Summary
How the act of social distancing turns into social resisting when women are around a Wild Stone man. Lockdown, masks, and distancing changed grooming for the worse. Wild-Stone reversed this by turning a problem to an opportunity. By engaging a potential ‘low-hanging fruit', men who were actively ‘engaged' in online dating and exciting them about what deos can do in this new normal, staging a comeback and managing to sell a sensorial product online.
Challenge
For a country with more men than women & strict cultural restrictions, deos like Wild Stone became wingmen to help approach women. Until 2020. The pressure to smell good was no more. The category tanked and Wild Stone was hit: Hopes were on UNLOCK 1.0 but nothing moved for Wild Stone. We found that deodorants were seen as a part of ‘social grooming'. Done with keeping others in mind. With masks & distancing limiting social interaction & hence making attraction difficult. Men were holed up inside homes. Grooming became optional. The pressure to smell good was no more. There was nothing deo could do for them at home. We knew that our relevance was linked to how much this guy feels can ‘happen' in the new normal. Which meant: For our guy to see value in social grooming, Wild Stone had to make attraction feel exciting again.
Objective
1. Stop the sales decline & regrow sales by 28%. A critical reversal keeping in mind that peak festive season was coming soon. 2. Getting 2.18 lakh men to buy Wild Stone online. Deodorant is a sensorial product largely bought and sold on ground after testing. But grooming products were now being bought online & creating intent amongst the audience to buy Wild Stone without testing was difficult but important for success. 3. Create online purchase intent & consideration amongst 5 lakh men in a month. Getting men to buy a grooming product without testing was difficult, hence it was important to create strong intent. 4. To create intent, we had to deepen engagement & excite men who are dating online. Which meant reaching out on platforms like Tinder & driving them into purchase action. 5.Pandemic dented budgets hence effectiveness of the message was important for a small intervention.
Strategy
In the new normal, attraction game was dull outside. One would think that this would put a pause on dating. But our conversations with young men revealed otherwise. We found that the dating game was still very much alive, but it had shifted online with more and more Indians getting used to the idea of online dating. Research showed that 72% Indians thought it was possible to fall in love with someone online they have never met in person. While around 45% thinking that online dating is the new normal for dating in India. Also, about 39% also tried a video date as their first date in 2021. A right swipe was the new attraction at first sight. The distance that lockdown had created, heightened the need for men and women to come together and finally, when they stepped out, social distancing and wearing a mask was in their way of coming close. Making them miss the fun and thrill of physical attraction. This revealed a unique but universal truth about dating in a pandemic: While we know that distances make our hearts grow fonder, in times of pandemic, DISTANCE WAS DRIVING DESIRE! THIS TRUTH SHOWED US A WAY TO FLIP THE PROBLEM INTO AN OPPORTUNITY. With a man's looks locked behind the mask, deo was the way to make his presence felt & attract from afar. And the right deo could add to his mystique, making him more desirable. We decided to shift our role - From a deodorant for confidence to approach with ease To A deodorant that turns distance into a playful tease Our big strategic idea was to Help men turn distance into a playful tease by showing how Wild Stone makes resisting the distance for women difficult!
Data
Data Sources - Wild Stone Consumer Dipstick2020 Wild Stone Dating Survey 2020 Open Sources: scroll.in (survey by Bumble India) Note – Nothing else mentioned about data.
Solution
The campaign had to do 3 things: 1. Excite the young men about possibilities of attraction in this new normal 2. Make him feel more desirable even behind the mask 3.And make Wild Stone a reason for that desirability while being responsible & not showing a breach of distancing. Here is how we did it. 1.Show the effect of Wild Stone on the woman & not the man. The impact of deodorant is often shown on a man's confidence. And it's his confidence that gets him the girl. We repurposed that code to show the effect Wild Stone can have on a woman. A strategic shift that made it more exciting for men. With that was born our campaign Idea: Social Distancing turns to Social Resisting for women because of a Wild Stone man. 2. Reach out to men in the act of online dating. Men consuming dating content online & using online dating platforms were the most critical audience. The campaign had to engage them and excite them into buying a Wild Stone deo while attraction was still top of mind. Hence, we went sharp with our media approach: Tapping on to men on YouTube consuming dating videos + songs TINDER – targeting them in the middle of action. We pushed contextual messages at late night between 9 pm to 11 pm, a time when online dating activity peaks.
Results
Wild Stone was back in a man's arsenal. the campaign successfully engaged young men to deliver growth after consecutive quarters and open a new effective platform for the brand to tap into for growth. Objective 1: Stop the Sales Decline & Regrow By Sales By 28%. Result: The Campaign within Just 4 Weeks Grew Sales By 50% Vs A Target Of 28% Objective 2 & 3: Get 2.18 lakh men to buy Wild Stone online by increasing intent amongst 5 lakh men online. Result: A Largely Offline Product Successfully Managed To Create Intent For It To Be Purchased Online! In the 4 weeks the campaign ran – 1) 7 lakh users showed greater consideration and purchase intent which is more than 10% lift. 2) 2.8 lakh men went into our buy page across platforms. 3) We saw a 59% increase in e-commerce sales. Objective 4: deepen engagement & excite men who are dating online. Result: The Approach To Talk To A Young Audience, Engaged In Online Dating Paid Off 1) 84% of overall campaign engagement came from men consuming dating content. 2) 2x more men clicked on our ads vs the industry average. 3) Just 1 week of intervention on tinder got 1 lakh+ men to click and buy wild stone before swiping right. 4) 379% + above our planned click throughs Objective 5: Effectiveness that allows maximum ROI from a small budget intervention RESULT: Social Resisting Punched Above Its Weight 1) The ad was watched 129% more than expected 2) 18% more reach than planned 3) 3x more click throughs than planned via tinder. Our exclusive partnership with E-commerce partners allowed us to tap into their reach especially when men were buying their grooming products during pandemic.
