Strategic communications challenge

To shout ‘pick me up’ while being buried deep inside a pile

1.Switchgear is a low involvement category with little

differentiation among the offerings.

2. Decision making is often relegated to electricians/

contractors, their opinion seldom questioned

3.Need to buy switchgear often coincides with the decision

making on interior decoration, a task that’s far more worthy
of mindspace.

And if some people still took their switchgear seriously they had a choice of 4 reputed brands: Anchor, Indo-
Asian, Standard and Legrand!

To win, Havells must redefine the category

Objectives

Increased relevance should lead to an increase in spontaneous recall. Hence…

Objective #1: Double Havells’ spont. recall among potential buyers and at least 50% increase in spont.
recall across overall audience

As is the case with most low involvement categories, consumers often buy what they remember, hence
increased recall should result in increased sales. Therefore…
Objective #2: Achieve 40% growth in sales

The Big Idea

“Live a shockproof life.”

Havells switchgear would ensure that there are no electric shocks in people’s life.
Consumer insight
There were two key discoveries that led us to this idea:

1.Most consumers saw switchgears as modern and convenient alternative to electrical fuse.

• “Whenever it trips, we now have to just

switch it on.”
• “It’s so easy to use, that now even my
mother and wife can use it”
• “Looks so much neater”

Convenience apart, consumers believed that in function and benefits, they are almost identical: i.e. both
protect against short circuits that can lead to equipment damage or in extreme cases, fire. There was no
awareness of the fact that a set of switchgears can also safeguard against electrocution, the #1 fear associated
with electricity

2.This lead to the realization that if we focused on switchgears that also prevented electric shock, we
would have a far greater role in consumers life
Hence it was decided to build the association of Havells switchgears with protection from electrical shocks.
And so, came into being, the promise of a ‘totally shockproof life’

Bringing the big idea to life

1. Thought of getting an electric shock is unpleasant enough, the advertising shouldn’t be!
Our key objective was to attain high recall levels which are easier if the communication is pleasant
rather than scary and dark. Resulting creatives delivered a fairly serious message in an extremely
endearing manner

2. Keeping the message single minded: We were out to create an entirely new connection in the minds
of consumers (switchgears for prevention of electrical shocks), no point confusing the issue, by
bringing in other messages. Consequently no other benefit was mentioned (not even in supers!)

3. Leveraged the topicality of economic slowdown to reinforce the message: By the start of 2009,
almost everyone had suffered on account of the recession. A TVC that used ‘shock of recession’ as
the backdrop was developed and put on air. It generated a huge interest among consumers, especially
on the internet where blogs and chat forums picked it up for discussions

4. Taking the single mindedness to media as well: With the objective of maximizing both reach and
OTS, Havells put all its investment in IPL 1 and 2. Given the popularity of the commercials, most
people find it hard to believe that the ads were aired only in April 08 & 09, during the IPL.
Results

Results dekha toh shock laga!

(The results gave us a shock!)

Spontaneous recall across general TG tripled, against the target of growing it to double.

Spontaneous recall among intenders grew almost 4 times!

The research was conducted in July 2009 across 4 cities. Pre advertising recall scores were sourced from Dec 07 annual brand dipstick study.
 During the year sales went up by 64%!
Communication was the only marketing intervention

Business growth gave company a strong leverage with the trade: Havells experienced significant
increase in interest from dealers keen to stock Havells switchgears

• Between April 2008-July 09, numbers of Havells dealers went up from 3800 to 4700. And a large number
of them had themselves approached Havells
• Havells managed to reduce the credit period from 90 days to 45 days, without impacting volumes
Creative elements
TVC grabs
TVC 1: ‘Shock laga’
TVC 2: Recession ka Shock
Internet viral activity
POS
 CASESTUDI
ES

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