Amol Dhillon is the Vice President of Strategy and Planning at Woodland, where he leads the brand management : Branding, Communication & Media, New Product  identity and Innovation Management  while overseeing marketing research, online retail and social media, merchandising and overseas business development.

Since joining Woodland in 1999, he has served in various leadership positions in business development, merchandising & sourcing, worked across various divisions and markets including India, Hong Kong, China, Europe and Canada. He was instrumental in establishing supply chain and merchandising operations for Woodland across South East Asia, where he led the global, collaborative and participatory product development process for Woodland's functional apparel and shoes line.

Prior to Woodland, he spent two years with an Italian J.V co Il Gioiello di Firenze, a leading fashion accessories firm, most recently as the marketing manager where he focused on new business development strategies  to enter the Indian market. Earlier in his career, Amol has worked with Mahindra & Mahindra in market research at Mumbai.

In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Amol talks about Woodland’s digital footprint, its strong social media presence and brands various online initiatives as well as future plans.

How does digital – both Internet and mobile – figure in Woodland India’s plans to reach out to consumers?

For our brand, digital has a very strong reference to social media, which has been a huge focus area and we have utilized this platform to add value to our brand. Our consumer is young and today’s youth lives online. They have a greater presence on the web than in the physical world.  They tend to do things they never experienced before and express themselves a lot more freely.  It is also a great medium for brands like us to get validation on anything we want within seconds.  Given the reach of this medium, the relevance to our consumer and the fast pace of growth, we see this as an integral part of our marketing mix.

We have used various social media touch points to influence the active online users. We have engaged the community with our products and ecofriendly activities under our CSR Initiative called ‘Proplanet’, through the social media domain. In fact, Woodland is one of the first brands to have an enormous presence on Social Media (12th most interactive Facebook page in the World). We have not just utilized the blogosphere and social networking sites, but have also created a compelling social media presence to be picked up by the larger space of the web.

Woodland has a very strong digital presence, across social media platforms: Pinterest, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more. The Woodland Facebook page has about 3 million fans.

Keeping all these points in mind, digital has become a core-marketing medium for Woodland today. When I say digital, I mean both the internet and mobile. So, we will use digital in a bigger way to build innovations for our consumers.
 
Woodland has done a lot of online campaigns on social media. Can you share some of the really exciting ones with us?

Keeping in line with the DNA of the brand and its Proplanet initiative, in early 2009 Woodland launched 'Woodland MTV Ecolution' India’s first digital campaign. For every virtual tree planted online,Woodland planted one on the ground. The sustainability initiative helped us to promote awareness of being Proplanet and Woodland was able to plant 60,000 trees with the help of its consumers.

This was followed by an innovative campaign - ‘StepOut2goProPlanet’ with LinkedIn for the World Environment Day theme - green economy. The campaign leveraged LinkedIn India’s member-base of professionals, urging them to step out of their offices and go pro-planet. This initiative allowed professionals to share their ideas on any one of the 10 important sectors identified by the United Nations, in turn igniting nation-wide engagement on LinkedIn. Woodland reached out to more than 15 million professionals using LinkedIn in India to spread the message and generated a corporate pool of ideas of green idea for greener environment.

Another exciting campaign on YouTube, ‘Woodland- What’s your Adventure Quotient’, aimed to find a new talented filmmaker. The winner went along with the professional team to shoot Woodland’s campaign for the season and got hands-on experience. For adventurists who are budding filmmakers, it was the best of both worlds.

Very recently, we have launched our most exciting digital campaign on Facebook called ‘Woodland -Adventurer Wanted’ in which the brand is looking for the 'Extreme Explorer' to discover unexplored adventure destinations around the world. The job ‘Extreme Explorer’ comes with enriching experiences including living costs and a film crew.

To apply, applicants need to create a 30 to 60 second persuasive and entertaining video / image application on ‘Why You are the Best Person for the Job’, demonstrating originality and commitment to adventure and post the same here. It’s that simple. What makes the whole thing more exciting is that the Facebook community will get to vote between various locations, daring outdoor sports and thrilling opportunities for the winner, with the highest vote directing the adventurer’s every challenge.  The campaign is designed with an idea to engage the online (Facebook) community present on social media platforms.

In the apparel category, visual brand building works the best. With new engagement forms such as videos coming up on Internet, what are your thoughts on visual brand building exercises on Internet in India?

In the past few years, videos have become increasingly more visible with the share-ability factor of social media networks. Users can record videos directly through their mobile devices and can then upload and share them on social network sites of their choice. Who doesn't like watching an interesting clip? Or sharing it for that matter? Online video consumption in India has doubled in the last 2 years, with close to 60 million internet users now actively consuming video content.

It is a great tool to have on your brand’s communication platform. What makes it important is the opportunity for brands to reach out to the savvy consumer without overtly being in their face. With a dedicated target market, it is a great way to be accepted in today’s cluttered environment.

It has increasingly become much easier for us to connect to our target audience with videos and through a medium that allows for a free flow of communication both ways, making it more engaging, fun and valued. At Woodland, our communication is about adventure, outdoor sports and environment issues, and that is what the brand is all about. We are looking at using this aspect of digital marketing for Woodland in India in a big way through videos on YouTube, blogs and across social platforms.

Over the past few months, we have launched a video series – ‘Brand Ambassadors’ – on YouTube. Brand Ambassador is a video series with adventurists, outdoor sports enthusiasts and seasoned experts sharing their adventures and experiences to inspire youth to live a life full of adventure.

With a strong digital presence, a lot of quality user-generated content is posted and shared on our platforms by our audience and professional adventurers. Our continuous efforts and focus is always on making high quality content available to our subscribers.

How crucial is it for a known brand like Woodland to have an ecommerce presence in India? How has been the uptake of company’s ecommerce portal 'Woodlandworldwide.com'?

Consumers have become very tech savvy these days and practically live online. They have their entire life mapped out on the web from where to meet, whom to meet, what to eat, where to go, whom to hang out with, etc. Moreover, digital media allows a much more interactive form of communication to target a specific consumer segment, unlike the traditional medium. The reach is also measurable and response is quantifiable.

Woodland stores in Delhi NCR and Karnataka are carbon neutral and the brand has a self-set target to be carbon neutral across India by 2015. The e-commerce platforms are very low carbon footprint when compared with the regular brick and mortar stores. This is a great advantage in moving forward with eco-indexing and footprint mapping on carbon emissions.

The flexibility of shopping anytime and reading detailed reviews on use and materials makes online shopping fun, and our consumers love it.  Even though we have an extensive presence, with 416 stores across India, the e-commerce sales are registering triple digit growth every quarter. We forecast online to generate about 10% of our total sales by 2015-16.

What percentage of company’s sales comes from online ecommerce portals?

Currently, the sale from online portals is about 3% and it includes our site as well as other national and international portals, which sell our products.

How are you leveraging social media in promoting your brand? Do you think it helps in sales or is it an information dissemination platform?

As more and more consumers increasingly live life on the go, the internet is changing how they connect digitally to people, places, information, entertainment and content across genres. Social Media is the pertinent platform to engage with the youth today and thus, it is very important for us to have positive posts, inspiring pictures/videos, likes, thoughtful comments, etc. on our pages to be able to not only increase awareness but to be a part of their experiences, guide them, and advise them in their choices. This enables us to receive direct feedback and incorporate it in our products as well.

The preview and review of the new products on social pages helps consumer get detailed insights into the functionality, innovations and styles introduced by the brand. The enthusiasm and passion for the brand’s products and outdoor adventure lifestyle translates to sales in real time.

Mobile is being held as a great medium for brand communication, but still, very less amount is spent on the particular medium. What is your take on this?

Mobile is by far the most important channel to connect, communicate, and transact with the increasingly digitally savvy consumers in India. Mobile has become an integrated part of our lives and lot of innovation in communication is taking place in this medium. Our first experience with mobile started on Four Square back in 2010, and today, we have one of the most active Four Square communities in India. Geo tagging, mapping trails and adventure locations is very important when it comes to exploring outdoors.

Woodland has collaborated with its mobile audience to launch exploremore.pro, which has been a step in this direction. We are working on several innovative mobile apps for outdoor and adventure. We are also currently working on the launch of Woodland TV, which will bring the highest innovation and technology to mobile outdoor adventure.

What is Woodland doing on mobile as a medium?

We are currently experimenting with a first mobile-centric initiative to launch Woodland mobile applications across platforms iOS, Android and Blackberry. A lot of apps are being developed, including Woodland TV and an online digital adventure magazine app. The future of digital content access in India through mobile is very promising and we are making some big bets in this space through our mobile-friendly site and through a slew of both adventure and outdoor sports destinations apps that you will see in the market very soon.

What answers do you seek from your digital advertising agencies and digital media partners while promoting your brand on Internet?

Our understanding on technology is simple – innovate or perish. Innovation is not only required in the product but also in the communication. The revolution in technology is changing the markets, business models and consumer expectations and only the brands which embrace technology in a timely fashion will survive. The traditional mediums are no longer sustainable in isolation and digital advertising agencies are still in their early days. Content is king when it comes to digital and this is where the challenge lies – a continuous churning of innovative and interesting content in the digital factories.

What percentage of your marketing budget goes to digital?

At present, we are utilizing 25-30% of our budget for this area.

How do you see your marketing objectives aligning with what the online medium offers two years down the line?

Every organization’s marketing objectives are now aligned with the online medium to increase visibility, retention and loyalty for the brand. Let’s understand that digital and traditional media are both just that – media to reach potential and current consumers. It’s the underlying idea behind the communication that is far more important to think through and typically, the communication objective plays an important role in defining the media mix itself.

Digital and traditional media both offer their own unique advantages and we constantly evaluate our media plans across tradition and digital media, both of which have finer segments. Is brand building possible on the Internet? – absolutely. Should an Internet business stay off traditional media without objectively evaluating it? – I would suggest not.