Born-again plywood

CAMPAIGN LOGIC: Greenply

The location is clearly somewhere in interior Tamil Nadu. A little Sikh boy is sitting on his mother's lap in a bus, complaining to his father in Hindi: "Mummy mujhe baahar dekhne nahin de rahi (Mummy is not letting me look outside)".

As the parents talk amongst themselves, the boy looks outside and sees an old-style mansion. He stares mesmerised and suddenly shouts "" in Tamil "" to stop the bus.

As the bewildered parents follow helplessly, he strides into the house, muttering to himself in Tamil: "Yenn veedu (My house)". The members of the household look on as he walks from room to room until he spies an old writing table. "Yenn table (My table)."

A black-and-white flashback scene shows a young man scribbling a name "Savithri" on the table. The boy runs a small hand over the tabletop and finds the engraving.

"Savithri," he whispers. Then he repeats the name loudly. An old woman appears at the door, sees the boy sprawled on an easy chair, looks up at a portrait on the wall and recognises the boy as her long-dead husband.

"Yenn swami (My husband)," she says joyously, even as the boy's mother faints with shock.

As the old woman kneels by the easy chair, the little boy strokes her hair. They speak to each other: "Swami", "Savithri". A male voiceover intones, "Greenply plywood. Janam janam ka saathi" as a close-up of the writing table appears on the screen.

That's a long description of a 60-second ad, especially for one that was created around a single-word brief. When the Rs 300-crore Greenply Industries approached Lowe India to create an advertisement for its plywood brand, its proposition was simple.

The ad would have to reflect durability. Other traditionally-highlighted features of plywood, such as termite-resistance, water and fire resistance, and toughness, were given the go-by.

After all, points out joint MD Saurabh Mittal, "Plywood is a backbone product. Durability is the only attribute that really matters."

For Lowe "" which has held the Kolkata-based company's account for three years "" such a strong brand proposition was a double-edged sword.

"It is the creative unit's ultimate dream: to be given a single-word brief," laughs Mohit Beotra, executive vice president, Lowe India. At the same time, he agrees, to focus on a core category benefit was to get into "dangerous territory".

After all, all products in the category offer the same benefit. "It was critical that the ad be salient and give the brand initial traction," he adds.

That's critical, given the nature of the plywood market and the product itself. Plywood is a commoditised market, and is driven by trade rather than by consumers.

Few consumers make the trip to the timber market and choose a particular brand of plywood "" they either order it over the telephone, asking the stockist to recommend a brand, or ask the carpenter to buy whatever is required. That means business is driven by the distributors and "the marketer has little control," says Beotra.

That said, there have been cases where investing in a generic brand has paid off. Beotra likes to compare Greenply with glass manufacturer Saint Gobain, also a Lowe client.

Both manufacture a generic product. Both operate in a market that is completely commoditised. "And both need salience for relatively smaller spends," he points out.

Subtle humour is integral to the Saint Gobain ads as well, as is the emphasis on the element of surprise. And Saint Gobain is one of the world's leading suppliers of automotive glass.

But if the product is commoditised, does it help to create an ad that will appeal to consumers? Beotra thinks so. Greenply is a challenger brand in the Rs 5,000-crore Indian plywood market, with Century considered the market leader in the organised sector (10 per cent of the total).

("We say we're No.1 and our competitor also claims to be No.1," says Mittal, pointing to the lack of independent data on marketshares.) Given that scenario, a television commercial can help create a number of benefits.

If it generates sufficient consumer pull (people start asking for it by name), more distributors will want to stock the product. And that will give the company a chance to command a premium on the product.

"Of course, you won't arrive at that situation on the basis of a single ad," accepts Beotra, adding "But the client is very happy."

But Lowe didn't leave much to chance. From brief to completion, the campaign has taken close to six months, including a long wait until Bangalore-based film production company Nirvana was free to make the ad.

The ad was shot deep in Tamil Nadu, at the home town of one of the creative team members. "There were innumerable instances of going back and forth," recalls Beotra. The ad ultimately aired three weeks ago on Zee Cinema, Star News, Sony, Discovery, HBO, NDTV and CNBC.

A few weeks before the television commercial was aired, Lowe also sent out about 1,000 mailers to dealers and distributors of plywood. The mailer was a pink sheet of paper, adorned with hearts and flowers, and purported to be a letter from "Savithri" to her husband, and recommended that "he" watch the ad.

The mailer appeared in Hindi, English and Tamil versions. It proved to be quite a hit. Mittal says the company received replies from several dealers, all addressed to Savithri.

This is Greenply Industries first ad for the plywood in close to five years, although last year it brought out a television commercial for its laminate brand Greenlam.

That campaign was also developed by Lowe, at a budget of about Rs 3.5 crore. This year, Greenply is shelling out Rs 6.5 crore, which will be spent on the TVC, print ads and below-the-line promotions such as the mailers and point-of-sale displays.

The increased marketing spend is in line with Greenply Industries' plan to portray itself as an "interior infrastructure" company (the company manufactures laminates, decorative veneers, prelaminated boards and, of course, plywood).

"In the past three or four years, we have become more active in the market," says Mittal. "We want that to be reflected in our tagline."