Case Study: How Payal Singhal leveraged influencers to make masks fashionable

Payal Singhal leveraged influencers to spread awareness about the importance of wearing masks, a prelude to launching a new range.

In April this year as COVID-19 started to make its presence felt in the country and the national lockdown was beginning to become a new reality for the citizens, brands had jumped in to create awareness about precautions within their domains and capacity. The next wave was about the production of essentials like masks and sanitizers. Payal Singhal leveraged both waves, first by creating a campaign around awareness and then launching their own range of designer masks.

Category Introduction

India closes in on becoming the world’s sixth-largest fashion market. McKinsey forecasts that the industry will be worth nearly $60 billion by 2022. Figures released by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India show the Indian luxury industry is currently worth approximately $30 billion. These estimates were released last year and thus do not take into account the impact of COVID-19.

Brand Introduction 

Payal Singhal is a South Asian fashion house established in 1999. The focus is on modern Indian bridal and occasion wear laden with global appeal. The brand’s signature aesthetic is contemporary and minimalistic, with a vintage heart. The emphasis is on wearability, comfort, value for money and effortless impact. The brand is now growing into a lifestyle brand with new launches in the fields of home décor, weddings, lifestyle products, accessories and more.

Summary

Amidst the ongoing pandemic, the brand wanted to spread awareness around the importance of wearing a mask. The brand thus requested the creation of a community of #PSGirls and #PSMen to send them pictures while wearing a mask. These images were enhanced with special #PSPrints in sync with the individual's personality to help them stand in solidarity with the awareness campaign. The campaign revolved around #PSMasks.

Objective

To spread awareness about the importance of wearing a mask when stepping out and create pre-buzz for the launch of #PSMasks.

Brief

Create a social media campaign for people to participate in spreading awareness for wearing masks while leveraging specific strengths and signatures of the Payal Singhal brand.

Creative Idea 

The utilisation of signatures of the Payal Singhal brand — signature #PSPrints in differentiated creatives and a network of patrons that include prominent celebrities and influencers.

Challenges

The team faced several challenges in the execution of the campaign owing to the restrictions under lockdown while coordinating the efforts of the entire campaign across 50 influencers and everyone involved (influencers, graphics and marketing teams) working from their respective homes.

Also Read: How celebrities helped Berger Paints India build Instagram engagement under lockdown

Execution 

Instagram was the primary platform for the campaign while the brand’s Twitter account and Facebook page supplemented the efforts. The campaign kicked off mid-April and the brand ran it for a month, putting up 2-3 posts every day, showcasing influencers.

The influencers involved in the campaign included Shamita Shetty, Drashti Dhami, Vidya Vox, Mouni Roy and Krishna Talesara.

Results 

The campaign garnered more than 1 million reach, more than 26k likes and media coverage across publications such as Times of India, ET Brand Equity and New Indian Express.

Awareness was built around the importance of wearing masks to stay safe in case one needs to venture out and buzz as created around designer masks in #PSPrints amongst customers, channel partners, influencers, and on social media. The brand got enquiries from e-commerce portals, stores and clients for listing/sourcing the product.

“We wanted to reach out to a wide audience to spread the awareness of the importance of wearing a mask when stepping out, as also announce that we are soon going to be producing face masks using signature #PSPrints which would accentuate the personality of our customers while keeping with the safety guidelines. For this, we relied on our patrons who are prominent celebrities and influencers in their fields and carry their own mammoth set of fans and followers. The campaign has reached out to more than a million people with their support and I’d like to thank each and every one of them for partaking in this awareness drive," said a brand spokesperson.