The Hindu Business Line : Built on glass

In a very short span, Saint-Gobain Glass found a prominent place in the Indian brandscape. "Who tells the story is as important as what the story is. That's where we had a huge advantage. If someone with around 340 years of existence says his products are good, it had a great impact," says B. Santhanam, Managing Director, Saint-Gobain Glass India Ltd.

The challenge for Saint-Gobain when it entered the Indian market six years ago was to build a brand in a market that tended towards commoditisation. What's more, building an unfamiliar and foreign sounding brand like Saint-Gobain was even more challenging. In fact, according to the company, some people even associated Saint-Gobain with Sant Gobind, the Sikh savant!

It wasn't just the brand. Glass was considered a low-involvement product category and even glass-buying was considered a complex purchase process. In that context, the company realised that it had to target different sets of people with a single but powerful tag line for its brand, which reflected quality, future and the heritage of the hoary Saint-Gobain brand. It came up with `The future of glass. Since 1665.'

As Santhanam recalls, the company wanted to go beyond mere brand awareness and build a strong brand proposition, like a generic association with the brand name and glass. Its market survey revealed that to consumers, glass meant something they could see through.

Choosing clarity as the value proposition, Saint-Gobain launched some memorable campaigns, created by Lowe, in print, outdoor and television, reinforcing the clear glass positioning. Those campaigns got it a huge amount of visibility and goodwill initially. To translate that goodwill in the marketplace, Saint-Gobain decided to move up the value chain. Having established its clarity value proposition, it is now looking to leverage that in other products. It extended it to mirrors with the tagline `Clarity of reflection in our mirrors.' The campaign showed a boy in a toilet full of wall-to-wall mirrors trying to relieve himself on the wrong side, fooled by the mirrors.

Another popular ad for the brand

"These campaigns reflected in terms of brand recall and converted that into sales," says Santhanam. According to him, the company now enjoys an aided brand recall of 73 per cent and top-of-mind of around 36 per cent. "And, it really converts into sales. Our present market share is 36 per cent in value terms," he says. The market size for float glass is approximately Rs 2,000 crore.

Now, having gone beyond the clear glass proposition, Saint-Gobain, which spends around Rs 10 crore on advertising, has launched a television campaign featuring a Japanese model fanning herself in a photo session, for its Sun Ban range of coated glass. The photographer is frustrated because the model keeps fanning herself to keep the heat away, till he closes the glass doors, which keep out the heat.

The commercials were a hit and won several awards. In 2004 the Advertising Agencies Association of India selected Saint-Gobain Glass for the Advertiser of the Year award as well as the best commercial across categories. The company's commercial was also one of the four Indian finalists at the 51st International Advertising Festival at Cannes.

Says Balki, Creative Director of Lowe, "We used the clarity proposition right at the launch stage since no one had branded glass in this manner. And, we positioned it as an international brand." This choice reflected even in the choice of models for its ads, to keep with that international look.

Also, as Balki adds, Saint-Gobain glass was not a mega-budget brand, even though a market leader in glass, and needed memorable advertising to stand out from the clutter. "The company understood the power of advertising and effective communication," he adds.