Jaquar builds awareness for its lighting product range with a humorous take on its bath category dominance.
Conventional marketing wisdom about brand extensions has been stood on its head by Jaquar who is running one of the most memorable campaigns in the IPL this season.
Most brands when going for diversification look for compatibility and overlaps between consumer perceptions and category core competences. For Jaquar the biggest thing to consider was how they could leverage the customer trust they enjoyed and get into affluent homes and offices with their new product offerings. Since Jaquar stands for superior product experiences and unmatched quality, the brand decided to focus on their specialist lighting products for homes, offices, and outdoor spaces, rather than their commodity retail product i.e. the regular LED bulbs or battens.
It is from this thinking that their range grew to include luxury and specialist products for homes, offices and outdoor lighting solutions. With chandeliers, decorative and exterior lights forming the mainstay for the business, along with the specialised façade lighting expertise. All these products are designed and made in a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Bhiwadi, Rajasthan.
Over the past few years that the business has been around it has built up a healthy market for itself, even though the biggest challenge for them remains – how to grow consumer awareness and mould perception.
Consumer acceptance for a ‘new’ brand in lighting was always going to be a challenge, specially in Jaquar’s case, since it’s seen primarily as a bath brand. While people who engaged with the product saw the product’s superiority, the large masses of potential customers still remained unaware due to a strong association with the bath category.
For the business to leapfrog to a higher level in this category, the issue of brand salience for the category needed to be closed for good. The company decided to take the problem head on and address it through a new campaign.
Sandeep Shukla, Head of Marketing & Communications, Global Operations, Jaquar Group, says, “It’s always an uphill task to shift consumer perception, especially when a brand becomes synonymous with a category. India’s most loved bath brand needed a new identity encapsulation, which our strategic partners and media agency Crescent
compressed succinctly as Bath + Light. Disruptive communication was the need of the hour, and these 3 films have caught the attention of IPL viewers and I am certain this campaign will be remembered for a long time.”
The ad films have been conceived by a creative shop called Enormous. Talking about the campaign, Ashish Khazanchi, Creative Head, said, “Jaquar is a brand that we have always been extremely proud to work with. This one though was one of the most challenging ever. Most brands have enough elasticity of equity to extend into related and adjacent businesses. This brand extension was like chalk and cheese. Lighting and water products from the same brand. While the lighting business had done well, the perception and association of the brand with lighting was still a big challenge. We took this very insight and took the perception head on.”
The ‘Yahan kya chal raha hai’ film campaign tickles audiences with a humorous script and raises awareness among Indian viewers about the company’s foray into lighting products. The current campaign can be seen during India’s most loved and watched program, the IPL cricket tournament.
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