Voltas: A cool cause

Voltas takes the social cause route to promote its air-conditioners.,

In a middle class home, a young girl switches on the air-conditioner with the remote. The scene shifts to a village where a mother is holding her child’s hand and teaching her to write in dim light. Suddenly, the bulb lights up and viewers get to see what is written on the slate: Ma (Hindi for mother).

Next, a dhoti-clad man selling banana and coconut at a small wayside shop is praying in front of his deity. A flower falls from the idol and the moment it lands, the electricity comes on. He looks up as if thanking the Gods. The shot then moves to a shack where we see a group of Bengali men playing carom in dim lantern light. Just as the electricity returns, a child catches an old man cheating and everybody laughs.

Cut to a young Gujarati woman inside her home. She is putting on a necklace when the light comes and we see her husband in the mirror smiling at her. That is followed by a Sikh man on his cycle with his son at the back. As they get closer to the camera we see the street lights come on. The kid gleefully points to the lights.

A voiceover delivers the message that if you want to light up lives elsewhere, switch on an energy-efficient Voltas AC. The ad closes with a shot of the young girl smiling in front of a Voltas AC.

This 60-second ad is the latest twist to the marketing campaign of the Tata-owned company. “Two years ago, we came out with the concept of energy-efficient ACs. We merely wanted to take that concept further. We felt it was appropriate to give something back and thus decided to tie-up with TERI (New Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute) and light up some villages,” explains Voltas Vice-president Pradeep Bakshi. Voltas, to be sure, needs to move fast if it wants to cement its position in the 2.2 million, Rs 4,000-crore per annum Indian AC market. A history lesson should explain why.

Ups and downs

For many years after its inception in 1954, Voltas ruled the Indian AC market with a whopping 40 per cent share of the market. That was before the multinational onslaught and the only players at the time were: Voltas, Blue Star, Fedders Llyod and Arco. All that changed in 1993, when American giant Carrier introduced a range of new generation ACs, which consequently knocked off Voltas from its perch. Things took a turn for the worse in the mid- and late-1990s when South Korean consumer electronics powerhouses Samsung and LG entered India. They had low-cost products and their ad budgets were huge. Voltas lost market share and by 2001, it had slipped to the seventh position in the pecking order with a market share of just seven per cent.

To turn things around, not only did Voltas spruce up its offerings but it also changed advertising agencies from O&M to Euro RSG which came up with a new positioning: “ACs with IQ.” The ads focused on defining features of Voltas’ new product range such as uniform cooling, energy-saving, timers and air filters.

Two years later, Voltas tweaked its positioning further with campaigns focused on its new Rs 9,900 AC, a first in the market. It then positioned Voltas as an Indian brand — an obvious attempt to differentiate it from Korean brands like LG and Samsung, Haier of China and Hitachi of Japan. In the following years, it stressed more and more on its energy saving. The move has more than paid off with Voltas securing the second spot with 17 per cent market share.

The energy cause

“Tata has always been at the fore of philanthropic causes,” points out Bakshi. Thus he doesn’t find the latest move very different. The brief then given to EURO RSG was simple — Voltas ACs should be seen as contributing to a bigger cause. “We wanted to add some value into energy conservation,” says Bakshi. Adds Mani Jayaram, the agency’s creative director, “Collectively we thought the best thing to do would be to light up ten villages.”

Energy efficiency is “in” these days. Not just because of better environmental awareness but also the economic slowdown. It has crimped household incomes in urban areas, the principle market for ACs. Buyers look carefully at the running cost of ACs, which is the power bill. Thus, an energy-efficient AC has better sale prospects in the market place today than ever before. This is a unique sale proposition most AC makers seem to have taken in the last two seasons.

Voltas clearly wants to break that clutter by linking its energy-efficient ACs with a social cause. And that’s not all. The company is going for a full 360-degree campaign. While print, outdoor, in-store, radio and digital advertising is a given, the company is also adding drop boxes at all its stores for people to donate money towards the cause. The television commercial, which will air for the whole year, will have several edits (60, 40, 30, 15 and 10 seconds).

Big budget

Voltas has never shied away from spending big bucks on brand promotion. In fact, between 2001 and 2004, Voltas invested more than Rs 50 crore on branding initiatives. This time too, it is reported that the company has allocated approximately Rs 20 crore. For this particular campaign, Voltas is spending close to about 75 per cent of its budget. Luckily for the company, ads such as this are a once-in-a-year phenomenon.

The market, mind you, is tough. With many banks and non-banking finance companies moving out of consumer electronics last year, dealers were stuck with huge inventories. Relief came only when the government said it will implement the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission for its employees. It did lift the sentiment. But will it be good enough to sustain the next few weeks of summer?