Eveready wins court battle over LED ad campaign against Havells

LED bulbs to be face of the Eveready brand, says Amritanshu Khaitan

Following Delhi High Court’s verdict upholding Eveready’s advertising campaign, the dry-cell batter maker’s managing director, Amritanshu Khaitan, said LED bulbs would be the face of the brand soon.

The campaign was contested by Eveready’s rival Havells.

“We are an established leading brand in the battery segment. LED is something we will try and push to make the face of the brand in the future,” Khaitan told the Business Satandard.

In the contested advertisement campaign, for which Eveready tied up with Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, the company compared its LED bulbs on three parametres — lumens per watt, lumens and MRP vis-a-vis similar LEDs from competitors such as Phillips, Syska, Bajaj, Halonix, Surya and Havells.

Thus, the campaign by Eveready “Check lumens and price before you buy” was an invitation to consumers to compare these two attributes of a bulb. Eveready also claimed its product as the “brightest” in the advertisement.

Havells contested the campaign on the ground that lumen was not the lone attribute determining the value of the product. It claimed in its suit that the advertisement was misleading.

However, in its judgment dated March 17, the court dismissed Havells’s appeal, observing that the “advertising campaign is not misleading” and “the factors compared are material, relevant, verifiable and representative features.”

No one from Havells’s was available for comment. A company official could not confirm whether or not it would challenge the order in a higher court.

Eveready Managing Director Kahitan, too, did not want to comment on the legal matter. However, he made it clear the company’s marketing push will continue to focus on LED bulbs which he believes will replace battery as the face of the brand. “In the case of LED bulbs, it is a new thing. Everyone is starting from scratch. We are very confident about our product’s success,” he said. Since Khaitan, joined Eveready in August 2011, as executive director, a range of new-age products such portable chargers for mobile devices, portable fans, and LEDs have been launched.

Eveready has also turned profitable in the last year, and according to Khaitan, the company hopes to end the current financial year with Ebitda at Rs 120 crore.

However, with more marketing push and focus on lighting products like LEDs, the company expects the share of revenue from different segment to change in the near future. “Currently, battery contributes for about 65 per cent of the revenue. Going ahead, I think it should come down to 50 per cent and revenue from lighting may go up to 25 per cent from the current level of 10 to 15 per cent in couple of years,” he said.