Q] Tell us something about your marketing initiatives. What do they look like?
Kalyan Jewellers has added approximately 50 new showrooms in India, increasing its geographical presence. We are adding these showrooms especially in those markets where the brand’s presence is not as prominent, unlike that in the South. During wedding seasons, campaigns contribute to up to 55% of Kalyan Jewellers’ revenue. The core strength of the brand is that we are a hyper-local jeweller, so we cater to the tastes and preferences of every region, especially when it comes to weddings and traditional wear. Wedding-related purchases are not an instant decision, the process starts at least one and a half years before. So, as a brand, we don’t just do one campaign during the peak wedding season, instead, we generate traction across the year and keep a percentage of our ad expenses for wedding-related campaigns throughout
Q1-Q4.
Q] What was your last year’s wedding campaign like?
We try to create campaigns which appeal to different people, generations, and geographical areas. Last year, we did a series of wedding campaigns in collaboration with Wamiqa Gabbi in Punjab, Ritabhari Chakraborty in Bengal, Pooja Sawant in Marathi, and Kinjal Rajpriya in Gujarat. All the ads are headlined by Amitabh Bachchan. Each year we also do some campaigns around our sub-brand Muhurat. We spend at least 30 to 40 per cent of our ad budget on this brand.
For last year’s campaign series, we decided on the one-liner, ‘women who think differently’, and we worked with multiple creative and regional agencies across the country to produce the commercials with a regional pinch.
Q] What percentage of your overall revenue is devoted to advertising and do you have budgets dedicated to specific seasons?
In the past two to three years, our advertising spends have comprised close to two percent of our revenue, at approximately INR 300cr. The budget is divided into four quarters to maintain the expense in the range of two percent.
We like to spend around 30 to 40% of our ad budget during the the wedding season, 10 to 20% on campaigns educating the consumers, 10 to 20% on our sub-brands, and 10 to 20% on pricing and transparency.
Q] Kalyan Jewellers has always had an integrated media approach. But do you particularly focus on specific media platforms which may garner a higher rate of engagement?
I will not say that for every ad, a fixed 35% will go to Digital and 25% will go to Print, because every creative demands a certain type of channel in which it has to be released. We might lean towards Digital for certain communications, very specific to a particular region, because it helps us reach the target audience specifically, but there are PAN-India campaigns that are equally divided between Television, OTT, Digital, and Outdoor. GroupM is our media partner. So, when we target a particular state, they give us the mediums according to our budget. They also inform us of the target audience and noise level which we need in each medium, and finally, they come up with a plan to reach or cope with the viewership which we target. We don’t look at the return on investment on every ad, because it is a long-term game for certain ads.
