After repositioning the brand, Amrutanjan launches its first ad campaign.
It could very well be a scene from a bloopers show. Upon second inspection, you will figure it’s an ad from a serious FMCG company.
The new Amrutanjan campaign features 10 short films showing slice-of-life situations in which people unexpectedly end up hurting themselves. Here are some of those: a man on a diving board is poised to take the plunge. But before he can, he slips and falls clumsily into the pool.
Another film shows a group of children in costumes, playing a game. Struck on the head by a ball, one kid topples.
Cut to a young model walking the ramp at a fashion show. With her eyes on the crowd, she fails to notice she’s at the end of the ramp and tumbles to the ground.
One more film shows construction workers passing bricks to one another, and, owing to one ill-timed move, the brick lands on a worker’s head.
In another, a lady in a resort walks to a table near a swimming pool. She pulls up a chair for herself but the chair slips and falls into the pool, taking the table and chair with her. On cue, a male voiceover intones, “Pain can hit you any time. Be ready with Amrutanjan.”
For a 30-second ad, that sounds like a lengthy explanation. It’s been just about a year since Amrutanjan last advertised its wares, still the company feels the need to communicate with its customers. That’s because even though Amrutanjan is one of the oldest FMCG companies in the country, competition from Zandu and Emami has ruffled its feathers.
At present, in the Rs 900-crore pain management category, Amrutanjan accounts for Rs 80 crore. Making matters worse is Emami’s possible takeover of Zandu. “We’ve been away from the media and hence losing market share,” says Amrutanjan managing director Sambhu Prasad.Amrutanjan’s problems don’t end there. A majority of the brand’s business comes from the South, followed by the East and the West. The North makes up for a negligible portion of its business. “Yes, we are almost non-existent in the North,” says Prasad. Of the Rs 80 crore, it makes only about Rs 2 crore comes from north India. “Hopefully, this campaign and some other initiatives will boost our presence in the region.”
Clearly, Prasad and team are betting big on this campaign for reasons manifold. “Overall, we expect volumes to grow 15 per cent and market share to increase by 3-5 per cent by year-end.”
Earlier campaigns for the pain-relieving products of the company focused largely on product attributes, such as, the joint pain-reliever cream campaign, featuring television actor Smriti Irani.
To ensure more effective communication, Amrutanjan decided to study its customer closely. This task was left to its advertising partner, Mudra South. Research revealed that though the brand had a very loyal user base (68 per cent of regular users using it for more than six years), it was not able to attract new users from the category. “We knew we needed to do some game-changing to infuse new energy into the brand,” says the ad agency’s executive creative director, Joono Simon.
The brief to Mudra South — which, in fact, won the Amrutanjan account with this ad — then, was simple. “We wanted to be looked as a specialist in pain management,” says Prasad.
After much brainstorming in Mudra’s Chennai office, Simon and team observed that most people led an active and stressful life, and they end up uttering “ooh, aah, ouch!” many times a day. “We wanted the consumer to be prepared with Amrutanjan as an effective solution to deal with these everyday accidents,” quips Simon. Hence, the “be ready” tagline.
Interestingly, for a pain-relieving product, the campaign uses comedy. “For us, the most obvious thing to do was to develop a series of hysterically funny commercials based on minor accidents that happen to people in their daily lives,” explains Simon. “As a matter of fact, people prefer non-scripted drama to scripted ones. The rising popularity of reality shows and the success of events like IPL suggest just that.”
Given the expectations of this marketing endeavour, a 360-degree campaign was a no-brainer. Accordingly, there will be print, more TV ads, out-of-home screens, hoardings, in-shop displays and radio promotions. Additionally, Amrutanjan is drawing up non-marketing plans for the North, specifically. “Among other things, we will be reinventing our distribution in the North,” says Prasad.
All this has cost the company dearly, especially considering that during 2002-2005, Amrutanjan was busy slashing its media budget. “We had expanded into sectors like IT, which did not work out well for us, and it affected our market share,” says Prasad. Intent on correcting the wrongs, Amrutanjan is spending about Rs 8 crore on marketing. This particular TV commercial cost the company Rs 70 lakh. Besides, with Zandu and Emami busy integrating the acquisition, Prasad is almost certain, Amrutanjan will gain.
The 15- and 30-second edits, which took two weeks to make, will air for about three months, following which there will be a one-month break, after which there will be another burst. The ad has been shot using a handheld camera by Ayappa of Footcandles Films.
