Creative encore: Do great ads make successful brands?

Sheetal Patel - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Over the past few years, leading brands known for their iconic and creative advertising have put out what can be described as a creative encore. Higher risk aversion and over-dependence on research during the economic correction maybe blamed.

Anand Halve, co-founder, Chlorophyll Brand and Communications Consultancy, says, "Today, there are many brands that seem to have stumbled with creative encores. The reason is not so much the client, but the creative agencies, who are not able to separate the execution idea from the creative idea."

When Star Plus announced Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) as the host of their third season for Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), big sponsors lined up to join the hoopla. But even heavy advertising, including a music video (Ek sawaal ka sawaal hai) featuring SRK could not do much to salvage the show.

Advertising will only take you so far, then you are on your own baby. KBC 3 premiered on January 22, 2007 and was the most watched show that day. But by the end of the week, the television ratings started to drop drastically.

For the second week, as per TAM Media Research data, KBC 3 got an average TRP of 7.1. In comparison, KBC 2, hosted by the Big B in 2006, had opened with 19.75 TVRs and reached 18 million individuals.

WorldSpcae ad

World Space, was launched in India in 2000, but high subscription cost kept many away from the satellite-based digital radio service. So in mid-2006, WorldSpace India slashed its prices, roped in music maestro A. R. Rahman to peddle its wares and launched an award-winning brand communication to woo customers.

But even then their performance has been dismal. While their current subscriber numbers are still unknown, WorldSpace India had only managed to garner a few hundred thousand listeners till the end of 2008. With the spectra of its global bankruptcy in late 2008, and regulatory hurdles in India, this one will take a long time to play catch up.

Happydent campaign

Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman, McCann Worldgroup India, and regional creative director, McCann Asia, created the highly exaggerated Happydent campaign to re-create the brand promise of sparkling teeth, the category was looking for something just as outrageous to spur the confectionary purchase.

Before the ad, consumers tended to confuse brand Happydent with rival Orbit. Effective advertising pushed Happydent to top of the mind recall in the category. Orbit was forced to change its communication from being a teeth whitening chewing gum to a gum with benefits like tooth decay prevention.

Namita Gupta, product head, Perfetti India, says, "Communication should be a mix of creative and effective advertising. Its pointless if our campaign is great, but we are not able to sell our products."

The new variant of the Happydent campaign looses on the novelty factor. The new ad for HappyDent Wave pales in comparison, which features a herd of elephants that stomp through several cartons of the gel-filled variant only to end up with tusks that flicker like tube lights.

Avenger ad

For Bajaj Avenger, with its combination of great looks, performance and value pricing, the Bajaj bike looked set to cruise to success when it was launched. The creative for this brand's launch can be described in a single word - Wow.

From the music to the visuals to the black and white scenes from the biker's life interspersed in between to the biker himself and the exhilarating 'Feels Like God' tagline. But the bike could not live up to expectations.

"Their campaign was good. But the initial product had a lot of problems, which turned away a lot of buyers. The Avenger 200 (launched later) was a much better product, but overall the Avenger hasn't been able to fetch volumes for the company," offers auto analyst, Tutu Dhawan.

Dicor ad

When Tata Motors launched the Safari Dicor, its bold rugged looks, styling and the award-winning 'Reclaim your Life' tag line immediately pushed the luxury SUV in the forefront of consumer recall.

But the brand could not steal the thunder away from M&M's brands in the segment - Scorpio, Balero and now the Xylo. Clearly, there's much more to brand dominance then mere creativity, smart tag lines and cutting edge advertising communication.

S. Krishnan, vice-president, commercial passenger cars, Tata Motors is unperturbed as he puts, "We currently have only 27 per cent of the SUV market, but that is because M&M has a larger portfolio in the segment," Krishnan says.

The Jaago Re positioning for Tata Tea has undoubtedly been the one of most innovative and clutter breaking in its category over the last decade. Since early this year, Tata Tea had stepped up its Jaago Re campaign One Billion Votes activity especially in Mumbai – in the wake of 26/11 terror attacks and the General Elections 2009.

The end consumer in this case became the voter. The buzz created by Jaago Re hoardings and signages across the city – not to mention the well-crafted TV commercial – was phenomenal. But the hype could not translate into reality. Despite huge voter registration activity, Mumbai recorded the lowest voter turnout among big cities in the General Elections.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd's Liril soap was first popularized by the signature imagery of a bikini-clad girl under a waterfall and owned the proposition of freshness in that category for a very long time.

Later, it decided to go through several permutations and combinations, with more people squeezed into the ad each time. However, the new ad for Liril 2000 claims to rejuvenate 2,000 body points with every use, but fails to click like the original.

A HUL spokesperson, however, explains that while it it is good to be iconic, it is critical to remain relevant to the current consumers. He says with the changing social context, the key issue being addressed by the Liril of 70s was no longer relevant to the consumers of today.

Heinz ad

Towards the end of 2005, Leo Burnett came up with two dramatic TVCs for Heinz Tomato Ketchup that won numerous awards. The creative accolades, however, did not bring Heinz anywhere close to market leadership in the category.

A source at Leo Burnett, the agency which managed the Heinz campaign, says, "The idea behind creating the ads was not to increase sales, but to make people pronounce the word 'Heinz' correctly."

The source infact attributes the failure of Heinz to make its mark in the category because of its non-robust distribution network. "Perhaps that's where the brand failed to deliver." he says.

Not that creativity and effectiveness in advertising are exclusive to each other. Coca Cola's clear lemon drink Sprite is the perfect example of what happens when creativity marries effectiveness. The Baaki Sab Bakwas campaign has elevated Sprite to the second leading brand after Thums Up in the sparkling beverage category, displacing Pepsi.

However, some brands that have managed to consistently get it right are Vodafone with its campaigns featuring the lovable Pug and more recently the Zoozoos, Swift, HDFC Standard Life and Maggi.

Vodafone Zoozoos

Vodafone Zoozoos, which were introduced during the IPL matches this April, are loved by many for its willowy, flat faced, ghost-like characters. But, what will be the impact on bottom lines and market share for Vodafone? In other words, has the creative accolades translate into effectiveness?

If initial numbers are any indication, then the Zoozoo hype does not seem to be translating into actual subscriber additions for Vodafone. Ever since Vodafone graduated from 16 to all 24 circles in the Indian telecom space a few months ago, the telco has been on an ambitious subscriber addition spree.

For the month of March specifically, Vodafone beat Airtel in terms of monthly subscriber additions for the first time. In April, when the Zoozoos campaign broke, the two GSM rivals were neck and neck again.

However, in May, when the Zoozoo hype was at its peak, Vodafone slipped adding 2.53 million to Airtel's 2.81 million subscribers. A reason could be that the bulk of new connections are being added from Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns, who perhaps find the bouncy, white creatures peddling some smart VAS offering a little alien to their taste.

Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone, is more than happy with the buzz that the Zoozoos have created. "We cannot really gauge the effectiveness yet as it is too early. But even we did not expect this awesome response," gushes Nagpal.

Kapil Arora, vice-president, O&M, who takes care of the Vodafone account, is equally astounded by the response that the Zoozoos generated. "We had thought that for the first 2-4 days of the campaign, people would think that we've gone mad. But we were pleasantly surprised when they became a phenomenon overnight." he says.

Remember the 'Play, Boy' campaign, which earned Maruti Suzuki the aspirational brand tag for Swift. One of the successful hatchbacks to be launched in recent times, the Swift campaign steered away from doing anything overtly creative and instead focused on creating a product-centric ad, devoid of any super creative props.

Totally forgettable in themselves, the ads did manage to highlight the attitude of the car by showcasing it in striking formats. Even creatively mediocre ads can deliver the goodies and deliver well.

Shashank Srivastava, general manager, marketing, Maruti Suzuki has been through all the ups and downs in his two decade career with the automobile major. He says, "For brands like Swift, where usage is known – it is more important to convey product features."

At a time when everyone was busy painting gloomy pictures of death and destruction to scare people into buying their insurance offerings, HDFC Standard Life launched its 'Sar Utha Ke Jiyo' campaign.

Not a Smart Alec creative but one that banked on good consumer insight and went on to make an emotional connect with its creative. They claim to be one of the leading players in the children's and pension plan segment today.

"It is a clear case where good customer insight has translated into good creative thought and delivered long term results for the brand," agrees Sanjay Tripathi, marketing head, HDFC Standard Life.

Maggi ad

Moving to brand Maggi, with an almost 90 per cent market share in its category, it is the classic example of perhaps creatively mediocre, but highly effective advertising. The '2-minute' jingle has become generic to the instant noodle category.

Maggi's communication strategy has no exceptional creative and revolves around the functional benefits like fast-to-cook and good-to-eat to consumers. The recent health-positioning with the slogan 'Taste bhi, health bhi' is another classic example of effective advertising.

"All that glitters is not gold. Maggi has high recall value because it has consistently tracked changing consumer needs," says Shivani Hegde, general manager, food, Nestle India.