'Kyuki Dil Hai Hindustani', says Zivame

The brand's Facebook contest familiarises women with the correct pronunciations of lingerie-related terms.

In matters of everyday life, we try to 'Indianise' everything, right from the food we eat to the clothes we wear and even the way we pronounce certain words - 'lingerie' being one of them. Zivame.com, an online lingerie store, recently came up with a Facebook contest called 'Kyuki Dil Hai Hindustani' where the brand asked women to share Hindi translations of lingerie-related words in the comments and tag three friends. The way most Indians pronounce lingerie as 'ling-a-ree' drove the brand to launch this contest.

The brand conducted qualitative research wherein responses from customers were collated by the customer relations team on a day-to-day basis. While many customers faced difficulty in pronouncing the word 'lingerie' correctly, some others found other category words like 'corsets' and 'negligees' novel. Hence, Zivame delved upon the idea of coming up with content in a language which a majority of Indian women could read and understand.

The brand has targetted women across India through this contest as it believes that good content around lingerie will be consumed well, irrespective of age. Moreover, the desi angle, the brand hopes, will appeal to a larger female population. The Zivame website receives 2500 daily orders and the 250-people-strong company now claims to have raised over $15 million from institutional investors like IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital and Unilazer Ventures.

"At Zivame, our objective is to reach out to as many Indian women as possible. TV and print have not only met this objective, but helped in opening out the category and created strong brand recall. Digital, especially Facebook, is a medium that has consistently worked very well for us from a variety of perspectives. The main reason is the extent to which we can narrow down and target the right person," shares Vatsala Kothari, brand evangelist, Zivame.com.

Talking about the marketing challenges for this not-so-talked about product category, Kothari shares, "Usually, for a lingerie brand, even simple contests are a challenge. People in India are still not too comfortable interacting with lingerie brands/ participating in contests as the interaction shows up in their friends' feeds. However, as a brand, we have come a long way in terms of getting people to speak about lingerie. We have had women tweet with photos of their lingerie and even hosted a virtual pajama party. Hence, many a times, our focus is mainly to get people feel comfortable, than drive sales through our contests."

The brand is open to reaching out to women everywhere and also wishes to explore BTL as an advertising platform. Towards this end, it plans to interact with women in colleges, salons and other comfortable environments.