Samsonite to increase focus on content marketing to add more credibility in India

The luggage brand Samsonite will increase focus on content marketing to gain more credibility among the consumers.

“Content marketing is working really well for us because today customers are looking at having extra credibility, which comes from someone they look up to, admire and follow. Hence, content marketing plays an important role in doing that through celebrities and influencers,” said Anushree Tainwala, Executive Director, Marketing, Samsonite South Asia.

As part of its mainline campaign #HardToLetGo for its brand American Tourister, it has also come out with a content initiative where the celebrities around the world met in Madrid for a meet and greet event with football player Cristiano Ronaldo. From India, Bollywood actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Arjun Kapoor went to Madrid to represent India globally in the meet and greet with Ronaldo. Both the celebrities along with other influencers created a lot of content around the initiative.

Even through influencer marketing, 90% of the content that Samsonite creates is video-based.

Tainwala emphasised on choosing the right kind of celebrity and influencer for any content initiative. “Whoever you are using as a celebrity or blogger is important to have the right connect with the brand. It can’t just be based on the number of followers they have or just over their popularity. It has to be. They should imbibe the brand ethos.”

She said the content produced should not be any kind of product placement done by the brand, but should be engaging. “The kind of content you produce is very important. It just can’t be the celebrity putting up the post of the product. The more innovative it is, the more you are able to show the user experience through the content and you connect better with the customers. Today the customers are bombarded with 1000s of pieces of content. You have to be different from what others are doing. You actually need to have a reason for the consumers to remain engaged with your brand.”

In March, the brand had come up with its #SwagPack campaign where various celebrities passed on challenges to other celebrities to show their cool dance moves along with the bag packs on their body.  

Tainwala sees the content marketing space shaping up well in India as more and more brands are using content to connect to the consumers.  “A lot of brands are joining the brand wagon of content marketing. Content marketing will help customers get wiser about the authenticity of brands and not everything is fake and paid.”