To Mark Its Styling Debut, Fable & Mane’s First Global Campaign Makes A Statement About South Asian Diversity

For its first global advertising campaign, Fable & Mane is reinforcing its core pillars: It’s a hair oil authority unabashedly rooted in South Asian culture.

Centered on the $38 product MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil, which represents the Ayurvedic-inspired brand’s styling debut, the campaign lensed by Hanna Hollier, who’s shot for Rhode, Saie, Kosas, Ilia and Prose, features a South Asian cast, including Fable & Mane’s sibling co-founders Akash and Nikita Mehta, their mother Chetna Mehta, influencer Janice Joostema, model and poet Praveena Tharmathas, and actor Zara Naeem. It will be seen in Instagram, Facebook and YouTube ads along with Los Angeles wild posting.

With its focus on South Asian representation, Akash Mehta hopes the campaign will herald a new era for the beauty industry that relegates tokenism to the past. “We can start seeing an industry that isn’t people of color or minorities as second or third or ticking a box, but we’re perceived as more,” he says. “The more people are put as the face of things, that’s what people see, and it’s familiar, it’s something people feel is normalized.”

Formerly a digital manager at Parfums Christian Dior and Estée Lauder, Mehta continues, “When I worked in big companies, I was always wondering why sometimes you didn’t have a person of color. And often people would say, ‘Well, look at China, it doesn’t work in this region or a fairer skin tone is the best globally.’ But if we started having more people of color, for example, on the billboards all over the world globally, people will be more used to it. And then more and more, this will change mindset. So, that’s a goal for me.”

The MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil campaign has a good deal of diversity even though every person in it is of South Asian descent. There’s a range of ages—Mehta’s mother Chetna is almost 60 years old—hair types, textures and colors. Chetna has blonde hair, and Tharmathas has purple and blue hair in the campaign. Curly, straight and wavy hair is incorporated. Mehta says, “The premise behind it is it’s made by us, made by South Asians, but for all.”

Another goal for the campaign is, of course, to help sell MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil. Mehta’s objective is for the product to become a top-five hair oil at Sephora and generate a seven-figure sales total during its initial year of availability. Overall, he says Fable & Mane aims to double its revenues in 2023. The brand arrived at Sephora in the United States in 2020, and it’s since expanded to Sephora Europe, Douglas, Selfridges and Nykaa. Further global expansion at Sephora is on deck for this year.

“The premise behind it is it’s made by us, made by South Asians, but for all.”

Fable & Mane has gifted MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil to select celebrities and members of the press, tapped a network of about 100 influencers to spread the word about the product and, in an approach the brand hasn’t taken before, reached out to hairstylists to provide their imprimatur on it. Fable & Mane pays the influencers in its network.

Mehta says, “Every content creator deserves compensation for their work and time because they’re going out of their way to create content, to try your product and to promote it and to post it.” He adds, “They have to be brand advocates and believers, not just sellers. I think, when they feel that you’re not requiring them to sell, they feel a lot more inspired by that relationship.”

Fable & Mane aspires for virality, but isn’t planning for it. Mehta points out MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil’s quick results lend themselves to the possibility of virality. The brand conducted clinicals that concluded it tames frizz after a single use. Mehta suggests virality typically arises from people buying or sampling a product and sharing their experiences with it organically. Fable & Mane is sampling the product heavily, and roughly 100,000 samples will be doled out via Sephora, events and its website.

“I don’t think it’s something that you should be obsessed with, that’s unhealthy and that’s unrealistic because you can’t source virality,” says Mehta. “So, I would say it’s never been in my meetings, ‘Guys, we need to go viral, what should we do?’ You never brainstorm that. I think it’s just more about thinking about dissecting what viral means.”

Fable & Mane will be hosting a series of events to showcase MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil. The product’s launch will be feted today with an event at the Santa Monica Proper Hotel, and events will be forthcoming in London at Selfridges, where the brand have a pop-up with a station for head massages, as well as in the United Arab Emirates and India.

Fable & Mane premiered with HoliRoots Hair Oil and has built a collection around the current bestseller containing an oil mist, mask, conditioner and shampoo. Later, it extended into scalp care with SahaScalp Amla Soothing Serum. The SahaScalp collection has increased with a scrub and mud mask. Fable & Mane will enlarge the MahaMane collection similarly, and the second styling product is due out in June. Maha is the Sanskrit word for “great.”

“People might be wondering, why another oil? But we’re only getting started.”

Mehta emphasizes that consumers can have different hair oils for different purposes—and the hair oil category is growing to accommodate multiple hair oils in people’s haircare regimens. According to market research firm Emergen Research, the global hair oils category valued at $4.31 billion in 2021 is advancing at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 4%. Mehta says, “People might be wondering, why another oil? But we’re only getting started because we are an oil brand based on hundreds and thousands of oils from India.”

A big priority for Fable & Mane is persuading HoliRoots Hair Oil users to pick up MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil. HoliRoots Hair Oil is a pre-wash product that customers slather on their dry hair and scalp as part of a hair oiling or “slugging” ritual. MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil is a post-wash product, and customers stick to a sparing one to five drops of it for heat protection and frizz busting. Fable & Mane has developed assets to break down product application, key ingredients and the benefits of using both. MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil has ashwagandha for hair strengthening and shikakai for shine.

An unexpected outcome of Fable & Mane’s MahaMane Smooth & Shine Hair Oil campaign could be catapulting Chetna Mehta’s modeling career. Her son reports she had a blast on the shoot and is ready for her next gig.

“She should be a model, but she’s never actually modeled. Everyone who sees her thinks she’s a model, and it just was the perfect moment to actually even potentially start her modeling. She was so natural on set,” he says. “I actually cried. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, hey, that’s my mom, so proud.’ I haven’t seen her that happy in a while. She’s happy all the time, but not that happy. She was loving it. She had a fan on her, and 10 people screaming, ‘You’re amazing. Go girl!’”