Allen Solly, which was launched in India in 1993, has proved to be the most innovative brands of Madura Fashion & Lifestyle. The brand with its Anglo-American heritage – introduced a completely new concept to menswear in India – Friday Dressing. In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Sooraj Bhat, Brand Head, Allen Solly talks about brands digital initiatives, visual branding on internet and company's ecommerce presence in the country.

How does the digital medium - both internet and mobile figure in Allen Solly’s plans to reach out to consumers?

Conversations with consumers are at the centre of Allen Solly’s digital strategy so we can build loyalty through insights and conversations. We are enabling the digital medium in helping the brand to translate engagement with fans and customers online into footfalls and sales at physical and e-stores.

Mobile, even though at an initial stage, will play a key role in Allen Solly becoming an important part of the lives of consumers and on the last mile, at locations where customers are evaluating options.

We are currently working on integrating our CRM programme with our online presence. It is probably a first for India and integrate Allen Solly's loyalty programme 'My Solly' with the Facebook fan group into one integrated social database creating a virtuous cycle of social actions and purchase. It will induce and reward social sharing by customers and fans, maps customer and social actions to draw correlation between purchase and social media. We are in the process of reinventing the loyalty programme in a way that it goes beyond redeemable points and adds real-value to the customers and to their lifestyle.

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?

Content is the glue that binds the community together. So scaling up content and building a rich and robust content framework for branded and co-created content is our key focus. We are putting the filter of conversation drivers to call content we are producing and will be producing. Visual content will play a very important role in all this.

Over the past few months we have launched a video series – ‘Solly on Style’ on YouTube. Solly on Style is a video series with the fashion and lifestyle bloggers and experts sharing their choices and recommendations.

How crucial is it for a known brand like Allen Solly to have an ecommerce presence in India considering the company has launched its exclusive ecommerce portal 'trendin.com'?

With the proliferation of e-commerce, we are experiencing more and more people wanting to buy online. We are very clear that we want to be wherever the customer are buying, at our online store, but also at stores like Myntra, Jabong, FashionAndYou etc. as well.

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

Along with our digital partners Blogworks, we have crafted a robust social media strategy, using their Three ‘I’model (Insights, Intimacy & Income). We are putting digital and conversations at the center of Allen Solly communication –both on the internet (social & search) and mobile. We intend to live the culture online by active participation of team and taking ownership of categories. We want move towards co-creating products through active participation of customers and stakeholders. Active and strategic listening and ethnography studies amongst our fans as well as customers is going to play a key role to drive co-creation and push forward our innovation story.

We are not just building brand preference and loyalty through our initiatives, but also driving revenues and yield.

Like I mentioned earlier, we are integrating social and our CRM programme to create a virtuous cycle between social sharing and buying.

Allen Solly has done integrated campaigns the recent being End of Sale activity on Facebook and mobile apps which generated 4 percent of the Sales revenue. Are you planning more such campaigns?

Yes we are looking at monetizing this medium and driving sales using the medium.We are taking the initial steps at developing robust POS system linkages for a seamless buying experience. This will take us a step forward towards realising our sales objectives using the digital medium. You will see us do more and more via Facebook gifts and offers.

Mobile is going to play a key role in monetising our initiatives in the digital medium. While we are still taking our baby steps in this medium, as more people are accessing us on mobile, we are certain that it is going to play a very important role in purchase decision. Hence you are going to see us using mobile to generate revenues.

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?

We are currently experimenting with native mobile applications to location based marketing. Our recent applications, such as the End of Season Sale Facebook app were available on Android and iOS platforms as well. We have also seen more and more people accessing our website and touch-points through mobile. We are certain that the mobile is going to grow.

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

How do we keep pace with the evolution of technology and consumer – to stay connected and engaged?

What percentage of your marketing budget goes to digital?

We intend to spend around 10 percent on dogital medium.

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

We want to create a strong digital ecosystem, spread across social media, search, display and mobile for Allen Solly and gain a competitive edge. Our vision for Allen Solly is:

Greater consumer engagement, through conversations with community resulting in co-creation and viral

Our customers and fans come to regard Allen Solly comes as a place to go to; get better on being stylish

Gaining a superior understanding of our consumers

Being able to monetise our initiatives through online medium