Clothing Brand Or Meme Page? A Case Study of Bewakoof Digital Marketing

Selling personal merchandise after a social media meme account goes viral is common. Bewakoof took that strategy and turned that the other way round. That is, Bewakoof began selling t-shirts earlier and only later started to share memes on their official social media handles to grow influence. Other new-age startups such as Netflix, Zomato, etc. have also been using a similar digital marketing strategy in recent years. The readiness of these brands to participate in the recent netizen’s obsession with #Binod makes it all the way more evident. Yet, Bewakoof continues to dominate the viral space at least in terms of digital marketing for an e-commerce brand. Bewakoof is perhaps also a pioneer in sensational marketing and has been a topic for many case studies.

Unparallel Growth: Brief Background to the Existence of Bewakoof

Founded in 2012, Bewakoof has grown from selling quirky t-shirts inside the campus of IIT Bombay to selling across the country with a monthly transaction of over ₹1.5 crores as of last year. The brand also claims to have sold more than 2 crore products to date.

The brand was started with an investment of ₹30,000, collected from the personal savings of its founders Prabhkiran Singh and Siddhart Munot. The startup had begun attracting investors as early as six months into its operations. Founders of the now-forgotten Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, constitute among its early investors. Bewakoof has also, in recent, secured another investment of ₹80 crores in a funding round led by a Bahrain-based private equity company, Investcorp.

Of all their wide range of offerings that they have on their shelves today, their quirky t-shirts continue to account for a major chunk of their total sales and people can be spotted wearing them across different cities and towns.

Crushing on Memes: Unpacking Bewakoof Strategy for Social Media

The viral growth that Bewakoof has witnessed has and continues to come in large fractions from social media. Strategy? MEMES MEMES MEMES!

Bewakoof’s social handles have more in common with pages like Bheegi Billi and Sarcasm than it has with Amazon and Flipkart’s. A usual ration of sales posts to memes for their Instagram handle would be around 1 to 6 (or 8, perhaps).

View this post on Instagram

Yeh galat hai!

A post shared by BEWAKOOF.COM (@bewakoofofficial) on Aug 12, 2020 at 6:30am PDT

Bewakoof has a fanbase of 4+ million people on Facebook and has crossed the million mark on Instagram. The brand has social media engagement rates greater than any other e-commerce platform in the country.

The quality of engagement for Bewakoof’s social profiles is again far better than other e-commerce platforms. For Flipkart, Ajio, and Amazon, their social handles seem to be the top destination for unsatisfied customers. On Facebook, the ‘angry’ button features among the top reactions for the posts of these e-commerce platforms. On Instagram, top comments are again of customers complaining about a poor service experience.

Is it that Bewakoof doesn’t have their unsatisfied customers on social media? Unlikely! They are, however, better at engaging happy customers with their memes.

One notable difference for the Instagram account of Bewakoof is that their sales posts don’t gather as much attention, on average. It shouldn’t be incorrect to say that these sales posts gather at least a greater impression because of a greater engagement owed to their memes.

Conclusion: Bewakoof Lessons for Digital Marketing

Sales pitch are boring. Try to offer some value to your audience. Of late, more and more brands are participating in viral internet sensations and that is only an expression for submission to your consumers. If your audience can associate with an internet sensation, do participate. Or, find some other way to offer value to your audience, online and offline.