Social Media Strategy Review: Pantene India

author-image
Nirali Hingwala
Updated On
New Update
Pantene India

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series, where we do a 360-degree analysis of a brand’s entire social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

Introduction

Pantene is a brand of hair care products owned by Procter & Gamble that offer hair care and beauty products like shampoo and conditioner.

In this article, let us try to assess the strength of Pantene India’s Social Media strategy...

Platform-wise Strategy

Pantene India’s website displays a link connecting only to their Facebook page. I am surprised as to why the brand has not yet considered it important to link their other social media presence to their official website?

Facebook

On the up-side, Pantene India’s Facebook page has been growing continuously and shows no signs of stopping even after crossing the 1.2 million mark.

PI

The brand’s main proposition is that Pantene can transform unhealthy to healthy looking hair in just 14 days and the same is being mirrored in their social media content as well where Pantene is inviting users to challenge them with a #hair dare by posting it via Pantene’s Facebook app or Twitter after which they can watch celebrities like Yami Gautam, Mahie Gill and Rituparna Sengupta take the user's ‘dare’.

PI1

 

Countless women have already shared their hair problems and dares on Facebook as well as Twitter.

PI3

Pantene also uses this platform on a regular basis for promotions and contests. As of now, in the month of March, it has been promoting the campaign aggressively on their Facebook page. However, I am surprised as to why they have they been inactive for about 15 days, (from 26th February to 14th March), just before the launch of the campaign. On the contrary, they could have used this period to create more buzz by unveiling a teaser campaign.

Earlier to this gap, they had been sharing hair styling tips, useful guidelines for hair care, make over looks and more. Pantene had also been sharing reviews for their products from various Indian beauty blogs on their Facebook Page.

PI4

It’s always a good idea to raise credibility levels by encouraging user reviews and by tapping into the reach of influential blogs. Reviews give a good idea of how the product fares in the Indian market and can also be used later to improve product development.

Pantene has on occasion used Facebook to drive traffic to their website. They have simultaneously been using ‘bitly’ links that could help them track their clicks through rates. The ‘Buy Now’ custom tab on Pantene’s Facebook page, diverts you to their online selling partners - Flipkart and Good Life.

On tracking these shortened URL's, I found that Pantene has been fetching a substantial number of clicks through their Facebook page. Take a look at this example.

PI5

PI

PI1Yet, in spite of all their efforts, on an average, Pantene receives a mediocre response on their page posts.

PI2

The following graph represents the percentage of likes, shares and comments on Pantene’s page.

PI3

I also noticed that users clog up Pantene India’s Facebook page with too many spams and irrelevant posts. The brand should try to deal with these spam messages by flagging/reporting or deleting them.

Twitter

Pantene India’s Twitter handle has more than 3400 followers. Twiiter is frequently used to launch and run contests.

Pantene has also been doing some influencer outreach on Twitter, using sponsored tweets.

Youtube

Apart from uploading television commercials on Youtube, Pantene uses this channel to broadcast expert tips, behind the scenes and video interviews of celebrity stylists such as Coleen Khan who shares the Do's & Don’t for healthy hair.

Recently, they have created a ‘Pantene Challenge Song’ to promote their latest #Hair Dare Campaign, with the help of a viral video. The song has received about 2.8 lakh video views.

Conclusion

So far, so good. Pantene’s Hair Dare campaign is helping solve the user’s hair problems with the help of expert opinion and the brand has been promoting the campaign well. But good can get better and in my opinion, Pantene India can do even better on social media if their strategy is backed with a very good content plan. There is lot more that a female centric hair brand could do on Social Media.

Moreover, I personally feel that Pantene India could have done a better job on Youtube. Helpful, easy-to-follow video tutorials, How to's, latest hair do's and user testimonials could have helped them strengthen their YouTube presence.

On the down side, I find Pantene India, excessively self-promotional on social media. They have neglected to follow the 80/20 content rule. Most of their posts seem to only focus on their products.

So to conclude, Pantene needs to fine tune its SM strategy to get maximum mileage from it.

Expert View

Pantene’s social media strategy can be improved a great deal. Currently, it is doing only basic stuffs that every FMCG brand out there has tried. On social media, where users are hardly paying any attention to brands, Pantene needs to stand out with the voice that is powerful and content that has a strong impact.

The content bank can do with a shot in the arm that helps it generate more interactions and is shareable in nature. They can possible enhance their listening skills and try to understand the requirements of their customers to create an effective content plan.

The brand also needs to create long-term sustainable campaign that brings them closer to their audience instead of just short-term burst campaigns that don’t create any lasting impact.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra, Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Digital & Social Media Agency.

Analytics Support: Simplify360

Social media Pantene Pantene India social media strategy review strategy review