Brands
VLCC disrupts festive skin care marketing with Animoji campaign
MUMBAI: With the beauty and skin care category hugely cluttered in the Indian sub-continent, VLCC, along with Grapes Digital has launched a campaign leveraging a brand new feature on the latest Apple phones – the Animoji.
The festive season is a particularly busy time for marketers, when almost any conversation finds it difficult to drive recall. However hard they try, cutting ice with the consumer always becomes a challenge.
To address this challenge, the campaign has Shiny Aunty and Chaddaji, two very quirky characters, created by Grapes Digital, the creative agency for VLCC.
By narrating stories and creating product usage contexts, these characters not only win the heart of the consumer, but also managed to create an industry first innovation.
Speaking on the innovation, Grapes Digital COO Shradha Agarwal says, “Our agency solutions have always been founded on the pillars of creativity, innovation and technology. The Animoji innovation has managed to disrupt the category and stand-out strongly in the cluttered Diwali space making us the first brand to use it. Going forward, we will continue working towards creating more such innovations and conversations for the brand.”
VLCC Personal Care digital head Ajeet Bawa adds, “Grapes has always led the game in terms of using innovative approaches to digital advertising. The current Animoji campaign only reinstates the trust that we have in them. We look forward to continued creativity and innovation from their stable for our brands.”
Grapes Digital is a full-fledged digital marketing agency, founded by Himanshu Arya in 2009. Started as a technology driven agency it has moved towards being a digital first agency, aiming at helping brands embrace creative, technological and digital media evolution and revolutionising all aspects of their business as per the need of the digital age.
It offers varied digital service like digital strategy & planning, digital content, creative – user experience, design & content, website/app design & development, social media marketing, search engine optimisation, experiential technology marketing, digital media – planning & buying, performance media – planning & buying and influencer marketing.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
