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Yes! It’s tough to say which ‘Big Idea’ will knock the brand into the consumer head. But Santosh Desai discusses a few key patterns that emerge from past successes
4PsB&M: What according to you is the key to making effective campaigns?
SD: Campaigns that make consumers experience some hitherto unsaid truth about them work. The Times of India’s integrated campaign – A day in the life of India – picked up everyday instances in the common man’s life and wove a brand promise around it. For example, when a welcoming parapet is built across the road overnight and disappears the moment the expected VIP conclave passes, the connect forms immediately when consumers say, “Yeah. That’s exactly what happens!” The receiver fuses with the message and takes the brand higher in consumer conscious. SBI Life’s ‘old couple’ commercial works with the same creative thought. The moment you see the campaign, there’s an immediate recognition of the protagonists. Virgin Mobile has managed to do just that with its Think Hatke campaign, capturing and articulating the mood of India’s increasingly irreverent youth.
4PsB&M: How important is the storyboard? Are ‘creative’ less effective?
SD: A campaign is effective when the brand is an integral part of that effectiveness. The storyboard is important. Via the script, a campaign should be able to occupy a previously vacant perch in the consumer lifestyle. For that, the marketing brains need to painstakingly endeavour to find an unexploited area in consumer life and creatively fill in the blank. Saffola did exactly that when it identified the growing importance of health among their target audience (urban consumer). The Saffola Gold Kal Se (I’ll start from tomorrow) campaign was built on the human behaviour to procrastinate on their health needs. “In the meantime, have Saffola,” the campaign reiterated. The brand found a perch in consumer lifestyle that was previously empty, and plonked itself there by creating a new space for itself.
4PsB&M: Is humour effective?
SD: Campaigns that speak a category truth in a compelling and visceral way are the ones that race ahead in the ‘effectiveness’ meter. And what can be more instinctive than humour? Population Services International used an absurd character called Balbir Pasha to bring the issue of HIV/ AIDS out of the closet. The campaign got eyeballs and ensured that the proportion of people who felt the risk of HIV increased substantially. Humour or absurdity removes a product/ service or an idea from the realm of reality and scales up the brand in consumer mind space.
4PsB&M: The 4Ps B&M listing of India’s 100 most effective campaigns over the last decade boasts of only a few celeb-driven ads. Comment?
SD: Well, it’s not that campaigns revolving around celebrities don’t work. They do, but only when celebrities are used as message amplifiers rather than attention magnets in their own right.
The Airtel Value Add services campaign used Vidya Balan and Madhavan to communicate the sort of quiet romance required by the storyboard, which a Saif and Kareena could perhaps never deliver. Trick is, if one conceptualises a campaign with an idea rather than a celebrity – it tends to do rather well. Lux has a story which is the celebrity itself as the primary promise, so the strategy of being the beauty soap of film stars works. But in most cases, making the celebrity your primary promise is not a good idea; instead use celebrities to multiply the primary promise!
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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