Lifestyle IP L’Affaire Effective for Direct to Consumer Communications: Godrej Group’s Sujit Patil

by  Mugdha Gaonkar Entertainment | February 23, 2021 | Interview

Sujit Patil Godrej Group Godrej L'Affaire

With the pandemic, media spaces have been shrinking leading to a rising appetite for owned media platforms. Godrej L’Affaire, a curated experiential luxury lifestyle platform by the Godrej Group, went live on February 14 and will conclude on February 28.

To know more about the IP, EVENTFAQS Media reached out to Sujit Patil, VP and Head of Corporate Brand and Communications at Godrej Group, for insights on the 5^th edition of Godrej L'Affaire going digital, vision, challenges, future initiatives and more.

Tell us about Godrej L'Affaire. How was the IP conceived initially and also how did you arrive at this year’s theme #LiveItUp2021?

Godrej L’Affaire is one of the IPs we have created in line with our strategy of launching owned media properties. The three pillars of our owned media properties vertical are – community building, content creation and experiential engagement. A research way back in 2017 revealed that our consumer connects and perception in the lifestyle space could be much better. The research also threw up data around the need to engage even more with the millennials and Gen Z. We also realised that a significant number of brands within the group portfolio played in the lifestyle space. It was the best opportunity to roll out an owned media platform that enabled experiential engagement with our brands in the said space, build a community of lifestyle enthusiasts and enable creation of authentic content based on real experiences.

The fourth edition of Godrej L’Affaire, which took place in February 2020, was a tremendous success. More than 1300 influencers including 150 prominent personalities and KOLs (key opinion leaders) attended the one-day soiree with masterclasses, sessions and festivities throughout the day. The most sought-after lifestyle influencers posted about their experience with over 40 participating brands that led to over 143 million impressions and 63 million reach. Over 450 media coverages, 100 videos and thousands of content pieces were generated that helped meet multiple desired objectives.

For 2021, a physical event was not possible for obvious reasons. However, with the thought of enabling a great positive start for 2021, we came up with the theme #LiveItUp2021 for our fifth season.

With over 40 brands participating in this virtual experiment, Godrej L’Affaire aimed at virtually doing justice to the three pillars viz. community building, experiences, and content creation. A quirky web series that features a courtroom drama with influencers suing 2020, strategic tie up with content platforms, and a pilot to achieve social commerce through a catalogue of lifestyle brands with special discounts are the highlights of season 5.

Godrej L’Affaire is turning out to be an effective platform for direct to consumer communications.

What is your vision for the 5th edition of L’Affaire and your expectations from it as it has gone digital?

The larger objective and desire are to position L’Affaire as an effective brand-agnostic platform in the country to celebrate nuances of lifestyle and create a community of lifestyle enthusiasts. Season 5 with the theme #LiveItUp2021 is 100 percent virtual and has in store some innovative consumer engagement and content generation plans. Over the 15 days starting Feb 14, Godrej L’Affaire will have flash contests, live streaming sessions, #LiveItUp sale and our nine-part web-series #LiveItUp2021 that will integrate brands in a very subtle and effective manner.

The innovative nine-part web-series #LiveItUp2021 takes a long, hard look at the year 2020 in a fun, conversational manner. The web-series has been conceived as a quirky courtroom theatrical in which viewers will see the year 2020, played by Jamie Lever, put on trial for the disruptions it caused in our lives this year from travel and food to parenting, grooming and various other nuances of lifestyle. Other than Jamie, some of the well-known faces from the industry have been featured.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Godrej L'affaire (@godrejlaffaire)

We are piloting social commerce through the #LiveItUp sale with exclusive deals and collections from more than 40 brands across categories.  Some of the Godrej brands that are featured during the exclusive #LiveItUp sale are Godrej Professional, Godrej Appliances, Godrej Properties, Godrej Security Solutions (EVE Home Camera, Home Lockers, UV case), and so on. The other external brands that we have on boarded to support home-grown Indian brands are Park Avenue, hand painted designer bags Paul Adams, luxury pret brand MxS, Reneé Cosmetics, organic nutrition brand Wellbeing Nutrition, Fantasie Chocolate and Isharya Jewellery among others.

Popular Bollywood and television celebrities are coming together for live tete-a-tete sessions that one can stream live from the Godrej L’Affaire Facebook and Instagram handles. The interactive sessions will touch upon a diverse range of subjects—from fitness and nutrition to Bollywood banter.

As part of the lifestyle festivities, flash digital contests will be announced throughout the digital event, giving people a chance to win hampers of their favourite lifestyle brands.

Overall, we aim to surpass season 4 digital metrics and social media reach. The icing on the cake would be the learning of generating leads and affecting sale for the participating brands using social media handles.

Are there any challenges you faced with Godrej L'Affaire going digital this year? Could you stick to your agenda of making it bigger and better each year?

Curating a meaningful integration digitally, getting external brands on board and creating a digitally amplified event is a time-consuming process. This new form of virtual engagement with consumers through influencers, targeting people across India and getting good brands to collaborate has been a bit of a challenge. The solution has been around creating compelling reasons for people to come and engage. The web series is working well in that context.

During the pandemic the consumers have shifted focus to digital and it makes more economic and business sense for brands to be present on (or invest in) platforms where their customers are. With the advent of digital tools, curating a digital-first experiential event has become easier than before.  I believe, with every passing year, it will become more effective and we will keep enhancing the experience for our audiences. While on ground physical event is more effective in terms of experiences, we shall certainly surpass the overall metrics of engagement and reach, hence making it bigger than the previous season.

What kind of opportunities do you see in the larger experiential/ events industry with L’Affaire? How has the IP benefited Godrej Group in the last four years?

Experiential events (especially on-ground) are investment intensive but are progressively becoming an influential tool to build advocate communities. Direct to consumer authentic communication has taken prominence and has become more important during the pandemic. As these platforms can also be used to mobilize influencers and key opinion leaders who have their own set of followers, the reach is high. The influencers help in churning and creating content in a focused and authentic manner around a brand’s offerings as they experience it. Brands regardless of new or legacy must evaluate if experiential events can meet their objectives. Large experiential events certainly bring consumers closer to brands.

In the past few years, L’Affaire has helped multiple internal and external brands to engage in an immersive and meaningful manner with influencers, experts, and key opinion leaders from different walks of life. It has been consistently delivering enormous outcomes in terms of trust, positive disposition, influencer engagement, and experiences. Overall, at a Godrej Masterbrand level, the admiration scores have moved up and our perception in the lifestyle space and connect with the millennials and Gen Z has gone up.

What are the initiatives that you have planned in the experiential/activations space for the near future at Godrej? What will be your priorities going ahead?

We currently have four owned media properties viz. Vikhroli Cucina (For the food space as six of our brands are part of the food related industries), Design Dekko (For building a community of architects and designers), #FutureofSeries (Larger industry narratives related to our main verticals viz. agri  space, safety, sustainability, vector-borne diseases etc.) and Godrej L’Affaire for the lifestyle space. Going forward, each of these properties would be rolled out through the year.

Our vision is to make owned media platforms more effective, reach wider audiences within the niches and work towards finding fresh ways to strengthen our relationship with our target audience. There are several other interesting ideas in the pipeline, but we shall wait for the opportune moment to disclose further details. Our objective is to communicate narratives that are data and research driven, fact based, and authentic directly with our consumers.