How Enamor built a 25-year legacy without PR and is now going influencer-first

New Delhi: Enamor, a brand that quietly built scale in lingerie for over two decades without leaning on traditional PR playbooks, is now stepping into a louder, sharper phase. 

The company has announced a luxury curation in collaboration with design label Papa Don’t Preach, signalling a fresh attempt to make lingerie more fashion-forward and conversation-led in India.

For Sandra Daniels, CMO, Enamor, the category itself makes disruption hard. “Lingerie is a difficult category. Everybody tends to do the same thing, so we’re always asking how we can be thought leaders, how we can change the conversation, and how we can tell a new story. How much excitement can you bring to innerwear? That was really the idea behind this collaboration.”

The collaboration is designed to create chatter more than chase conventional reach. “This campaign is designed primarily to create social buzz. It’s about new conversations and taking lingerie out of the closet and making it fashion-forward,” Daniels said.

That intent also fits Enamor’s broader media mix, which has increasingly moved away from mass media. “About 10% of our total revenue goes into marketing. Nearly 75 to 80% of our marketing budget goes into digital performance marketing. Everything is digital-first, except some below-the-line activations and store visibility,” Daniels told BestMediaInfo.com.

The shift, she said, was deliberate. “We moved completely from TV to digital about three or four years ago. The consumer is evolving, and we have to evolve with them. The consumer is the queen. Wherever the consumer is, that’s where we need to be.”

Enamor’s visibility strategy has also changed with its transition under Modenik Lifestyle. Daniels said the brand’s early years were built with a different mindset. “We were a very owner-driven brand to begin with, and the founders were very low-key. They believed in strong products and marketing, but didn’t really appreciate PR.”

Now, Daniels said, the tone is different. “Now that we’re part of Modenik Lifestyle, we’re not shy. We’re very proud of what we’re doing around the brand, and it’s important to speak about it.”

As Enamor leans into cultural relevance, influencer marketing has become a key lever. “Influencers make a difference to the brand. They’ve played a big role. We’ve seen strong website visits and actual buyers coming in through influencers.”

Daniels also framed the influencer shift through a generational lens. “Our mothers were our original influencers. They went everywhere recommending Enamor.” 

While word-of-mouth built the brand in its earlier years, she said the company has only started investing seriously in influencer marketing this year, and the early response has encouraged a bigger push. “2026 is going to be Enamor x influencers. That’s going to be a big focus for us next year.”

The brand’s positioning is also being recalibrated around what luxury means in India. Daniels pushed back on the idea that premium is only metro-led. “It’s strange that we think luxury is not applicable to tier two and tier three cities. Luxury is more psychographic than demographic. I honestly don’t see a tier two, tier three divide in luxury.”

Beyond communication, Daniels said Enamor continues to bet on product innovation as a growth driver. “Our innovation-led products grew by 150% last year. We are the only ones currently talking about innovation in innerwear. We started the brand after researching 4,000 women across India.”

On competition, Daniels said Enamor sees whitespace in marrying comfort with fashion, especially as consumers upgrade from basic innerwear. “It’s our chic and allure range that is going to enable us to get newer consumers, to get consumers to upgrade from basic brands into a more fashionable, everyday brand. The market is largely there for everybody to grow. There’s a lot of scope for growth. We stand for fashion and style. Brands like Jockey are very basic; they just offer comfort. Our opportunity is to build on comfort and style, but to offer more.”

Enamor’s fashion ambitions, Daniels noted, have been visible earlier, too. The brand was the first lingerie brand to be represented at Lakmé Fashion Week. “They only work with design labels, and allowing lingerie to walk the ramp was a big achievement for us,” she said.

The Enamor x Papa Don’t Preach collaboration aims to blend lingerie design with high-fashion storytelling. 

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The campaign introduces the luxury curation through a dark, cinematic film, using striking visuals, fluid movement and surreal motifs to build a world that reflects confidence and individuality. 

The collection, the brand said, is rooted in celebrating women who are “timeless, fearless, and unapologetically themselves,” positioning luxury through a lens of personal style as much as product.