<b>Campaign Logic:</b>Lending a personal touch

In its new campaign, on-demand service provider UrbanClap promises a balance of high-tech and high-touch service

Brand: UrbanClap

Budget: Rs 15 crore

Agency: Publicis Ambience

The household services market in India is highly unorganised and fragmented. Players in this category face the twin challenge of offering consumers an assortment of services under one platform and delivering consistent customer experience. Therefore, building trust and quality is key to creating a strong brand in a market where the neighbourhood dry cleaner or plumber continues to be the first port of call for a vast majority of people.

In its latest campaign, UrbanClap, an online services marketplace, promises to offer help with a personal touch. The campaign highlights everyday “crisis” situations where one wishes one had professional help but in a personalised way. The TV campaign comprising four films shows how family members end up playing multiple roles to quickly fix things. There is a father who fixes a faulty light, a sister who doubles up as a beautician and a parent standing in as a photographer for her kid. Simply put, the ads use human relationships as metaphors to drive home the point that it provides services with a personal touch — just like a family member. “UrbanClap has been around for two years and people have tried our services and have returned to the platform for more services. So it’s the right time for us to magnify this message and let people know that UrbanClap stands for trust,” says Abhiraj Bhal, co–founder, UrbanClap.

The campaign has been conceptualised by Publicis Ambience. The brief to the agency was simple: to present UrbanClap as the go-to destination for all kinds of household services. Paritosh Srivastava, chief operating officer, Publicis Ambience, says, “Scanning through the competition and consumers, one thing that stood out was that even as consumers are looking for reliable servicemen, the incumbents in the category only offer listings without really taking the onus of the quality. Thus, ‘trust’ became the most important ingredient for the stories to come alive.”

UrbanClap offers services in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. It lists 80,000 categories including photographers, salon at home, home cleaning and repairs, yoga and guitar instructors etc. The company has 50,000-plus service professionals on its platform and claims that it serves 5,000-plus customers every day across these eight cities.

The challenge for the creative team was to strike a balance between showcasing the width of services offered by the platform and making sure that consumers see UrbanClap as a trusted brand. “And hence the communication highlights trust and quality services provided by UrbanClap in an endearing and relatable manner,” says Srivastava.

The local services market in India is pegged at Rs 13,307 billion. Besides UrbanClap, the key players in this segment are Sulekha.com and JustDial. Given the growth potential that the industry offers, many new players have thrown their hats into the ring, such as Zimmber, Callfixie, Timesaverz and Workhorse.

How does UrbanClap plan to expand and grow where a host of players have come in offering highly undifferentiated services? Bahl says the size of the market is so big there is enough room for many players. The challenge here is for a player to organise the market.

UrbanClap says its challenges include standardisation of services, optimum resource utilisation and matching of locations and price points. It is leveraging technology to address these issues. “The matchmaking algorithm plays a key role in helping UrbanClap match customers with professionals who possess relevant skills to address specific customer requirements,” says Bahl. UrbanClap is also investing in training professionals who are listed on the platform.

All said, to be able to sustain itself UrbanClap has to be careful about unit economies and per-order profitability. If it looks at expanding geographically, it needs to ensure consistent quality in local partners and delivery staff. Investing in technology, data and processes to make its services and apps more intuitive will be imperative.