BRIEF23 brings you insights and inspiration from Uday Vijayan, Co-Founder & CMO, LaundryMate –the on-demand laundry and dry cleaning pickup and delivery service.
Uday writes on invitation and exclusively for our special series BRIEF23, which features industry stalwarts, thought leaders, industry captains, business heads, brand custodians and other C-suite heads from diverse companies across sectors, size and scale, sharing their learnings from 2022, and guidance and inspiration to help empower professionals for the upcoming FY 2023-24.
Uday Vijayan is a senior marketing and brand development professional currently involved as Co-Founder and CMO of LaundryMate. LaundryMate aims to change the way homes do their daily laundry. In his career spanning over 30 years, he has worked with large global advertising and communication agencies and has been involved with the launch and development of many brands cutting across various categories.
He has also helped provide direction for global communication agencies to enter the Indian market. Uday has, in addition, headed the marketing function of large organisations. He did his education at the Hyderabad Public School and his graduation from Delhi University. He also has a PGDM in Marketing.
Uday Vijayan is also the Managing Trustee and President of ‘Beyond Carlton’. After the loss of his young son in the Carlton Towers fire tragedy in Bengaluru on 23 Feb 2010, he has for the last 13 years been relentlessly trying to place fire safety on the table across the country. Beyond Carlton is a go-to citizens body, focussed on Awareness, Advocacy and Accountability. Uday frequently speaks on issues to do with fire safety at various forums.
BRIEF23 by Uday Vijayan – LaundryMate
2022, a year in which a lot of us working with new brand launches or meandering our existing brands would have learnt a few lessons. The continuing pandemic and its anxieties had an immense impact on the way media was consumed and resulted in a change in buyer behavior. Some categories, especially online commerce, profited immensely. A lot of at-home media consumption moved fully and squarely to digital platforms, with the fight for brand visibility becoming more intense.
Shorts/video became truly the center place for brand engagement. It was not uncommon to spot many Gen Zeers and maybe some older Gen Alpha consumers using interesting locales to shoot their reels/videos for their Insta posts. “Viral” became more common phraseology across various demographics and lingual consumers.
Short form videos have moved away from other social global media and content through a strong ‘Bharat’ positioning. While Indian Metros prefer more English-led content around fashion, education, and motivational stuff, Tier1 and Tier2 cities are driven by content in Hindi and vernacular content respectively.*
The power of the camera and thereby videos shot on mobile phones became truly the most interesting gadget for self-expression. India’s strong digital wave has also led to strong digital content growth. Audience-generated content will only grow.
We at LaundryMate, we’re using the year to get our facility, logistics and soft launch ready in Bengaluru.
It’s about time…
Consumers in our larger cities are shouting out and willing to accept brands that offer convenience provided they are efficient, reliable, and affordable. In effect, they are willing to pay for a service that reduces their time and effort on daily chores. Over the last few years, we have seen this across categories like online grocery, food tech, mobility, or e-pharma.
Consumer insights in 2023 will continue to be as relevant as it has been for decades. Consumers! Consumers! Consumers! will always continue to be a good marketer’s focus.
Our research across 30 cities, told us that daily wear laundry is a chore no one likes because it’s so time-consuming and takes away valuable daily time for consumers to do more with their lives. They told us clearly: It’s about time!
Incidentally, that’s our tagline!
For us at LaundryMate: It is indeed all about the time saved by outsourcing the tedious chore of daily laundry. It’s about valuable time gained and the improvement in the quality of your life. It also says it all for changing behavior in the category – it’s about time someone came up with an app and a real efficient service for that!
The more things change they remain the same…
In 2023, some things will continue:
- Carving out a relevant and relatable proposition will continue to remain exciting and challenging.
- The articulation of a brand proposition in a well-thought-out manner for internal brand custodians and agencies etc. will continue to be vital.
This is how we defined our Brand Proposition Statement (the Who Am I?):
Our brand is a daily wear laundry service with pick up and drop from homes washed/ ironed/ dry cleaned at a sprawling tech-enabled facility and returned in impeccable condition at the doorstep in 24 hours flat – all at amazingly affordable rates. Saving you precious time to do so many wonderful things in your life. Couldn’t get better!
- Making your brand distinctive with a carefully picked persona will continue to be most interesting.
We picked the ‘magician’ and ‘jester’ persona to bring magic into people’s lives while being a little irreverent as it brings energy and fun into an otherwise mundane category. The Un-Laundry (remember the Un-Cola?) if you could call it that!
- Brands will continue to find challenges in getting their voice heard in the media milieu, especially with the choice of digital.
Leverage the digital shift
Some very interesting data points reflect a huge shift in media opportunities:
India is home to the 2nd largest internet user base in the world at 780 Mn in 2022 and is expected to cross 1 billion users by 2030, expected to surpass even China.*
There are currently over 350Mn internet users who transact online and that number is expected to grow to 600Mn users by 2030.
Eyeballs reached by digital platforms are expected to surpass traditional media by 2025.
Clearly, brands have to lead with digital in their media choices. If you look around you will notice that shift across some legacy brands too.
The advent of ChatGPT and AI -will it disrupt?
There’s no doubt that ChatGPT is pretty outstanding. While it is still to get its completeness with up-to-date data it will be a boon for marketers.
This will definitely have an impact on content providers though. AI-created tools like Chat GPT will bring a new and fresh opportunity for marketers provided we know how to consume the content on scale.
AI is predicted to make the greatest impact on the marketing function in organisations. Many marketing teams may already be doing so without realising, while using tools for social, SEO, content, etc.
Finally, coming to myself, what’s the one big event that impacted me in life?
A quote I came across that looking back into my past makes so much sense: “Don’t die with your gifts still inside of you.”
For me, a tough personal situation with the loss of my young son in a fire accident has been transformational in many ways. A not-for-profit ‘Beyond Carlton’ focused on fire safety, that I set up has given me ways to express my desire of touching and impacting others’ lives like never before. It’s taught me lessons on leadership, engaging with diverse audiences, building teams of citizens, and of course making a difference to others. There’s so much we each possess that sometimes we never bring to bear.
As they say, never wait for the morrow because it may never come.
Go out and use every moment to express yourself, there can be no better personal satisfaction.
Cheers!
*Research, Redseer Management Consulting, Analysis, Consumer Surveys