Influencer marketing is a crucial part of our strategy
Founded in 1985, Celio has become a leading men’s ready-to-wear brand in France and a prominent global player with over 1,100 stores in more than 50 countries. Known for offering stylish urban fashion, Celio caters to men’s diverse fashion needs with collections covering casual, smart, jeans, and essentials. With nearly 4,000 employees, the brand emphasises values like inclusivity, innovation, and authenticity. Celio continues to evolve, expanding its international presence, embracing e-commerce, and launching new store concepts, all while offering fashionable yet affordable clothing for everyday life and special occasions. Speaking to Fibre2Fashion, Celio India’s Head of Marketing & PR Rejoy Rajan discusses marketing strategies and PR challenges.
In an industry heavily reliant on seasonal trends, how do you see brands maintaining long-term loyalty while constantly introducing new collections?
Brands maintain long-term loyalty by consistently introducing new collections that allow consumers to stay ahead of trends while still feeling connected to the brand’s core identity. By offering fresh and seasonally relevant styles, brands create a sense of excitement and anticipation, encouraging repeat engagement. At the same time, fostering loyalty comes from balancing trend-forward pieces with timeless designs and quality craftsmanship, ensuring that consumers see the brand as a go-to for both current fashion and lasting wardrobe staples. This dynamic approach keeps customers engaged while reinforcing the brand’s relevance over time.
Celio has a strong presence in men’s fashion globally. How do you localise your marketing strategies for the Indian market, given its unique cultural and consumer behaviour?
We look at India with a two-pronged marketing approach: a blend of Pan-India and localised communication. For our collection launches, we adopt a nationwide strategy, ensuring our brand’s presence and consistency across the country. However, when it comes to culturally significant events like festivals, we tailor our campaigns to resonate with local preferences and traditions. This dual approach allows us to establish Celio as a fashion-forward brand while staying relevant and engaging with diverse regional audiences, thereby deepening our connection with Indian consumers.
With e-commerce growing rapidly in India, how has Celio adapted its digital marketing and PR efforts to engage more with online customers?
We are heavily invested in e-commerce, recognising it as a vital part of our larger strategy and a key growth channel. At Celio, we embrace a digital-first approach, ensuring our brand remains accessible and relevant to the tech-savvy Indian consumer. Our focus on mobile marketing is particularly strong, as handheld devices dominate online engagement. By aggressively targeting this platform, we aim to enhance brand visibility, drive traffic to our online stores, and create seamless shopping experiences across all digital touchpoints, ensuring a unified brand presence.
What role does influencer marketing play in Celio’s overall strategy, and how do you choose influencers that resonate with your brand’s values and target audience?
Influencer marketing is a crucial part of our strategy, as it not only helps us reach a highly relevant audience but also adds credibility to our positioning as a trendy fashion brand. We carefully select fashion influencers who resonate with our target audience and align with our brand values. To ensure deeper local engagement, we focus on influencers who have a strong presence in specific cities or towns, making our campaigns more relatable and authentic to regional audiences. For instance, during the recent launch of our Celio store in Calicut, we collaborated with local influencers, allowing us to connect directly with style-conscious consumers in the area. This hyper-local approach helps us create more meaningful and impactful brand experiences.
How does Celio leverage consumer insights and data analytics to refine its marketing campaigns? Could you provide an example of a campaign that evolved based on these insights?
At Celio, consumer insights and data analytics are the foundation of our marketing strategies. We constantly gather feedback from our storefront teams and analyse data from various campaigns to refine our messaging and ensure it resonates with our target audience. This data-driven approach allows us to tailor our communication, making it more relevant and impactful. For instance, our performance marketing campaigns are continuously optimised based on real-time data. If a particular message or creative is not performing well, we quickly pivot, focusing on what works best. A great example is our campaign for casual wear, where initial data showed a stronger consumer interest in comfort-focused products. We quickly adapted the campaign, highlighting our comfort-driven collection, leading to a significant boost in engagement and conversions. This agility in using insights ensures that our marketing remains effective and consumer-centric.
What are the key PR challenges Celio faces in India, and how do you navigate them to maintain a positive brand image?
One of the key PR challenges Celio faces in India is balancing our global brand identity with the local preferences of a diverse and culturally rich market. India is a vast country with varying fashion sensibilities across regions, and ensuring our communication resonates with consumers nationwide while staying true to Celio’s brand values can be complex.
To navigate this, we adopt a localised approach to PR, tailoring our messaging to different regions and incorporating cultural nuances while maintaining consistency in our global brand image. Another challenge is staying relevant in the highly competitive and fast-evolving fashion industry. To address this, we prioritise a dynamic PR strategy that leverages timely trends, engages in influencer collaborations, and integrates digital-first campaigns to stay connected with our audience.
Additionally, the rise of e-commerce and digital platforms has heightened the need for real-time communication and engagement, which we handle through strong social media management and rapid response to customer feedback. By being agile, responsive, and consumer-centric, we ensure Celio maintains a positive and relatable brand image in India.
Can you tell us about the most successful marketing campaign you have executed in India recently, and what factors contributed to its success?
One of our most successful campaigns was the regional campaign for Durga Puja and Dusshera, where we faced an internal debate on whether to feature a national celebrity or opt for local influencers. Ultimately, we decided to trust the strength of our script and collaborated with well-known regional influencers and actors. This decision proved to be a game-changer, as the local influencers brought authenticity and connected deeply with their audience. Their performances brought the script to life, infusing regional nuances that resonated with the cultural sentiments of the festival, creating a more personal and relatable campaign. The focus on local relevance helped us engage more meaningfully with the target audience, enhancing both brand recall and emotional connection. This approach resulted in high engagement levels across digital platforms and increased footfall in stores during the festive season, making it one of our most effective campaigns to date.
Celio offers a wide range of men’s apparel. How do you ensure that your marketing messages highlight the brand’s diversity while maintaining a cohesive brand identity?
At Celio, we ensure our marketing reflects the diversity of our offerings while maintaining a cohesive brand identity through performance marketing. By following a monthly content calendar, we highlight different collections tailored to specific target groups, without compromising our core identity. We consistently emphasise our premium, French-inspired heritage in all communications, whether promoting casual or formal wear. This unified approach allows us to showcase the brand’s diversity while reinforcing Celio’s hallmark of elegance and modernity across all channels.
With the rise of omnichannel experiences, how does Celio align its in-store and online marketing strategies to offer a seamless customer experience?
At Celio, we prioritise a uniform core messaging across both in-store and online channels to maintain brand consistency, but we adapt our delivery based on the platform. While our core values remain the same, we tailor our approach by highlighting different aspects of the brand depending on the touchpoint. For example, in-store experiences emphasise personalised customer service and tactile interactions with the products, while online, we focus on convenience, accessibility, and the use of data-driven insights to personalise recommendations. This ensures that no matter where a customer interacts with the brand, they experience a cohesive and seamless journey tailored to their needs.
In the current landscape, how are fashion brands adapting their marketing strategies to meet the demands of increasingly digital and mobile-first consumers?
Customisation is indeed central to meeting the demands of digital and mobile-first consumers, and AI-driven tools are revolutionising how fashion brands deliver personalised experiences. Through AI, brands can analyse consumer behaviour, preferences, and purchase history to offer tailored product recommendations, dynamic pricing, and personalised content across platforms. This technology enables real-time interactions, such as AI-powered chatbots for instant support and virtual try-ons for mobile shoppers. The ability to customise everything—from product offerings to marketing messages—creates a more engaging, personalised shopping experience, making consumers feel more connected to the brand.
Finally, how has the role of Public Relations evolved in the fashion industry with the growing impact of social media, and what are the current best practices for managing brand reputation online?
The role of Public Relations in fashion has evolved significantly with the rise of social media, where real-time engagement is key. Today, brands must actively manage online narratives, leveraging influencer partnerships for example like how Celio did for the store launch in Calicut where we engaged two prominent local influencers who created content for the brand thereby increasing direct consumer interactions to shape public perception. Best practices include maintaining consistent messaging, responding quickly to feedback, and using social listening tools to stay ahead of trends and potential challenges, ensuring a strong and positive brand reputation across digital platforms.
