We don't believe in playing Discount Games: Ashim Chatterjee, abof.com

When it’s your style which does most of the talking, Aditya Birla Online Fashion, abof.com is definitely a rescuer for many of young divas and dudes who want to set the style rather than be a trend follower. The advertising campaign which says ‘Don’t just Look Good, Look Famous’, targets the millennials.   The ad focuses on driving the current generation into being a celebrity rather than merely following one.

Chief Marketing Officer, Ashim Chatterjee says, “With abof.com you can make an ordinary day extraordinary. The city is stuck in its mundane routine, chasing after the same tedious day and looking at same old boring images. It is up to the young fashion stars to shake things up and take fashion to the roads and bring them to life. Abof is sharply targeted at the millennials, largely, the 18-25 year old fashionistas. Our promise is to treat them like a celebrity, and help them Look Famous. We don’t expect them to browse through a mountain of merchandise and figure out which styles to buy.”

The idea which was developed in-house along with a creative agency partner now has already received more than 800,000 views over YouTube.com. The main film which is 60 seconds long was premiered over YouTube around mid Nov’15 and had a targeted audience across our target consumer who is primarily the urban youth of India. He adds, “The production was done by an external production house, based out of Mumbai. We hired a critically acclaimed fashion director of international credentials from Russia. The actors for the film were chosen from 4 countries (India, Russia, Ukraine and Germany) after audition of at least 50 different actors. 90% of the film was shot in Istanbul with some parts of the film being shot in Mumbai. After YouTube, as a next step, the film got aired on national television – across select niche channels in English and Hindi. We are getting very positive response from all quarters. It is currently on-air. As part of our launch campaign, we were present on the front page of The Times of India – all over India in the first week of Nov’15.”

The film has a very aspirational and international look. On this he says, “In the current media clutter, we are confident that this film will help break clutter and make abof.com stand out from the rest. We are targeting not just a healthy share of voice on TV, but a majority share of mind of consumers watching the TV.”

The campaign is the outcome of hard work put by a large and young talent base which consists of 200+ highly energetic employees. It also made sure that it has a wide reach with desktop site, mobile site as well as an app. Ashim who wants their brand to be seen as more curated, very trendy and fashionable, more youthful, and delightful to shop with, and somewhat positively quirky says, “Our consumer research shows that existing players are associated with large range and great discounts. We want to be seen by consumers differently. We have approached our brand very thoughtfully right from inception, and we are confident that consumers will see the difference immediately. That will help us build more awareness and traction with lesser marketing monies than usual. Our focus is on consistent and sharp messaging about the brand, and memorable consumer experience.”

Right from the click on to the URL of site to taking delivery, the whole process has been designed keeping in mind todays trend and preferences of target audiences.  Ashim says, “The landing page of our website or app is not the banners or product catalog, which is today’s norm. It is our proprietary fashion feed, much like you would see in an Instagram. It is visually very rich. We have also significantly addressed the fit-and-sizing problem by introducing a first-of-its-kind 3-D Trial Room, which is much better than anything available in India at this point in time. This feature is far ahead of other players today. All our 50+ consumer touchpoints have been designed for the millennials in terms of communication approach and tonality. The emails, the SMSs, the call center experience is highly differentiated versus what’s prevalent in the market today. And yes, we do Sunday deliveries.”

Talking about key tie - ups including vendors, media partners and distribution channel he further adds, “abof has assembled best-of-breed technology, adapted for uniquely Indian requirements, to ensure flexibility and scalability. Mobile experiences have been built from ground up to cater to fast growing mobile user base. Our technology approach is a healthy mix of Build and Buy. We have bought many components from IBM’s Websphere Commerce stack. Our in-house team will focus on highly differentiated technology components only (e.g., Visual Search). abof believes in building deep partnerships with a select set of fashion brands that are highly relevant for the expectations of our target consumer group – The glam inspired young fashion lover. We work with globally the best vendors across all our touch points.”

Ashim who does not consider the need to take the route of initiatives like refer a friend is rather confident about strong digital strategies in place to increase their consumer base. He further says, “Yes, Celebrity lines are being evaluated. High end collections is not on the radar for the first year. We might choose to add something based on consumer feedback.”