- In our latest interview series, we talk to brands to understand how they are coping with the new normal and their strategies towards navigating these difficult times.
- As Acer opens its stores in green zones, we catch up with Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO and Consumer Business Head,
Acer India to find out what kind of precautions the brand has taken to ensure the safety of its employees and consumers who visit the store, the future of retail industry and changing landscape of marketing in India.
The brand has, therefore, tweaked its marketing strategy to reach out to prospective e-learners. It has partnered with Indian Principal Network that helps teachers, students and parents equip themselves with the right tech support.
Acer India is also opening its doors to its consumers in green zones and is fully equipped with safety kits for its employees, partners and walk-in customers.
Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO and Consumer Business Head, Acer India further shares with us their e-commerce strategy, how segmenting their consumers into different categories helped the brand understand the urgency of delivery, why tweaking its marketing strategy was important to leverage the uptick in demand for devices, and precautionary measures it has taken to help its employees get through these unprecedented days.
Excerpts:
Q. Are you planning to open your stores in green zones?
As per the government directive in lockdown, we have gradually opened our standalone stores in Green zone areas. However, we are taking care of complete sanitization along with providing the retail hygiene kits to our employees, partners, and walk-in customers. At Acer, we ensure that our stores are safe and COVID-19 free. Also, we are optimistic that the attempt of restarting stores will lead to some positive changes towards the economy and allow us to meet the growing consumer demands.
Q. What has your marketing strategy been during the lockdown weeks? Have you changed your media mix, investing more on platforms like Digital since a few other mediums like OOH/Print have been suffering due to the lockdown?
As we have been witnessing the unfolding of COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of it has moved the world towards quick digitalization. We are leveraging our e-store services to further accelerate our omni-channel services which have been initiated for partners and customers. The solution comes with the ease of home delivering products keeping the social distancing awareness in mind. Our e-store services feature a wide portfolio of products right from laptops, Desktops, Monitors, Projectors, and other accessories. Along with remote working, the shift has been seen in education sectors as well with remote learning concepts. In lieu of the rising demands, we have come up with focused targeting campaigns and partnerships to promote online education with Indian Principal’s Network (IPN) which is aimed at equipping lakhs of teachers, students, and parents with technology like laptops and tablets to teach smarter and learn better.
Also, in the context of media, we understand that the print/OOH media has been witnessing a significant drop due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic. However, at Acer, we have been a digital-centric company. Hence, the media mix does not really change the scenario for us in a significant way.
Q. Marketing during adverse times could often be misinterpreted as opportunistic. How have you made sure that your marketing communications have stayed relevant and not come across as insensitive?
We have always been a customer centric organization and our agenda is to be nimble and optimistic. Upholding these values, we had come up with the Acer Care campaign for our consumers whereby we maintained sensitivity towards the situation and spoke to them on the lockdown. We covered various facets that were going to be part of the new normal and how we felt our consumers could cope with various new scenarios such as work hacks, maintaining social distancing etc
During this lockdown period, to ensure that the consumers' rising demand for PCs are met at the earliest, we had come up with innovative buying options on our e-store where a customer could book a PC of their choice and pay later once the shipment is ready for their location. We had segmented them across categories such as Work from Home, Learn from Home, Game from Home and Create for Home, and had created customized bundles for them.
We had also extended all the expiring warranty by 60 days so customers do not face any inconvenience and our customer care centres were enabled with remote servicing capabilities.
We believe in innovation and are continually looking at new and progressive ways that will help us stay pertinent amongst our consumers.
Q. Have you seen any changes in consumer behaviour?
We have observed a rise in demand for laptops and gaming accessories which will mostly continue to be high as WFH, remote learning is going to stay for many more months. We have launched campaigns and marketing strategies to help our partners reach out to customers with home delivery and easy pay options. As an impactful and global brand, we help our customers with multiple buying options which are safe. We believe that in these unprecedented circumstances, customers will look for credibility, convenience and safety while shopping along with higher standards of business operations. We must enable the change as times and situation demands.
Q. How is Acer utilising this time to upskill employees? Have you introduced any mental health awareness and care programs?
We have looked at virtual learning for our employees and partners to ensure that we make the most of this period. Along with that, we have introduced initiatives to make our employees adapt to the new business environment, the customers’ demands, and enhance their know-how on the products and services. We have also organized an innovative leadership series with our management to further galvanize and motivate the employees while helping them stay better prepared in the ongoing crisis.
Considering the well-being and health of our employees, we have provided our employees with a stationed gym to ensure that employees should get fitness breaks. We also have Physiotherapists and General physicians visiting us at the workplace with regular health/dietician sessions and medical check-ups for employees before the lockdown and the same facilities are available remotely now. We trust that a workplace is an important setup of our lives where we tend to spend at least 8 to 9 hours a day. Hence, a safe and healthy workplace can lead to a positive work culture and milieu. We also encourage employees to participate in the promotion of safety and health at the workplace through discussion to reduce their stress levels.
Q. How are you preparing yourself for when things come back to normal? Because we think it will not be the same.
At Acer, we are focusing on efficiency and digitalisation in our business. We are focusing on quick adaptation towards the changing requirements of the business and marketing strategies in the new normal.
From the product sale side of it, we are transforming business strategies to keep the continuity and supply chain management on track. As mentioned above through our various partner solutions, we are training our channel partners and helping them to reach customers from multiple touch points. Being a digital-first company has helped us to adapt quickly to the changes and we are well equipped to thrive in this new normal.