Swaminathan Balasubramanian
In the age of digital drive a buyer in Kerala can be updated on the trends in Paris. Gone are the days, a customer need to walk in the counter and decide. Every customer has options wider and smarter in their mobile devise on the fashion around the world.
Seemati, one of the leading retail brand believes in 360 degree approach for its marketing and communications plans. As of today, a challenge for a retailer is to understand the milennials entering a store according to Beena Kannan, one of India’s leading fashion designers who also runs one of the biggest chain of retail showrooms in Kerala since 1980. Speaking to medianews4u, she eloborated on their markecom and Brand strategy while reiterating that that the way advertising is perceived has been changing constantly From her earlier generations.
In-store activities:
While Seemati bets big on 360-degree campaigns, activities in their store had given opportunities for them to engage with the customer in maximum level. “Some of the key activities include bringing dancers From Rajasthan for a Jaldance or Dancers From China for a Dragon Dance to name few. Others included the social awareness campaign among and by the students on the importance of voting. Time to time, we had brought mascots in and out of the stores.”, Beena says further concluding that they even had fashion shows inside the stores.
New age Consumer:
Representing the third generation of a family which is into the textile business for more than 100 years, Beena feels that the Gen-Y crowd which had unleashed the potential of the digital world has an access to fashion trends across the globe. “However, they are not clear in their purchase decision. One major trend we see among the customers , predominantly women is they would like to replicate exactly what looks in a magazine or a posture or other image they see in social media. Practically it is not possible.” Many cases, they come up having something in mind and end up buying something which is exactly contrary to what they had in mind initially.
Traditional Advertising:
The retail giant Seemati has been a traditional advertiser in all forms. “We had been spending big pie in print earlier. In fact, our campaigns had always been uniquely creative for more than 30 years. Even now we get our shoots done in places like Portugal, Africa, Cape Town with our models wearing traditional sarees”, Beena says further adding that her connect with the customers through digital modes had increased despite not having a e-sales (e-Commerce) platform. Seemati is in all social media platform and updates and engages its customers on a regular basis.
In Store Experience:
In addition, Seemati fine-tune its staff to understand and deal with the customers. “Our store is designed according to different trends. We train our staff in terms of verbal language, body language and giving detail insights about the product both in terms of quality and style. ” Seemati has both self-select segments and executive-assistant segments in her stores. “On a dry day we make our staff assist the customers till the billing happens while on the busy day, we try to bring some additional staff From other counters to manage the crowd. Training is what helps us in all aspects”, says Been Kannan who further added that every morning, the staffs are updated on the trends and updates on the products they sell and what are the new products they are going to sell.
