Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation ?

PowerPockets was first hand experienced by the Women Bikers Club (Bikerni) in Retail outlets on the day of the launch (8th March - Women's Day) which gave the product innovation, authenticity and the cool quotient that the brand stands for. The Bikers not only experienced the product, but went a step ahead and tested the deeper pocket claim with the Phone Push-up test. The Buzz created by the Female Bikers club appealed to many more women across country, which got the brand announcing the national launch in 300 outlets across country.

Background

Flying Machine is an Indian Denim Brand.  It fights the likes of Levi’s and Lee. The brand poses as ‘the cool half’ and believes in offering cool innovations.  To stay ahead of the game the brand used analytics and deep listening expertise. The brief was to give proactive insights on consumer sentiment and recommend opportunities for the brand.   The data suggested that there is an opportunity in offering deeper pocket denim to women.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

On an average, the pockets in women’s denim are 48% shorter and 6.5% narrower than men’s pockets.That is basically half as deep. Denim is the ultimate symbol of rebellion. However, when it comes to fashion, it still conforms to traditional norms of sexism.  Digital listening data suggested that women were buying men’s denims because it had deeper pockets. ‘When our phones are the same size why can't our pockets be the same too?’ voiced the women. When we applied deep listening to the conversations, we realized that the real ask was much deeper than just deeper pockets! While on one hand denim has become a symbol of modernity for Indian women, the shallow pockets were seen as regressive, unequal and extremely inconvenient.   Flying Machine decided to address an age-old sexist product design flaw.  Presenting PowerPockets, Denims with deeper pockets for women.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Data suggested that women were complaining of small pockets world over and we caught the early signs of this trend in India with our analytics tool, Gipsi.  The data gathered was a mix of complaints addressed to Levi’s, the leader brand and increasing impatience with unequal pockets. The clear behavioural datasuggested that women were increasingly buying men’s denims because men’s denims have deeper pockets! This was an alarming behaviour which suggested that they are pushed to compromising on aesthetics and style in exchange of deeper pockets.  We dug deeper we realised that the fight for pockets is rooted in a larger ask of equality. Thus was born, PowerPockets. We interpreted the data as Women wanting gender equal pockets! We targeted not just denim women consumers  but all women who are fighting for equality to give a larger meaning to the product innovation

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

This innovation required a heart and commitment to address the century old pocket problem.   The designers and product development team re-engineered the pockets to emulate men denims pocket sizes for women denims without losing the fashionable element . The goal was not to add manufacturing processes and thus use energy to create something that should have been there from the beginning. Our goal was to show that small design changes can lead to a revolution that was waiting to spark. To showcase the use of Power Pockets, we partnered with Bikerni – a gang of women bikers to launch it and popular bloggers showcased the product in a Facebook live

List the results (30% of vote)

The results were overwhelming The century old gap got bridged in just 3 hours! 500 special edition Power Pocket denims sold out in just 3 hours in Bengaluru, where the launch was piloted Women across the country applauded the ingenuity of the PowerPockets initiative and was covered by media publications in the city Received a reach of over 2 lacs in media publications Earned media worth USD 25000 Looking at the overwhelming response to the launch Flying Machine has announced the PowerPockets range in 300 stores across India What’s more, Flying Machine increased its ‘cool quotient’ with this innovation. The association with ‘Cool’ increased considerably during this period.