Wills Lifestyle logs on to Facebook for

brand building

New Delhi : Facebook, Flicker and Twitter. Hoping to attract the young and tech
savvy, Wills Lifestyle, the brand behind the trendy clothes and the fashion week as
well, is using social networking sites to boost its sales.

It has more than 16,000 fans on Facebook as well as a presence on other interactive
websites like Twitter and Flicker.

"As a lifestyle brand, we believe we should keep on doing things to engage

consumers. It is very important to be where the consumer is spending maximum
time and it is new-age media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flicker," Atul
Chand, chief executive of ITC's lifestyle retail business division, told IANS.

"Right now, we are leveraging on technology. We are using the power of technology
for brand building and it is benefiting us big time," he added.

Wills Lifestyle is one of the main sponsors of the Fashion Design Council of India's
mega fashion event - Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW). In the last two
editions, WIFW roped in actress Gul Panag and jewellery designer Farah Ali Khan as
celebrity Twitter faces. They tweeted regularly during the five-day fashion fetes.

"The idea to have a celebrity Twitter face is that in a few seconds, the fans, who are
following the star, get to know about latest happenings of the WIFW. This helps to
reach out to people sitting all around the globe," said Chand.

This year, WIFW started another initiative called 'celebrity photographer'. Model
Sheetal Mallar clicked exclusive backstage and green room pictures and posted them
on Facebook fan page of Wills Lifestyle.

"We wanted our Facebook fans to view some exclusive pictures of the WIFW on our
Facebook page. So we had chosen supermodel Sheetal Mallar and she had clicked
pictures of green room and events that were very exclusive for our fans," said
Chand.

Apart from this, the brand has also tied up with online portals like rediff.com,
sify.com and HomeShop 18 to sell Wills Lifestyle apparels. According to Chand, there
are more online sales of men's products compared to women's.

"It is a very surprising fact that men's apparel sell more online because they know
their exact size. Also, not all our apparels are available online; only the pieces that
we feel don't require much of the customisation of fit are put for online sale," said
Chand.

He also pointed out that people usually buy Wills Lifestyle products online to gift and
the profit made with the online sales is equal to business made from one store.