It has been an exciting year of new experiments for the omni-channel jewellery brand, CaratLane. For starters, FY25 saw the brand move from tactical communication to brand building and brand communication. A big change was a shift in their media strategy.
For almost over a decade, 80% of CaratLane’s media spends was targeted to digital - programmatic followed by performance, remarketing, YouTube ads and other equivalent digital platforms. This changed with CaratLane consciously making a shift in its media spends.
Today 80 percent of its spends which used to happen on programmatic, has been reduced to 50 percent, with the brand now consciously investing in traditional mediums. The reason behind this move was having 300 stores across 128 cities, including in smaller cities. The need to be relevant has led to CaratLane investing in traditional mediums like print ads, outdoor, radio and ground activities. Says Shaifali Gautam, Chief Marketing Officer, CaratLane, “This media mix shift is giving us a very high brand recall. With the move to traditional media, we have a good media mix today.”
In Q4FY25, the brand came back on television after almost seven years, across Hindi GECs, regional GECs and even IPL. Gautam says, “We saw a lot of pull because we were able to tap into a new audience set completely through the television medium. This gave us a lot of confidence, so much so that we decided to go further on television with IPL. As a brand, we’ve been constantly on television starting from before Valentine’s Day to the end of IPL. It's been a great journey for us from the media mix perspective.” CaratLane associated with IPL for the first time in 2025 to target the large consumer base, watching the T20 series, across the country and of which are women.
In March 2025, CaratLane unveiled Eternity featuring tennis bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, in diamond jewellery. This high-end collection opened to the brand an entirely new set of discerning older consumer, looking to buy at higher price-points and also grow the brand with consumers who started their journey with CaratLane, a decade ago, and have now moved up the value chain.
Building Engagement
In February, for Valentine’s Day, CaratLane launched Valentine’s Day and engagement campaigns, for its strategic all-new engagement rings collection, strategically as two separate campaigns. This also marked CaratLane’s foray into the wedding space. The success of the first engagement campaign, built confidence in CaratLane to quickly move to the second campaign as well. With a large offering of engagements ring, starting at Rs 25,000, the first film was sent to customers and ran on Digital – YouTube, Meta – and through programmatic ads as well as on television.
She says, “We did a dipstick post the first campaign and saw the metric for engagement rate at 4.29 percent, which is very high. Secondly, we also looked at the brand track, and are very happy to see that within the jewelry business our total awareness has gone to upward of 37 percent, which is fairly high. We saw the awareness reach the frequency with which we were able to reach out to the customer. We've never before been able to reach to such a wide audience with a 4.29 percent of engagement rate. One of the main metrics that we see on YouTube is the video completion rate. For our engagement 1.0 film, we were able to see a 36 percent of 100 percent video completion rate, which is again very high for YouTube ad films which are skippable. With the second campaign, we are hoping that it will go even further high.”
The second part of the engagement campaign film is called the Nudge Chapter 2. Interestingly, the film has reimagined the act of proposing, not as a Western ritual, but as an Indian ritual. Gautam says that a common theme, connecting both the Chapter One and Chapter Two of the campaigns were very strong relevant consumer insights that consumers can instantly connect with it. She explains, “The Nudge film is messy, funny, but also real as it captures a very honest and pure raw moment in a real relationship. Men tend to procrastinate sometimes as they become very comfortable in a relationship, and do not think of taking it to the next level. This film shows a couple in love, whose relationship is at a status quo. The girl has to nudge the man, and this is one insight in everyday life, that women have to nudge men a lot of times to take that step, as they don't understand and pick up on the clues. It's a beautiful film which ends at a metro, and I'm hoping that the men who watch this film, do not miss the train, and are able to go and propose.” While the first film was released during Valentine's, the second film was timed to release just in time for the pre-wedding shopping.
Commenting on the response she says, “The response has been overwhelming. In fact, this film has been loved 2X more by people, than the earlier engagement film, both internally as well as by our customers. This is validated through the data as well.” Gautam believes as the first leg of the campaign ended in March end, and the second film was launched within a month and a half, this film was seen as a continuity by consumers. She continues, “In terms of the metric for the second film, the YouTube completion rate is even higher. This film has a bit of quirkiness, humour and is far more real while the first film was built on jitter. This film has garnered far more love, both in terms of engagement rate as well as from the video completion rate perspective. For the film running on IPL, the organic engagement within the first week, was upward of 5 percent. The video completion rate, within the first week, was upward of 62 percent, a very high number. From a business perspective, we look at the number of pieces sold. After our first campaign, we saw our engagement rings business go up by 21 percent.”
Recently, in April 2025, Caratlane has launched for the first time a brand new loyalty program for its crown customers to engage with its topmost customers frequently and also collect feedback. In fact, Gautam says that CaratLane has been able to design 9 personas within the jewelry business for its consumers, who are often collectors and come to the store every month to pick up one piece from the latest collection. The brand also recently launched a runway collection dedicated to the women who are the trailblazers in the sky, from commercial pilots to the fighter pilots as well as to the air crew on ground and in the flights. This collection consists of planes made in gold and diamond and is also targeted to travel enthusiasts.
Looking ahead, CaratLane is working on two new IPs to be released soon, and is looking to launch a new collection every month with the latest designs and trends. The brand is also gearing up for lots more including its Diwali and Dhanteras collection and as Gautam says, “With the kind of experiments and the array of collections we are bringing, we're extremely excited about the current year.”
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