Dr. Fixit, the water-proofing brand from Pidilite, has unveiled a new campaign featuring actor Amitabh Bachchan. The new campaign aims at educating consumers about the importance of complete waterproofing in the construction of a new house.
Said Vivek Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, Pidilite Industries: “Proper and complete water-proofing remains a vexing issue in Indian homes. Through this campaign, Dr. Fixit continues to educate consumers about the need to do complete waterproofing and makes it more accessible to consumers, contractors and dealers alike in easy ways across all touch-points.”
Added Talha Bin Mohsin, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather: “People are used to using either Dr. Fixit LW+ or Dr. Fixit URP for waterproofing while making new houses, but complete waterproofing can only be achieved when both of these are used. To explain this, we decided to capitalize on cricket season with an analogy that would resonate with everyone, the bat and ball. Just like cricket can’t be played with only one of them, waterproofing too can’t be done with just LW+ or URP, you need both. Sometimes, all it takes to change behavior is explaining a complicated concept with extreme simplicity and a slice of fun.”
India has been under a full lockdown since March 24, 2020. After three subsequent extensions, a relatively unsuccessful Unlock 1.0 & 2.0 in June and July, spikes in positive cases are forcing many Indian cities to go under full lockdowns, again.
As the economy degrows, unemployment rises and sales decreases and every subsequent FY21 GDP forecast is worse than the previous one, the future seems bleak and unlikely to bounce back soon.
Basis a GroupM report released in June 2020, India’s GDP will contract by 3.7% and subsequently overall advertising spends will decline by more than 20% this year. This follows, as advertising in current scenarios is an after-thought, with most companies focused on reviving production and distribution. The drop in advertising has led to unprecedented job losses in the ad-dependent media industry, so much so that industry body International Advertising Association (IAA) has been running a campaign, ‘Let’s Advertise’ to spur advertising, since June 2020.
The campaign seems to have made some impact – brands in the Health & Hygiene categories or those that can pivot their messaging to sound Covid-wise have started advertising. However, this is a small portion of the market, and for the economy to revive, brands which can afford to, should, play a bigger role in recovery.
As Keynesian economics espouses, spending spurs consumption during times of economic downturns. If brands (which can) spend monies, this will spur demand, and the money will help the economy as a whole. In such pandemic times, the messaging of many brands is irrelevant, a great way to remain visible is by running Public Service Announcements (PSAs) campaigns.
While a decade ago, PSAs were issued by govt bodies, with the advent of social media, brands regularly run socially relevant campaigns because they help the brand earn respect and hence brand equity while also doing social good. Due to their affirming messages, PSAs also have higher than average trend-worthiness, i.e. audiences share these ads more because it helps them feel good about themselves to do something socially relevant.
With the notable exception of Mumbai Police PSAs, most PSAs released by government bodies in India, are pedagogical spiels, which are not engaging, even when starring celebrities.
In March 2020, just as the lockdown was announced, the Maharashtra government released a pedagogical PSA on Covid-19 headlined by the biggest stars of Bollywood including Amitabh Bachchan, Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, Alia Bhatt, Akshay Kumar etc. A month later, Sony launched a PSA with a similar Bollywood lineup but a much better storyline. (The PSA can be viewed here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQk0VrL2I-w
Short film – ‘Family’, conceptualised and virtually directed by Prasoon Pandey for Sony Network starring celebs from across the country used storytelling creatively to communicate the importance of staying at home. It was telecast in April 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju7ku–S6F4
Hence, in Covid-stricken times, effective PSAs can help brands kill many birds with one stone – create brand equity, earn public goodwill, spur good behaviour, meet annual CSR target spends as mandated by Indian law and, most importantly, help the economy recover. Earned goodwill will also spur trials for those whose loyalties lie with competitors.
Budget-struck brands can collaborate with other brands; conduct digital-only campaigns to give the push to the economy to help its recovery.
As brands with diverse target audiences release PSAs, different strata of society will get targeted which will help in overall compliance. This is backed by research conducted by 2019 Nobel laureates in Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. In a paper released last month, they have shown that frequent celebrity messaging, in addition to the existent large-scale government messaging on Covid-19, can positively impact behaviour by nudging people to follow best practices. The research also shows that there are spillovers of good behaviour in the entire community even when a few are targeted.
In a CSR initiative, waiting to be replicated by national dailies, Kashmir ‘s Urdu newspaper Roshni, affixed a mask on the front page of the paper on July 20 to drive home the message about mask usage. Kashmir was under complete lockdown from 22-27 July, due to a rise in Covid cases.
VIRALITY TO BEHAVIOURIAL CHANGE
The challenge even for good PSAs is translating virality to behavioural change. The ease of communication brought on by social media has made armchair activists of the majority of the population. However, while these activists enable knowledge-sharing with other people they don’t bother much with acting upon the gained knowledge before moving on to the next trending topic. Which is why, despite the dangers of inobedience, many who wear a face mask, style it as a chin-guard.
Hence, brands should be careful to create PSAs which are not just a retelling of facts, but facts communicated in way to appeal to their targeted audience, whether it is through high quality storytelling, a new ‘Hook Step’ or a ‘Challenge’ which is creative enough to warrant sharing. Basis the research by Banerjee and Duflo, leveraging brand ambassadors signed on for lavish multi-year contracts will also help to drive behavioural change. So brands, any takers?
Bhuvi Gupta is a marketer with over 10 years across industries, of which the last six have been in Media & Entertainment. She has been a part of many launch marketing campaigns – specifically at the Times of India group, Republic TV and the latest in marketing a Bollywood film. She will write on A&M (mostly marketing, but often on advertising too). Her views here are personal. She tweets at @bhuvigupta3
Muthoot Finance has entered into a partnership with Red FM to launch a series of real-life inspirational stories that break stigmas around gold loans in India. Muthoot Finance’s brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan narrates these stories in an all-new avatar.
Commenting on the association, Alexander George Muthoot, Deputy Managing Director, The Muthoot Group said: “We have always launched path-breaking campaigns that have brought attitudinal transformation in the lives of people. Gold loans have huge potential as Indian households have 26000 tons of gold and just 2-3% of this is monetised by way of gold loans. We at Muthoot Finance are the guardians of trust who empower society to realise the power of their dreams by unlocking the true value of their emotional currency. Our Sunheri Soch campaign brings inspirational real-life stories to life to help common people realise their dreams”
Added Abhinav Iyer, General Manager, Marketing & Strategy, Muthoot Finance: “Sunheri Soch is a series of life-transforming stories that can inspire a million others. As humans-beings, we feel inspired by great success stories. With a little help from Muthoot Finance, these are people who realised their dreams. With +2.5 Lac customers being served every day, it wasn’t easy to hand-pick a few success stories. Mr Bachchan’s incomparable voice and amazing delivery has just brought in the magical touch to this campaign”
Said Nisha Narayanan, COO & Director, Red FM and Magic FM: “We are excited to announce our collaboration with Muthoot Finance, one of the most trusted financial services brand in India to feature inspirational success stories and break all the prevailing apprehensions associated with gold loans. With deeper engagement being the primary need of clients, we have taken a different approach in sharing some of the extraordinary real stories of Muthoot Finance Gold Loan customers”
Added Ruchi Mathur, Senior VP, Mindshare: “Magic happens when real life and storytelling come together. Especially in times like these when consumers and listeners are looking for something positive to latch on to. With this idea, we are not selling a brand or a product, but we are bringing hope to the many who have a dream, but just need the inspiration and a little help. We at Mindshare Content+ are proud to partner Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch and hope this platform will bring the change we feel it can.”
On June 12 midnight, as the Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer ‘Gulabo Sitabo’ was released on Prime Video, ABP Spotlight created a show with anchor Shrivardhan ‘Sansani’ Trivedi who interviewed ‘animated’ renditions of lead characters of the film.
Mona Jain
Said Mona Jain, Chief Revenue Officer, ABP News Network: “At ANN, we are always exploring fresh and inventive formats to keep our viewers engaged. This new offering by our content division is a positive take from the daily onslaught of news generated by the pandemic, which takes a heavy toll on the nation’s mood. It will not only act as a means of entertainment & amusement amidst these trying times, but will also open doors for advertisers to fine-tune their media plans amid the ongoing shifts in consumer behavior and leverage exceptional reach across all platforms.”
This Mother’s Day, Kalyan Jewellers launched a digital ad film with Amitabh Bachchan reciting the poem ‘Maa Tune Sone Ka Dil Paaya’ – thus paying tribute to all mothers. The video rendition of the poetic tribute features ‘Maa & Me’ images, these photographs were sourced via social media participation. From the hundreds of crowdsourced images, the brand handpicked some of the best moments captured on camera to be part of the campaign video.
Speaking about this campaign, Ramesh Kalyanaraman, Executive Director, Kalyan Jewellers said: “Our mothers have always stood by us and been our biggest support system. This year while some of us are lucky enough to celebrate Mother’s Day at home, there are several who are celebrating it from afar. In times like these, it is important that one holds on to the good and beautiful moments and takes the nostalgic trip down memory lane. Our Mother’s Day campaign has sought to follow this approach and use the evergreen voice of Amitabh Bachchan juxtaposed with real photos.”
Kalyan Jewellers’ regional brand ambassadors, Wamiqa Gabbi, Ritabhari Chakraborty and Kinjal Rajpriya joined the campaign along with Shweta Bachchan Nanda by sharing pictorial ‘Ma & Me’ memories.
Kalyan Jewellers has announced that it will be supporting the daily wage worker community from the Gems and Jewellery industry as well as the Film industry, in association with Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘We Are One’ initiative that aims to support over 1,00,000 families.
On its part, Kalyan Jewellers will provide 50,000 households with monetary relief during these tough times.
For the ‘kaarigars’ or artisans and the daily wage workers who are part of the gems and jewellery industry, Kalyan Jewellers has launched the ‘Goldsmith Relief Fund’ and will be working closely with Jewellery Manufactures Association (Kerala), Coimbatore Jewellers Association and Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (Mumbai). The fund will be used to provide relief material and monetary assistance to the daily wage workers.
Talking about the initiative, TS Kalyanaraman, Chairman and Managing Director, Kalyan Jewellers said, “We are witnessing an unprecedented global pandemic. During these testing times, it is important to support the daily wage worker community which has been most affected due to the shutdown. The Goldsmith Relief Fund is a humble initiative that we have put together to try and bring some semblance of financial relief to the artisans working in our industry.”
Kalyan will also be partnering with the ‘We Are One’ Public Service Announcement film. Led by Amitbh Bachchan, stalwarts from the film industry have come together to make this short PSA, that clarifies the importance of staying home and maintaining social distancing to break the chain during COVID-19.
“The film being made is very special as it brings together all the best creative minds of our industry. This will further strengthen the unity among the citizens of our country to fight COVID-19 and enable India to lead the world out of this pandemic,” added T S Kalyanaraman.
IDFC First Bank has announced the signing of actor Amitabh Bachchan as its first ever brand ambassador. Bachchan’s personality resonates IDFC FIRST’s brand persona and values pillars, that of sincerity, humility and contemporariness, notes a communique.
Said V Vaidyanathan, MD & CEO, IDFC First Bank: “It gives me immense pleasure to welcome the superstar of the millennium, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, as our brand ambassador. The charisma of Mr. Bachchan has captivated people of all ages across countries. I am most amazed by his humility despite his extraordinary successes. All of us at IDFC FIRST Bank are delighted about this association with the true legend of our times.”
Netcore Solutions announced the success of its Big B virtual assistant on WhatsApp built for Flipkart’s recent Big Billion Days sale. Netcore helped Flipkart leverage Facebook’s Click-to-WhatsApp feature on Facebook Ads by allowing users the real-time experience to chat over WhatsApp with a virtual assistant modelled on the star Amitabh Bachchan.
Said Vikas Gupta, Head of Marketing at Flipkart: “We are a customer-first company that takes pride in pioneering industry-first innovations. Given WhatsApp’s large footprint, we wanted to leverage it to connect deeply with our customers. And that’s why we created The Big B WhatsApp virtual assistant during this Big Billion Days, a unique tech-led engagement model in association with Facebook and our technology partners, Netcore. It made use of several loved features such as emojis, images, and audio – to create a truly engaging experience. We were able to drive almost 1 million interactions with an impressive 7 minutes of engagement per session to drive nearly 20,000 hours of engagement with this initiative.”
Added Kalpit Jain, Group CEO at Netcore: “Today, we exist in a multi-channel environment. In this era of conversational commerce, brands need to engage with their customers in real-time across instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp to deliver differentiated customer experiences. That was the focus when we started building out the Big B virtual assistant for Flipkart. We didn’t want it to be just a gimmick, but wanted to actually power value-driven conversations at scale for Flipkart. We are thrilled to have partnered with a like-minded, innovative company such as Flipkart and look forward to empowering brands fuel personalised customer engagement through WhatsApp as an effective channel of conversion and communication.”
APL Apollo Tubes Limited (APL Apollo) has roped in actor Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador for all brands housed under APL Apollo. The contract signed for two years entails Amitabh Bachchan to endorse and promote the innovative product line of APL Apollo.
Commenting on this announcement, Sanjay Gupta, CMD, APL Apollo said: “We take pride in announcing that now legendary star Amitabh Bachchan is another added Jewel to our crown. We believe he encapsulates all the qualities that APL Apollo stands for, and so this association will enable us to reach out to far more consumers domestically.”
Bikaji Foods has signed megastar Amitabh Bachchan as its brand ambassador. The actor will feature as the face of the brand in a multimedia campaign which has gone live from this month (October 2019).
Said Deepak Agarwal, CEO and Director, Bikaji Foods International: “We are delighted to welcome the entertainment industry’s most revered personality, Amitabh Bachchan aka Amitji as we fondly call him. He has a massive fan following across geographies and has an identity beyond the films, ads that he does. His mass appeal and larger-than-life image will help expand Bikaji’s boundaries. Bikaji is a favourite among Indian snack lovers and we hope to enhance the brand appeal to young people across geographies and boost distributors’ confidence.”
Added Sagar Parikh, Managing Partner, 3 Brothers & Fils: ‘‘The campaign encourages the youth to enjoy ethnic snacking. Amitji is loved by the masses and the classes, so he’s the best choice to deliver the message in a fun and entertaining way.”
In all likelihood, over the next few days, you will buy some item on the ‘Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale’ or the ‘Flipkart Billion Days Sale’. And at the end of the sale period, one of them will claim some astronomical figure of realised sales.
Through the years, Amazon and Flipkart have successfully redefined ‘the biggest sale’ in Indian festival calendar. It is now nearer to Dassera than Diwali, an attempt to sweep the market before the traditional sale period.
Sales in India on a single day are nowhere close to the eye-popping record $30.8 Billion ‘Single’s day’ sale of Alibaba, which was more than the ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’ sales combined. But we are getting there with growing e-commerce, better logistics, infrastructure and some help the banks and payment gateways.
STRAIGHT FIGHT BETWEEN AMAZON AND FLIPKART.
Ladies and Gentleman, the man/woman with a high-end mobile and slow connection and the laptop babu with a fast connection. The fight is opening soon. Guaranteed you will benefit in this ‘diwalia hone ko tayyar‘ (Ready to get bankrupt) sentiment associated with such sales.
In the red corner of this ring of festival annual sale fight is the Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale with its very cultural centric motif that is scheduled for September 29 to October 4. Amazon Prime members can try it out from September 28 itself.
In the blue corner is Flipkart, which has mastered the art of sale throughout the year. Its Big Billion Days Sale will start on September and 29 and end on October 4.
This is a straight fight no consumer worth his or her last spending INR wants to miss.
The banks are joining the fun with further cash backs and easy EMIs. Somewhere there is a hint of cashback within 72 hours of sale! Additionally, to keep the excitement, there is a promise of new additions on hourly sale, which is expected to boost repeat logins. And the exchange offers are not missing from the sale. Don’t have money, well, there is some 1,00,000 credit possibility with Flipkart.
Both Amazon and Flipkart want you to keep your wishlist ready. No doubt this is the best sale one can aim at. But as per the earlier pattern, one can see additional Dassera sale, Electronic sales, Diwali sale online and offline. Maybe the only issue is too much option for the consumer that may delay decision-making.
CONNECTING WITH THE CONSUMER.
Now both the e-commerce sites have upgraded their systems and made arrangement to smoothen the consumer experience. But the campaigns by Flipkart seem heavy and lacking conviction. There has been a Billion Day Sale for production and media. It is overloaded.
Deviating from ‘children acting like adults (adult kid)’ theme that predominates Flipkart as a brand, it seems to have gone back to the safety of celebrity advertising. Flipkart has cornered and employed every possible top celebrity interested in selling the idea of getting ready for the sale. Virat as a Cop and Deepika as a Lawyer, Amitabh as a Godown owner and Alia as a newsreader. Regional skew and for every region worth as a priority market, they have a regional star selling the Big Billion Day sale. Don’t know if the celebrities came in some sale.
Meanwhile, Flipkart continued with the strongly associated Adult Kid format borrowing the characters of Circuit and Munnabhai for its Rewards Programme.
Amazon is playing on the brand pull and the past experience of the family as the purchasing unit. And whoever I have spoken with, seems to have a strong perception that the discounts- delivery- experience at Amazon is far better than at Flipkart.
This, in fact, will be a more significant factor in deciding which way the match swings. Because, people know in India that sale and discount is one thing, delivery, service and protection is something totally different.
THE COMMUNICATIONS.
AMAZON GREAT INDIAN FESTIVAL SALE
FLIPKART BIG BILLION DAY SALE.
In the past, Flipkart has used their strong Adult Kid format for the Big Billion Day Sale.. But for some reason, most likely it not giving then enough ROI, they have opted for the celebrity safety net.
Followers of Hindi cinema would know of Progeria as the rare disease afflicting actor Amitabh Bachchan in the film ‘Paa’.
The Progeria Research Foundation (PRF; www.progeriaresearch.org) announced the launch of ‘Find the Children – 60 in India with Progeria’ campaign. The campaign is designed to create awareness among the general public and healthcare providers, in order to locate and assist children with this rare and fatal rapid aging condition. The India search calls for the public’s help in finding undiagnosed children with Progeria, so they can have access to treatment and healthcare guidelines that can give them longer, more active lives.
Said Audrey Gordon, President and Executive Director of PRF: “In order to help the children, we have to find them. Locating and assisting them is the goal of our international ‘Find the Children’ campaign. Progeria is a very rare disease that many people don’t recognise. And in a vast, diverse, and multilingual country like India, many of these children come from smaller towns and remote villages; so this outreach is vital to finding them.”
The Progeria Research Foundation has collaborated with MediaMedic Communications through its exclusive status as India partner in GlobalHealthPR. In the past, MediaMedic helped find Nihal Bitla from Bhivandi, Mumbai, and several others, including children from Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh.
Added Dr Leslie B. Gordon, Medical Director of PRF: “We have connected with over a dozen families of children with Progeria in India, and they have become part of the PRF International Progeria Registry, received treatment recommendations, and joined clinical treatment trials. Our goal is to provide these opportunities to every child with Progeria in India. Finding these children and their families is the essential first step to helping them/ All children with Progeria must have the opportunity to benefit from our efforts to find treatments and a cure, so please help us find children with Progeria in India.”
India has been under a full lockdown since March 24, 2020. After three subsequent extensions, a relatively unsuccessful Unlock 1.0 & 2.0 in June and July, spikes in positive cases are forcing many Indian cities to go under full lockdowns, again.
Muthoot Finance has entered into a partnership with Red FM to launch a series of real-life inspirational stories that break stigmas around gold loans in India. Muthoot Finance’s brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan narrates these stories in an all-new avatar.
APL Apollo Tubes Limited (APL Apollo) has roped in actor Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador for all brands housed under APL Apollo. The contract signed for two years entails Amitabh Bachchan to endorse and promote the innovative product line of APL Apollo.
In all likelihood, over the next few days, you will buy some item on the ‘Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale’ or the ‘Flipkart Billion Days Sale’. And at the end of the sale period, one of them will claim some astronomical figure of realised sales.