The Hindu Business Line : Staying power

THE water nymph has made way for the beauty of the bathtub, thus ending the long run of one of the most well-known campaigns in Indian advertising. Liril is no longer about waterfalls, abundant water and girl splashing about in gay abandon; it's gone in for a makeover that features siren and seduction. There have been other campaigns that changed tack, but came back to the original, others that left certain elements unchanged and others that haven't changed anything at all, such as Amul butter.

Catalyst spoke to ad agencies and brand managers to discuss enduring ad campaigns, the reasons for their success, changes and return. Sylvester daCunha, Chairman of daCunha Associates, the agency responsible for creating the 38-year-old Amul butter campaign famous for its comments and puns on current events, emphasises that stable brand management and its support to the campaign are vital. "We had a wonderful client in Dr Kurien," he says, adding that the credit should rightfully go to him and the company and only then to the agency. What's more, the ad agency has carte blanche to say what it wants in its ads, a unique feature in client-ad agency relationships across the world, says Jayen Mehta, Assistant General Manager (Marketing), Amul. And no, the company has never been tempted to change it.

According to daCunha, the Amul girl, the treatment of the cartoon and the topical underpinning are what have gone into making the campaign an enduring success. The humour is important, but it's secondary. He doesn't comment on copycat campaigns but he does say mere humour and cartoons won't do the trick. "You have to have the right people working on it," he states.

Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO, Brand-comm, a Bangalore-based brand consultancy, says the media strategy the Amul brand chooses — primarily outdoor, just a few hoardings at strategic places — also counts. "There has to be a reasonable amount of continuity in the agency and the client," he says, a view many endorse.

Often, new brand managers or creative directors want to put their stamp on it for no reason other than a big ego, which can end up damaging the brand, say some of those whom Catalyst spoke to. "Good or bad, once a brand is made on a particular thought, it is incorrect for an agency or brand manager to tinker with it," says U. Jayraj Rau, Vice-President and Client Services Director, JWT, Chennai. "This is where larger agencies score — we care a hoot for new creative directors or adventurist brand managers who want to change just for change's sake." It is a tough task to convince them but ultimately, the campaign has to relate to sales, growth, margins and the like. "You may get bored with it, it may not be an entertainer, but you trust the brand and will stay with it," he says.

However, Pranesh Misra, President and Chief Operating Officer, Lowe, which is responsible for the new Liril campaign, has this to say: "In the 1980s and early 1990s, life had a pattern and it followed that year after year. Consistency was a cherished value in all walks of life, advertising included. However, with liberalisation of the economy and the advent of satellite TV in the mid-'90s, life around consumers changed at a fast pace. TV penetration went up from below 10 per cent to near-saturation levels in urban areas. It accelerated a change in their behaviour. Consistency was devalued in favour of change and innovation. Old had to reinvent itself to earn a right to be in their shopping bags. Brands which did this grew by leaps and bounds."

This was the time, Misra says, that many brands expanded their horizons. Bajaj moved from being a predominantly scooter company to being a mainly motorcycles company, Lifebuoy went from being a male, macho, low-cost soap for men to a fragrant health soap meant for mass market families, Fair & Lovely from just face cream to one exploring all skin care needs, and now Liril, which has joined the ranks of these examples.

"It will survive because it is changing in a time that consumers are changing. When consumers change, staying constant would mean that you get left behind. You don't want that to happen to your brand, do you?" he says.

There are quite a few other campaigns which have maintained continuity one way or another. Lux soap has the tradition of having film stars endorse it. Titan's campaigns carry a piece of Mozart's music (rendered in musical instruments that came long after Mozart) which, says a company spokesperson, was such a resounding success that it was never ever dropped. Rasna and Onida are two other brands which have had long-lasting campaigns, tweaked now and then, dropped and revived.

Says Rajesh Mehta, General Manager (Marketing) Rasna, campaigns for which are split between the old "I love you Rasna" and others, "Brand managers or not, it's the owners who pump in the money. And after a point, it's the consumers who own the brand, so change or no change depends on their needs." He explains that the tagline has been around for two decades now and is an integral part of the brand. "But we don't need it in ads for sub-brands — those ads need to focus on their specifics." Rasna did not use the famous tagline for a year "to see how it went" but recognised it was a strong brand property and "kept contemporarising it."

Onida, famous for its `neighbour's envy, owner's pride' devil (or singwala aadmi, as the masses saw it), failed to impress the market when it dropped him after a 10-year run. "Fatigue had set in as the campaign had run for a long time, but consumers continued to associate Onida with him. From 1997-2004, Onida spent lots on advertising but the technologies its products offered weren't registering with the consumer," says Sudip Ghose, Brand Manager (Onida), Mirc Electronics. What's worse, research revealed that consumers thought it was great advertising but associated the style with competing companies. Which is when the company decided to resurrect the devil.

Of course, by now the colour TV was no longer an object of envy, so the devil changed too.

"He is a next-generation devil, more sophisticated, a techno-person, more in the mould of Keanu Reeves of Matrix; as challenging, irreverent and maverick as the old one," says Ghose. Post-ad research has shown that the consumers have welcomed him back, and market share has climbed to 11.8 per cent as of April 2004 from 10 per cent earlier.

Says Brand-comm's Sridhar, "Clients get tired because they've seen so much more of the campaign than the consumers, but that's not true. It's sad when a brand property you build consistently over a period of time is lost halfway. The challenge is how not to bore people and still get mileage out of it." Says JWT's Rau, "You shouldn't have novelty for its own sake. The DNA of the brand has to be documented; nine out of ten times, it's created accidentally. You can keep the soul the same but dress it up for different occasions." Maybe a devil of a task, but not impossible.

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