Short-form videos help brands create a mix of education and entertainment in a go: Kaushik Mukherjee of SUGAR Cosmetics

While content marketing takes a front seat in the marketing mix for every brand today, SUGAR Cosmetics was among the first to realise the importance of good quality branded content and to start using it way back in 2019.

Generating engagement and impressions is the number one reason for which brands should choose the performance and content marketing route, as per Kaushik Mukherjee, Co-Founder and COO, SUGAR Cosmetics.

“In the modern world, a lot of traditional marketers look at content marketing as a hassle to justify the expenses on content marketing as they think only in terms of numbers and sales,” Mukherjee said.

“I think sometimes we need to measure very different metrics when it comes to performance marketing and content marketing. The main reason for any brand resorting to content marketing is generating engagement and impressions.”

As per Mukherjee, the content marketing strategy for SUGAR Cosmetics is built across all channels and is very bullish as the brand has built capability in-house to produce quality content.

Furthermore, Mukherjee also pointed out that with the audience’s attention span reducing, short-form video content like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels become very crucial for any brand.

“For makeup as a category, there is enough content which you can position for entertaining people and for even educating them. But the best results kick in, when you mix the two and short form video content can be made around those lines,” he added.

Commenting on what can SUGAR do as a brand to leverage on the rise of short-form content, Mukherjee stated, “There are viral makeup hacks, certain dos and don’ts for makeup and the best part is that this is nothing new and was already produced even before short-form content came into the foreground. The challenge is not content, as one can easily condense a longer video into a shorter one.”

“Once you find and identify what your audiences find value in, then the only thing that matters is the skill to shorten the long video into a 30 seconds portrait format for Reels or Shorts,” he added.

As per Mukherjee, some of the content that performs extremely well for any make up brand are the viral hack videos, quick makeup tutorials or even the makeup looks videos which can end up garnering a million views in a very short span of time.

Also, when it comes to brand philosophy, SUGAR Cosmetics has laid equal emphasis on both functional and emotional benefits. “For functional benefits, we have harped on the long-lasting makeup range and for the emotional benefit we focus on inclusivity.”

Sharing an incident Kaushik spoke about the constant need to keep educating the people, including those who work on the inside. He said, “We as SUGAR had to educate the customers and the store employees both, about moving on from the earlier pattern of selecting a lighter shade than usual for foundations and make them aware that we already have curated 22 shades of foundation to ensure there is an exact shade for each of our audiences.”

Speaking of what went behind the making of their first television commercial, Mukherjee also talked about the confusion that the brand had to go through in deciding whether to go on with being bold, independent and free or pick up on the long-lasting product feature. Later on, it was decided to stick to the default and showcase the brand ethos of being bold and free.

Mukherjee said that one of the things that the brand realised a bit late was the importance of vernacular content. As per him, the realisation dawned on them when they posted an image on YouTube and Instagram, which said ‘Kya aap jante hai?’ with an interesting trivia about lip makeup.

This post is still one of the most trending and viral posts of SUGAR Cosmetics. Adding on to the story of the post, Mukherjee stated, “After our post, a fight broke out in the comments section wherein one of the regular followers of the brand had commented that why did SUGAR post in Hindi. On seeing this, a lot of people took offence to it and commented that why shouldn’t they do so. Similarly, another follower commented why hasn’t the brand posted in Tamil.”

He added, “In this manner, the post became highly interactive and drew a lot of engagement which is why the algorithm which checks the frequency of comments and responses on a post, thought this post was the real-deal in terms of fire content, so it pushed it even further.”

It was after this post, that SUGAR learned the importance of regional content while maintaining the brand ethos. “We later decided to roll out TVCs in eight different regional languages not as an option, but as part of the brand’s hygiene,” concluded Mukherjee.