The Man Company – My Tryst With Beard

My association with The Man Company dates back to 2018. During my engineering days, I decided to keep my beard and had to discover a product that could help me do so. At first, I was reluctant to use any product because of my own reservations and started using natural oils, but that resulted in bad odour and made my face oilier.

Those were the early days of the grooming market in India with entrants like Ustraa, Beardo, The Man Company predominantly capturing the market. I tried out Ustraa, coming to know about the brand from the promotions they were doing during that time. But they failed to retain me with not-so-good packaging along with a lack of consumer experience. Then, I moved on to Beardo which was growing at a rapid speed with the influx of investor money. I was happy with their product offerings. I used them for a year and was planning to continue. But wait, here comes the twist.

That year, on my birthday, I was given a gift pack collection of The Man Company by one of my female friends. What surprised me later was the activation and campaign plan. The Man Company reached out to each and every lead who had enquired about the products via their social media channels. They also targeted females as their relevant audience group. They knew that these products could work as an amazing alternative to those boring gifts given to their male counterparts (brothers, husbands, fathers, boyfriends). Men were reluctant to use grooming products and the category was essentially women-dominated. Given those gifts, they were bound to use them, out of compulsion, curiosity, or interest. One simply couldn’t ignore the gifts. This helped the brand in two ways. Firstly, the products started selling like hotcakes. Secondly, the time spent by a person with the brand increased. This infused a habit of using the products frequently on a daily basis and increased repeat customers.

The Man Company positioned itself as a “premium” brand from the very beginning. This reflected in the designing of the products, their packaging and superior quality. Being a start-up enthusiast, I love to try new services being launched by various companies. I started using CRED, a credit card payment app in which paying your credit card bills gets you the same number of coins as the amount paid. These points can be redeemed against various promotional offers of different premium services/products that CRED has partnered with. Guess what? I got a 50% off voucher on buying The Man Company’s products after redeeming my coins. This time I tried out their other categories like face scrub, perfumes as I was bored with the normal generic brands. As they say, the product is the king. I was totally inclined towards the brand with the range of products it was offering.

Partnership with Ayushmann Khurrana

Being a marketer, I feel their best bet came when they strategically partnered with Ayushmann Khurrana in 2019. The actor invested an undisclosed amount in Helios Lifestyle which is TMC’s parent entity. He also became their brand ambassador. Ayushmann has huge popularity among millennials being an actor, singer, presenter more importantly an amazing storyteller. The move helped the brand hit the right chords with the youth, who are also their best potential target audience.

The “Bring out the #GentlemanInYou” campaign on International Men’s Day where Ayushmann urges men to be themselves without the societal pressure on them for being the perfect man, went viral on all social media platforms, hitting more than 5 million views. Personally, the message resonated with me, and again the brand impressed me with this gimmick. The Man Company won me over, connecting with me at multiple touchpoints over a period of time.

With strategic investments from the home-grown FMCG major Emami Ltd, the company plans to expand its presence across Tier II and III cities. It could be a challenge for them to conquer smaller towns, but I am sure the company has a bright future ahead!