Inside DaMensch’s campaign to show liberal side of Indian fathers
The Drum sits down with Deepti Karthik, senior vice-president of marketing at DaMensch India, to find out how the D2C menswear brand made its recent Father’s Day campaign.
DaMensch is a new player in India’s premium menswear segment. For Father’s Day, it launched a new ’Make Dad Comfortable’ campaign that features sons and daughters reliving memories of their fathers making them feel comfortable in challenging scenarios, including choices and challenges around career, sexuality, mental and physical health, adolescence and partners.
The campaign idea, says the D2C menswear brand’s senior vice-president of marketing Deepti Karthik, “is to show a liberal side of fathers who have always accepted and supported their children through their hardships and their lives”.
Changing the narrative around the dad
On Father’s Day, where there’s plenty of chatter from brands and social content creators, says Karthik, “we wanted to portray real humans and real stories“.
The insight for the campaign stemmed from the idea that many people find their dads to be a cause of their discomfort. They assume that their fathers cannot be opened up to. The DaMensch team, however, looked for and found people to come on camera and simply remember a moment from their lives when their dad reacted in an opposite way and no matter how uncomfortable he was, did everything in his power to make the child feel comfortable.
The campaign highlights the personal life stories of millennials from different walks of life, talking about their connections to their fathers and the comfort of having uncomfortable conversations with them.
According to Karthik: “The campaign seeks to break the clutter with a message that may be topical, but a narrative that remains forever.”
Through the chosen themes, the content comes out unscripted and honest, revealing to the world private moments from different people’s lives, she adds, and heart-warming anecdotes of when fathers went out of their way to make their children feel comfortable.
Making the campaign resonate
Loyal DaMensch consumers tell in research that they buy the brand because it is comfortable to wear, shares Karthik.
The ambition of the brand is to expand the product experience to a brand experience, thus getting the consumers comfortable in various facets of life.
Says Karthik: “We want to own comfort in the life of ’Da Man’ and that's our brand play in this campaign as well.
“This campaign is dedicated to all the dads who have been the go-to person for advice, confrontation, confession, support and unconditional love.”
Touching upon the evolution of the relatively young brand’s playbook thus far, she says: “The brand surveyed the topics that make men uncomfortable and where it can play a role in getting them comfortable, and this started the journey to address every scenario that makes a man uncomfortable.
These ranged from a Valentine’s Day campaign, when it addressed uncomfortable questions between couples, to the Holi campaign, when it addressed uncomfortable questions around skin color, and its Dance Day campaign, where it addressed uncomfortable questions around shape.
“DaMensch will always look to create the space for people to have uncomfortable conversations,“ says Karthik, “because the brand believes in the philosophy that comfortable people are born through uncomfortable conversations.”