The Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry has changed significantly over the past decade. Consumers' preferences have altered and so has the demand and supply chain pattern. The adoption of automation is one of the key reasons the FMCG industry has experienced a digital revolution.
UNILEVER INDIA, the leading FMCG brand, has revolutionized the way the industry communicated with its B2B partners (wholesalers, dealers, and pharmacists). It launched Shikhar, an app that empowers its distributor network to directly order stock online with ease and convenience. It enables any-time ordering, access to full Unilever assortments, easy returns, and the option of low-cost credit. This was a huge step for Unilever to make its retailers and pharmacists' future fit.
Objective:
With the app being launched and being downloaded by over a million retailers and pharmacists all over the country, the real challenge was the high dormancy rate of users and those users not coming back to Shikhar.
Unilever intended to build interest and excitement in consumers' minds to visit the Shikhar app more often apart from just ordering when the stocks are low. UNILEVER wanted to make the app's engagement reach a new "Shikhar" (meaning a peak).
Target Audience:
The entire nutrition portfolio of Unilever is placed and distributed from approximately 9 million medical stores across India. In India, pharmacists as a community are also looked upon with trust to recommend medicines and other health-related product alternatives. Hence, it is paramount that pharmacists need to be educated about Unilever's health-related products and their key benefits.
While all of them are smartphone users, their key purpose is to be in touch with family and business. They are more technologically advanced due to the regular use of software for billing and stock updates.
The core target was these pharmacists who empaneled themselves on the Shikhar App and constitute 10 to 12 percent of the entire user base of the application, Pan India.
Creative Strategy:
Launching Shikhar made Unilever's brands accessible to all pharmacists. But the brand was always looking for opportunities to engage with the community more often. Unilever has always considered its distributors as its family and would like to treat them as one.
During the pandemic, pharmacists played a vital role in making sure consumers got the required medicines and other health-related items. They worked tirelessly along with the Indian Healthcare system to serve their respective communities.
"World Pharmacists Day" is a global event that is celebrated on September 25th.. In 2022, Unilever took this opportunity to celebrate their pharmacists and wanted to give them a digital experience they have never experienced before.
While Shikhar was already a robust ecommerce platform for retailers, its users had never experienced being entertained on the platform. That's where WPP and UNILEVER saw an opportunity.
Mandira Bedi, a well-known celebrity in the Indian community was the apt choice to educate, entertain and push sales to the pharmacists. Based on her nutritional background, the chosen celebrity was a perfect fit for the target audience and the event.
Context:
In FMCG Retail, the on-field sales team has been taking orders physically for decades. Visiting the shops, taking notes of products and quantity the pharmacists intend to order, having a conversation over a cup of tea, and increasing sales have been the nature of the business. It has always been a face-to-face meet-up that the pharmacist community has grown up with.
With Shikhar being launched, pharmacists were delighted and looked at UNILEVER as a technology-driven partner. However, the habit of ordering face-to-face was an uphill task to beat. While the pharmacists are more technologically inclined, the company observed a substantial number of downloads but failed to see an uptrend in active users of the app leading to high-level dormancy. In past efforts, banners were pushed on the app with lucrative sale offers however the same did not receive the desired traction and high-level engagement.
Downloads were achieved but the app started to see dormancy rising; hence, building and maintaining in-app engagement were the biggest challenges.
Overall Campaign Execution:
While Unilever's Shikhar was seeing constant growth in retailers onboarding YOY from 2020, engagement was something that needed growth.
Live commerce as a concept, while still evolving in India, is a huge game changer for brands internationally. A lot of D2C brands are adopting the same leading to sales using this feature on their sites or on aggregator platforms.
Shikhar partnered with India's biggest live commerce tech partner Firework, which has done live commerce solutions for international/domestic conglomerates, to set up an event to celebrate the pharmacists and their contribution to society.
Shikhar also strategically picked a time when most of the pharmacists would be free and would engage the most, according to insights provided by its on-field team across the country.
With respect to spreading the word, in-app push notifications were the front runners. WhatsApp messages and SMS were also done to the entire user base of pharmacists. On-field teams made sure the word spread about the event details and about the sales offers. Shikhar also used the Synthetic AI Avatar of Mandira Bedi to personally invite all pharmacists to the event.
Mobile Execution:
The experience was coded within the Shikhar app itself. The app users didn't have to go to any other page or web destination to experience this. The pharmacists had to simply log into the app, click on the Live Now Banner, and they were in the live commerce environment.
Scheduled for 30 minutes, Shikhar invited a well-known celebrity in the fitness space, Mandira Bedi, and a renowned host Siddharth Kannan to entertain and spread product knowledge to the pharmacists.
Unilever intended to demystify a lot of myths with respect to the ingredients, who should consume and how safe they are to be consumed. Who better than Mandira Bedi to communicate the same?
Since Mandira Bedi is a fitness influencer, a mother, and a firm believer in living a healthy life, the brand strategically selected the Horlicks array of products which has Horlicks Jr, Horlicks for Women, and Horlicks Diabetes Plus.
Mandira interacted with the audience through:
Thirty audience members who interacted more frequently were rewarded with Unilever Shop points to encourage more participation.
The Mobile App screen was split between a video window and a carousal with Unilever products the Pharmacists could order for their stocks. To make sure that Shikhar didn't lose its engaged audience, Shikhar devised the landing page in a way that pharmacists could keep adding products to their basket during the live sessions and go check out at the end to order.
UNILEVER's key intent in having such a one-of-a-kind event was to demonstrate a future-proof partnership with the pharmacists. While the engagement was the key metric to be tested, the brand observed a massive jump in orders in those 30 minutes of the event. This proved that the pharmacists not only loved the content and interacted but also took advantage of the sale prices to stock products.
Sales included:
Live Stream engagement results included:
In-App Results:
This unique B2B live commerce was widely appreciated by internal and external stakeholders. The pharmacist's community congratulated UNILEVER for such an experience and expects such innovations more often in the coming months.
This has only strengthened the brand's relationship with the community and has also increased the acceptance of the UNILEVER salespeople as trusted partners when visiting their stores.
