Marketing and branding strategy advice for Mother Earth - First store in India focusing on sustainability

About the organisation

Mother Earth India is an organisation which is responsible for the design, production and sales of products including furniture, gift items ,garments (woven, embellished or stitched by rural artisans), food (organic and natural), natural fiber products, handicraft decor. 

The organisation exists of three entities. One of these is the Industree Crafts foundation, which supports artisans in rural areas with design and skill development. Secondly, Industree Crafts Pvt. Ltd. ,they handle all commercial activities and have their own production centres. A third entity is Industree transform Pvt. Ltd. This entity takes care of all back end functions such as sourcing, procurement, sorting, ware housing etc.

The aim of the company to work with craftspeople in a self-sustainable fashion - marketing rural skills to urban markets. As a social enterprise, Industree's core practise for achieving deep social impact is to engage a wide range of stakeholders in an integrated, coherent, and sustainable way. The company currently has an annual turnover of €330.000.


Business case
'Industree Crafts Ltd' is responsible for marketing the products. Their challenge is to build a strong brand for rural producers amongst urban Indians. The Indian retail market is booming and needs to build on a more inclusive and aware market, with strong social values: Fair, Sustainable, Natural. They want to organize an annual master plan create brand awareness for the Indian consumer. Neelam Chibber, Director of Mother Earth asked SharePeople for support from a marketing or branding expert to help them define a branding and marketing strategy.

We linked this business case with Lilian Heijmans, an independent consultant: "a marketeer with a passion for 1-1 contacts. She is a thinks strategically and is able to implement the strategy and translate it into specific (multi)media and social media tools" 

Results

Analysis
Lilian worked closely together with the marketing manager, assistant marketing manager and Director of Mother Earth. The professionals of Mother Earth already had many ideas regarding the marketing strategy, Lilian played a important part in coaching the process of defining the strategy. At first some meetings were held to get more insights. Insights of those meetings were clear: by increasing customer insight Mother Earth will be able to develop its business (increase turnover, product development, acquisition new customers, retention current customers).

The major conclusion was that Mother Earth is doing very well as a company but should be prepared to bring the business to the next, a more professional level. To reach this level, marketing should be a key component of their strategy.

Advice
Some key issues were covered by the recommendations:

"Customer is Queen" (mainly female customers). Manage all projects with the customer in mind. Not only communications but also products, product development, pricing, operations, processes etc. All communication should be developed based upon the brand key. Also co-productions or partners should be in line with the brand key.

Concrete results/deliverables out of the programme:

• Marketing plan / business strategy
• Brand key
• Draft loyalty program
• Definition of quick wins on social media, online and website
• Overview of next steps to be taken on a (very) short term

Impact on the partners

Lilian Heijmans: "This programme gave me some lessons in patience, and took me out of the getting-things-done-immediately mentality."

"I learned that coaching is a part I really liked and want to develop further. I gained more insight in knowledge and way of working"

Neelam Chibber: "I learned that marketing should be an important part of the company. The business should be moved to the next professional level"

Follow up

Internally Mother Earth is planning to develop processes to gain customer insights.

Plans for the future on the longer term:

• Development and implementation of loyalty program
• Start up getting more customer insights
• Make marketing an important factor in business strategy
• Development of Brand Manual

The expert agreed to take responsibility of the development of the loyalty program and be in touch with Neelam regularly for follow up on both marketing and loyalty.

This is a start of a two-year partnership between SharePeople and Mother Earth.  Both organisations will keep in touch (a.o. via the SharePeople liaison, at least every 3 months) and with the expert as well. After this Programme, an official update on the status of the organisation takes place every 12 months.  

Besides, already a second expert has worked with Mother Earth. Rob Maessen has worked with the company regarding improvement of their supply chain management.