culture that will inspire future lifestyle experiences.
MediaNews4U spoke to Sujit Patil, VP & Head of Corporate Brand & Communications, Godrej Group, on how the traditionally rooted brand entered into the experiential marketing space with Godrej L’Affaire, to secure a special place in the heart of consumers, especially millennials.
What’s your take on experiential marketing?
Experiential owned brand properties are increasingly becoming a powerful tool for building communities and advocates. Such platforms can also be used to mobilize influencers – celebrities, bloggers and key opinion leaders – who have their own followers and, more importantly, understand the kind of content that will appeal to their base. Influencers can also help marketers in creating focused, relevant and engaging content around a brand’s offerings. Such platforms mobilize key influencers who are then able to churn out authentic content around your offerings as they have experienced your brand and understood its purpose better.
How do brand platforms help the mother brand?
Through strategically designed experiential owned media platforms, brands can help foster trust and brand loyalty; they can also help build a community, especially when experiences are effectively combined with influencer engagement and digital storytelling. Case in point, after 3 years of Godrej L’Affaire, Godrej group’s admiration scores have gone up by 6 % based on the various parameters by Millward Brown, including scores on other parameters which have also significantly gone up. Godrej’s ranking in the Interbrand listing has gone up and 15 of our brands in the TRA Trust Report have been featured, out of which 5 have secured a number one position.
What made you start something like L’Affaire?
Research prior to the launch of Godrej L’Affaire revealed that the youth’s affinity towards Godrej Masterbrand needed to be more relevant. We realized that just advertising is not immersive, and we needed a Masterbrand strategy for the Godrej Group, which engages with millennials. In 2017, Godrej L’Affaire was established as a brand agnostic platform, to enable the Group to complete the circle of lifestyle. Content creation was one pillar, and the second was an experiential engagement, which increased the consumer salience with our brands. We also wanted to build a community out of these people.
Godrej’s personal brands have engaged influencers a lot, how does it work as ROI for the brand?
Godrej Group had a huge chain of influencers and digital PRs within the corporate brand and communications team. And so we thought of mobilizing this community of influencers, give them a platform to experientially engage with Godrej brands and lifestyle space, and help create content in a meaningful, authentic manner.
Once they see, touch and feel the product, they experience it and then the content will automatically become much more authentic. We thought that if we were to give the influencers this platform, bring them all together in a celebratory style where we celebrate the lifestyle, it would be much more effective.
We created an integration of almost all our brands at Godrej L’Affaire having unique USPs. One example is Godrej Eve Cameras, which caught over 1600 leads. Every untold story about our brands comes and manifests itself in an experiential manner at the Godrej L’Affaire, which rubs off in a very positive manner, leading to more sales. Godrej L’Affaire not only brings together various Godrej Group businesses present in the lifestyle space but also non-competing external brands.
Approximately 300 integrated videos are created in one evening by 40 brands at Godrej L’Affaire. Each brand creates around four to five videos with multiple influencers on an organic basis. Brands with so many influencers create discerning content and use it over a period of time
L’Affaire is in its 4th year of learning and challenges, and what are your expectations this year?
Godrej L’Affaire is a brand agnostic platform and as a strategy, we invite non-competing brands in the lifestyle space to participate in the experiential on-ground engagement. Getting external brands on board, curating meaningful integrations and delivering 360-degree amplification is a time-consuming process. The challenge is to get good brands to believe in the platform and this new form of experiential engagement with influencers. With every passing year, I believe, it will be easier. This year, our aim is to take Godrej L’Affaire to a point where it becomes the single largest brand-agnostic platform in the country to celebrate the lifestyle and create a community of advocates. The larger strategy is to create a digital safety net on social media, so as to hold the consumer’s trust in case of any eventuality of adversity or crisis. The number of brands in this season has gone up and the engagements, quality and kind of talent on board are going to be much higher.
