Sounds offensive? The hash tags #womentakeforever and #beforewomengetready were effectively used as a teaser campaign on Twitter, by cosmetic brand, Maybelline, to launch its new product – New York Clear Glow BB Cream. The new ‘Bright Benefit’ cream that claims to provide benefits of a foundation, sun block and a moisturiser, urges women to ‘go nude’, the ‘nature way’.
The trend started on January 3, with comedian, Varun Thakur (@lareVaboon), tweeting, “Dude don’t ask man. I’ve been waiting below anushka’s building. She went up 27 mins ago to get ‘READY. #womentakeforever” – an answer to his friend, Harshil Karia’s (@harshilkaria) tweet, asking, “not heard from since a while…”
Karia is the Founder & Online Strategist of FoxyMoron, the digital agency, behind the campaign.
Subsequently, Thakur replied back – An entire Ashutosh Gowariker film will get screened #beforewomengetready.
On January 3 itself, another comedian, Utsav Chakroborty, better known as @SatanBhagat amongst the Twitterati, tweeted: Women get Dabanng. #BeforeWomenGetReady.
Harshil Karia, Founder & Online Strategist, FoxyMoron
The tags were instantly picked up by the Twiterrati. “Basically it had the dichotomy of pitting men against women. It had tons of women up in arms on Facebook,” says Karia of FoxyMoron.
The discussion got participation from popular names like Aayushman Khurana, VJ Hoezay, Kainaz Motiwala, Konkana Sen Sharma and comedians like Rohan Joshi and Tanmay Bhat. “It is a different launch to communicate to women in a breakthrough fashion,” Karia says, adding, “We wanted WTF to turn into a movement. We wanted men to latch on to this as a concept. That’s what it did. It was trending globally; there were 2,500 tweets with celebrities too tweeting.”
In a planned way, Maybelline joined in, by initiating the topic on its Facebook group of more then 5,00,000 members. It was left to Thakur to create the Women Take Forever community (facebook.com/womentakeforever) on Facebook.
“The peg is 35,000 men said ‘WTF’ and they get the answer, ‘we’re going nude’,” says Karia.
Manashi Guha, Marketing Manager, Maybelline, throws more light on the approach taken by the brand. “The Maybelline girls are full of fun, very spirited, optimistic. The 18-25 year old, who’re already so aware. They have their Facbook, Twitter, Blackberry, iPhones and are connected. If you have to talk to them, you need to be different. That’s why we chose to do this. The product proposition is a revolutionary concept,” she says.
Manashi Guha, Marketing Manager, Maybelline
According to her, the product, called as the “8-in-1 skin perfector” is a “huge rage” in Korea, and “is just-a-minute of effortless application”.
In the second phase of the campaign, Maybelline is taking the “dare to go nude” stance and will talk about the “eight benefits of BB cream in more detail.”
The activity will be supported by on-ground activations in colleges. Guha says, “Digital is our lead medium along with a little bit of print (read Femina) and OOH.”
Maybelline has purposely kept television out of its media mix. “As young girls today do not have time to watch much of television and are not loyal to any genre of programming, we have really not been on television; and we do not even plan to use it for this product launch,” Guha says.
She is not much forthcoming on the media spends for the product. “With the TG sufficiently engaged, and getting them talk aggressively on Facebook and Twitter, we’ve seeded the idea. Compared to the kind of action on the net, our spends were nothing. We certainly would be spending in the next one to two weeks – where the answer to WTF would be ‘dare to go nude’,” she adds.
Expect a few flash mobs too for the same.
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