Being the parent company of a slew of lifestyle-oriented brands such as Good Knight, Godrej Properties, Cinthol, etc. and recognising that Millennials and GenZs find lifestyle brands that focus more on purpose-driven communication attractive, it was six years back that Godrej launched L’Affaire to have a larger positive disposition of its brands in the category.
“We realised that despite having brands in the lifestyle category, we were not seen as much in the lifestyle space as we would like to be seen. For us, the thought was clear that lifestyle didn’t just comprise makeup and beauty but also included wellness, food, travel, and other things which gives an individual some positive goodness,” stated Sujit Patil, Vice President and Head– Corporate Brand and Communications, Godrej Industries and Associated Companies.
With this, he also mentioned that at the time of its launch, the masterbrand also identified that the three key pillars of Godrej L’Affaire would include experiential engagement, creating a community of lifestyle enthusiasts, and collaborating for content creation with likeminded creators and key opinion leaders.
This year’s edition of the by-invite event, i.e.- Godrej’s brand-agnostic owned-media platform, is scheduled to take place today evening in Mumbai.
During the course of his interaction with Marketing Mind, Patil also elaborated on how the name Godrej L’Affaire stands for a cumulation of Lifestyle, Affinity, Food, Flavours, Innovation and Environment amongst other things.
Commenting on how the owned-media platform’s brand positioning and audience perception evolved over time whilst adding more value to the master brand’s image, he stated that since a survey is conducted after every two years of the event takes place, from the first edition to the second, there has been a ‘great positive shift’ in the Millward Brown’s Scores when it came to people recognising the masterbrand in the lifestyle space followed by the a positive disposition in the individual brand track scores.
Elaborating on what factors have contributed to this development, he mentioned that since Godrej L’Affaire is an event where not just Godrej brands but a slew of other external brands are also present, the audience gets to come, touch and feel, and experience the product and its USP which is otherwise not possible via an advertisement, social media post, etc.
“Today, every brand worth its salt is trying to create experiential engagements and being one of the pioneers in this space when it comes to lifestyle category, we feel that its always better to collaborate with other brands in the category as the costs involved are quite high. And hence, we try to approach only those brands whose purpose is aligned to us, are from good values and understand the true meaning of experience for Godrej L’Affaire,” Patil pointed out.
With this, he also mentioned that given the objective driven nature of the soiree that Godrej L’Affaire is the yardstick for measuring the success or progress of the event is not the number of people attending it but the quality of people and engagement that it can create.
Commenting on this year’s mix of brands that’ll be a part of Godrej L’Affaire Season 6, he pointed out that it’s a fairly proportionate mix between the internal and external brands that will have an on-ground presence as well as an opportunity for brand integrations at the event.
While the internal brands include GCPL’s Godrej Professional, Magic, Cinthol, Park Avenue, Kama Sutra, Godrej Selfie, Aer, Good Knight, Godrej HIT; Godrej Agrovet’s Godrej Jersey, Godrej Combine, Godrej Rashinban, Godrej Yummiez, Godrej Real Good Chicken; Godrej Capital; Godrej Properties and DEI Lab, the external partners for the event comprise brands such as HSBC, Freedom Tree, Mercedes, Aspri Spirits, Carlsberg Smooth Soda, The Label Life, Women Company, Baskin-Robbins, BMW Motorrad, Cancro Water, Dubai Energy, D’Décor, Smoor, Moshi Moshi, MyGlamm, The Bartenders, Bright Media Outdoors, etc.
Since the theme for Godrej L’Affaire Season 6 is tonight’s event is ‘All Things Goodness’, Patil mentioned that it has been kept such since ‘Goodness’ is ‘very close’ to Godrej Group albeit in its purpose, products or even as a keyword, all the internal and external brand partners participating in the soiree will be demonstrating goodness via experience creation on their respective spots.
Despite Godrej L’Affaire being an IP, the event is not a revenue or profit centre for the brand and therefore the charges paid by external partners, as per Patil, is mainly to balance the massive cost and have their skin in the game. From Godrej, what’s promised to them is certain amount of brand mentions, opportunity to engage with and get the content created by creators.
As for the deliverables for the content creators attending the event include creating certain amount of content for Godrej and the external partners at the event which continues to be amplified on the brand’s official handles over time.
Moreover, Patil also mentioned that the experiential platform’s goodness goes beyond to creating a sustainable event where every constituent gets used is going to be reused so as to ensure a neutral event where there is no bad carbon footprint or very less/no plastic usage.
At this year’s edition as well, the lineup for the soiree includes a Fashion Show by Malaika Arora’s The Label Life; a Music Performance by Shalmali Kholgade and her band ‘The Bartender’; unveiling of the Godrej Food Trends Report by Chef Vicky Ratnani, Chef Varun Inamdar, Chef Rakhee Vaswani, Chef Ajay Chopra, etc. and the announcement of the 25 Best Emerging Content Creators via L’Affaire Select by Ranveer Allahbadia.
“In the long term, the idea is to make Godrej L’Affaire a one of its kind congregation of all the lifestyle brands and come out with a larger lifestyle report which covers all that’s happening in the country and enter the realm of thought leadership in the space,” Patil concluded.
