Pepe Jeans & Their Influencer Marketing Journey
By Rachit Juneja
June 8, 2021
“We don’t just want to tell people what to buy and what will look good on them, we also want them to experience our denims through the journey of people who genuinely inspire them through their art and travel stories.” - Priyaranjan Manay, Head of Marketing, Pepe Jeans.
Pepe Jeans London was born in 1973 on the streets of Portobello, worn in the world today. As denim pioneers, they have consistently reinvented the definition of denim to keep up with the trends. It is an iconic brand that is synonymously associated with denim and limitless creativity. Pepe Jeans London gives you the foundations to exude self-confidence, uniqueness, and authenticity.
Pepe Jeans London was launched in India in 1989. Looking back, over the years, the brand has flourished and continues to expand throughout the country, in sync with its global identity. Pepe Jeans showcases the most comprehensive and trendiest collection of denims and casual wear for adults and kids as well as a robust collection of innerwear for men and a brief collection of footwear for adults. The brand also launched Beat London by Pepe Jeans; a sub-brand that caters to the fashion needs of young men while offering a great value proposition. Beat London by Pepe Jeans is inspired by the urban pop culture scene that is reflected in its style that is vibrant, fresh and easy going. With jeans as the focal point, Pepe Jeans and Beat London by Pepe Jeans, both brands develop collections covering all occasions and fashion trend needs of the young adult.
We got in touch with Mr. Priyaranjan Manay to find out more about Pepe Jeans’ influencer marketing journey and here’s what we found out:
What makes your brand unique, in terms of your influencer marketing initiatives?
“Pepe Jeans is all about real fashion, real people. The objective is to highlight the brand’s inclusive personality with the key messaging – Wear Pepe, they all do!
It’s a great way to associate with socially active stylish individuals who champion a diverse universe of non-mainstream pop culture. They help highlight our core product stories uniquely and creatively that brings out our key messaging that there’s a Pepe Denim for every adventure, for every fit, for every style, for every mood and for every story.
We don’t want to only tell people what to buy and what will look good but we want them to experience our denims through the journey of people who genuinely inspire them through their art or travel stories. How a Pepe denim can add comfort, fun and style to their routine.”
For a particular campaign, how do you decide on influencer marketing for it?
“When it comes to millennials and gen next, around 40% of people reported buy products online after seeing it used by their favourite influencer. They trust blog reviews more for their purchases as compared to commercial advertisements. Hence, we have made Influencer marketing a major part for almost all our campaigns as it works really well when you want to attract a new target audience of specific interest groups.”
How do you measure the RoI?
“We measure our influencer marketing campaigns basis quality of content, reach and engagement. Our current purpose is to attract a new set of audience and is not linked to ROI directly.”
Tell us about the process of shortlisting influencers? How do you leverage the uniqueness of each influencer?
“Firstly, we associate the denim collection to a specific category of influencers according to its functionality. We go through their profiles to check their content quality and to get a sense if they will understand the product and brand expectation. Most importantly, their personality should represent the brand. We love working with influencers who are niche, who are extremely talented but not explored, who look promising and who stand for something they believe in.
For our Stretch X and Softflex denim campaign we associated with influencers from different walks of life but who have the same love for the great outdoors or anything adrenaline. With the hashtag #FreedomToMove we associated with a young couple who love road tripping across our beautiful country with their furry kids encouraging pet friendly travel. Another one was the first Indian female F4 racer to win internationally and another one is on a quest to find the most unexplored places. It perfectly and seemingly brought out the style, fit and functionality of the denim through their story. In a Stretch – X and Softflex denim they are ready for whatever the adventure demands.
Similarly for our Wiser Wash Sustainable denim campaign, we wanted to encourage people to wise up about water conversation and denim sustainability, to organically educate them about Wiser Wash denims. We partnered with fashion conscious influencers who are actually into a sustainable lifestyle to maintain the authenticity and genuineness we leveraged their uniqueness that fit really well for the campaign.”
Do you have any long-term associations with influencers?
“We don’t have a long term association with any influencer but we have worked again with some if we really loved their content. There are so many talented influencers out there, partnering with new influencers help reach out to a wider audience.”
What are the pros/cons of it? Would you recommend it to other brands in this category?
“Pros: It helps reach a relevant and broader audience, it helps build credibility as the consumer trusts the influencer they follow, faster turnaround of content.
Cons: Difficult to measure direct ROI, lack of brand loyalty as they work with many other brands, shortlisting the wrong influencers.”
What was the role of your media/creative / PR agency in your influencer campaigns?
“While we mutually close on the concepts and shortlisting of influencers, we do work with a social media agency that manages the execution and coordination.”
Besides influencer marketing, what are the other 3 most rewarding activities in your marketing campaigns? How has Covid 19 impacted your market?
“After the initial months of the Covid-19 outbreak, we at Pepe Jeans India began to introspect and reimagine the business. We identified new opportunities and reassessed our business strategy. As initial steps, Pepe Jeans has introduced a unique fashion home delivery service across its stores nationally. Customers could now shop from the safety and comfort of their home from a product e-catalogue that is made available to them. Products selected were delivered to the customer’s address of choosing within less than 4-5 hours from the nearest Pepe Jeans store while adhering to all safety measures as per WHO guidelines.
Additionally the brand also introduced a one of its kind fashion on wheels concept – PEPE ME UP Fashion Truck, that went from place to place stocked up with the latest collection. Customers were invited to check out the latest collection on wheels all while maintaining strict social distancing and other WHO safety protocols.”
If you were to re-do any campaign, how would you do it differently?
“As explained in our influencer shortlisting process, we do a lot of research and planning before we execute any campaign and have managed to pull them off successfully. I’m unable to think of anything there is to redo.”
What is a recent trend in influencer marketing that you think is here to stay? Do you see any innovation coming up in the space of influencer marketing?
“It has been reported that Instagram reels seem to work really well and helps achieve a better reach compared to Instagram posts organically. A new trend seems to be catching on with the recent launch of reel remix.
Chingari, a social media platform, ventured into video commerce as a part of its monetization strategy. In a recent article, the platform has partnered with e-commerce giant Amazon India to roll-out the shoppable video feature on its platform. Think of them as compulsively watchable commercials—with a direct link to buy a particular product. It has become increasingly clear that short video clips are the future of e-commerce. Only time will tell.”
If you were to summarize your influencer marketing strategy in 1 word, what would it be?
“We don’t want to only tell people what to buy and what will look good but we want them to experience our denims through the journey of people who genuinely inspire them through their art or travel stories. How a Pepe denim can add comfort, fun and style to their routine.”
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