YouTube Brandcast
One of the largest on ground events for the B2B consumers, The YouTube Brandcast is much awaited for and extremely critical for brand YouTube in India.
At Toaster, we crafted the digital and creative strategy for launching the YouTube positioning for 2020 in the India market in a manner that resonates with the Indian marketer/brand managers, media agency leads and creative agency leads - in order to establish the effectiveness and insightful targeting aspects of the platform like never before. Interviews with the target audience, competition audits, creative concepting, brainstorming sessions and creative briefing were undertaken as the Strategy Lead for Toaster India.
Google Pay
Strategy Lead for Toaster India for a new product launch within the Google Pay brand in the India market. Worked closely with the US team and directly with the Global Strategy team to create a positioning that sits within the overarching global thinking, yet brings alive nuances of the Indian consumer. Hunted for culturally relevant insights within the online payments/digital transactions category.
Bumble
As the Strategy Lead for the Bumble project, I helped craft the brand positioning after in depth interviews with around 40 respondents who fall in the core TG definition, category study of dating apps in India, competition audits of Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, TrulyMadly, Aisle, etc., user experience research and an ethnographic study to understand changing notions of gender equality in India. Bumble, being a dating and social media app that believes in equality, the effort was to find a strong and powerful brand narrative that is rooted in the Indian culturescape yet riding on the emerging trends of changing gender stereotypes and ongoing women centric conversations.
The two directions arrived at were:
Done Smiling Politely (women having had enough)
and
Big Bad World of Equality (the troubles of trying to be equal)
Pantene - Oil Replacement
Pantene was launching Oil Replacement as a product in the Indian market. The challenge here was multifold as consumers believed in the efficacy of oil as the best way to get nutrition for hair.
The key consumer tension was identified as the long hours needed for oiling and the inconvenience of oiling in the traditional way. This was not something that the new age woman’s life allowed for - as she was busy and had to always look her best for all the occasions in her life. Oiling was also seen as the ‘mother’s way/old people’s way’, not the coolest way of haircare.
Lilly Singh the Canadian-Indian comedian was identified as the perfect brand ambassador for this launch as she was already known for the ‘Shit Indian Mothers Say’ viral videos. Similar content was created and Lilly Singh and Priyanka Chopra came together to talk about the relevance of Pantene Oil Replacement and how it is hassle-free and at the same time, provides 2x nourishment to hair.
Pantene - The Most Extreme Hair Test in the World.
The objective was to showcase the effectiveness of Pantene 3 Minute Miracle to strengthen hair, and to highlight that with Pantene 3MM hair will be strong and ready to face even the most extreme hair test you can think of.
To create the most beautiful hair torture test in the world, we used the biggest blow dryer we could find: a Boeing 737 turbine. Wind velocity of 10,000 cubic meters per minute. That equals up to 6,000 blow dryers. Can hair take it? With Pantene 3 Minute Miracle, it can.
Not just that, the way it was revealed, was by inviting social media influencers to witness this event, and their genuine reviews added to the credibility and social buzz.
Pantene - celebrity optimisation study
A massive celebrity optimisation study was undertaken to ensure that Pantene could have The Best KOL Plan in each country, yet maximising the appeal and pull of every KOL who was already in the Pantene team.
A social media study for each KOL in each country was done - in Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. To understand their followers, their interactions, their cultural associations, who commanded most value in each market, on which medium, etc.
A grand KOL architecture was drawn out where we identified who would be the face of Pantene in which country, and on which media. In some countries there were dual brand ambassadors recommended - for ATL and BTL, in some they were the same. In some countries there were surprising findings like how a western celebrity had more pull than a local celebrity, so we decided to not go for regional celebrities in all markets.
Titan Raga - Repositioning
Raga, the leading women’s watch brand in India, was known for its ornate jewellery-like watches, and Indian women loved pairing these watches with their traditional sarees and ethnic wear. The brand was positioned on sensuality and revolved around the significant other.
It seemed that brand Raga was becoming a special occasions purchase (only for weddings, etc.). Most of the target group were working women who opted for western formals and Raga’s existing world was losing relevance, as the TG’s mindset was also evolving.
Qualitative and quantitative research showed that women valued independence, financial freedom, career, and having their own points of view on every subject. Surprisingly it was seen that even among the men, there was a growing preference for women who were independent. The repositioning of the brand focused on making Raga a brand that stood for #HerLifeHerChoices, and it was moved from ‘sensuality for the significant other’ to ‘sensuality for the self’.
This campaign won the Integrated Gold Effie Award, the Tata Awards Gold and the WARC Asian Strategy Merit award.
Titan Raga - Wedding
Titan Raga stayed consistent with the repositioning thought as they released this Wedding Season campaign. But unlike most other messages during the wedding season, the Raga conversation took a fresh direction.
The protagonist - popular Bollywood celebrity Katrina Kaif - urged young women to not get married for the wrong reasons. This was culturally relevant as research findings indicated that women cited strange reasons for feeling pressured to get married (Aunties asking why they are not married, to get back at their ex-boyfriend, because they wanted to be a mother, and so on). The campaign stressed on the importance of getting married only ‘when you have found someone who deserves your Time’, yet another attempt for Titan watches to own Time as a space.
This campaign was widely shared online and went viral and generated conversations not just in India, but also in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, UAE, Indonesia and Malaysia - where women seemed to resonate with the thought.
Titan Celestial
Titan Watches, the market leader in watches in India, decided to focus on the young, urban, ambitious men in India with the Celestial Collection.
Deep dives and ethnographic research revealed that men were also going through vast changes. While traditional roles of men, like being the protector or provider, were becoming irrelevant, men were trying to make a mark in new ways. Especially in Indian towns, there seem to be a huge focus on being brave enough to be a successful startup founder. Deciding to go the startup way, was the new definition of courage and bravado.
Celestial decided to focus on these men who were tasting success at a very young age with startups.
Titan Diwali
Diwali is one of the biggest festivals in India, and gifting is extremely important during this festival.
We found out that the most often gifted items included gadgets like mobile phones, Kindle, PlayStation, laptops, etc. The one thing that seemed to be common amongst all these gifts was the fact that the user ended up spending too much time on these gadgets. But when you gift a watch, it does not take away Time from your loved ones.
We arrived at the campaign thought of - Gifting Time, this Diwali.
Times of India - Kerala Launch
Despite being the leading newspaper daily in India, the Times of India was not present in one state in the country - Kerala. This state behaved differently when it came to consuming news. ‘The Hindu’ was the preferred newspaper, and people in this state were known to be extremely serious about news, they were politically much more clued in and valued debates and discussion on daily news. News was serious business - and these consumers perceived the Times of India as a frivolous newspaper.
But we found out that the younger generation was slowly changing, and they seemed to like a little more fun. So we decided to turn the perceived weakness of the newspaper into its strength, and focused on the youngsters who were more playful. ‘Why So Serious’ was the broad creative thought.
The launch campaign took this thought to a whole new level by creating advertising that was done in the locally relevant satirical style and by borrowing local nuances and stories, all presented in a very playful manner.
The communication hinged on giving a twist to a local saying - ‘Kali Kaaryamayi’ (meaning ‘Play has become Serious - something that started out as fun, has become serious). The campaign thought was now ‘Kaaryam Kali Aayi’ (meaning Serious has become Fun - something that was seen as ‘serious has now become fun’, implying that News is now Fun).
The brand collaborated with a popular local rock band to create a song for the launch of the newspaper in Kerala focused on ‘Kali’/Play.
The brand also had their own fun local delivery boys - boatsmen delivered newspapers to homes near the backwaters, elephants delivered newspapers and even the martial art warriors of Kerala were part of delivering newspapers.
This campaign won the WARC Asian Strategy Bronze Award
Cult Modern - Brand Positioning & Brand Identity Development
A boutique premium lifestyle and fashion store, Cult Modern wanted to create its brand essence, positioning, tone of voice, mood, colour palette and design strategy.
The brand existed between the classic and the modern, and believed in, and found beauty in stories that were about overlapping spaces and blurring of lines between extremes. The brand key was done after an in depth stakeholder interaction, and the design inspiration narrative was ‘Twilight’ - the poetic beautiful in between time, and the colour palette was derived from an abstract version of twilight. Everything that the brand was about - was created from this creative space - Twilight.
ITC Gum On - Brand Architecture + Nomenclature Directions
ITC, one of the top FMCG brands in India, was launching a new brand of chewing gums. As the lead strategist on the brand, all pre-launch strategy was led by me - including new product ideations, brand key development, brand positioning workshops, brand architecture studies, competition analysis to understand how other the category codes were, communication brief, consumer research and launch strategy.
We analysed all possible brand architecture options, looked at competition brands and their variant architecture, potential new product ideas for the new brand and finally arrived at our recommended architecture framework and nomenclature directions.
Titan Skinn - Design Brief
Titan. the leading watch brand in India, was diversifying into the affordably perfumes category. We decided to study brands that are leaders in a particular category, diversifying into a totally new category - how do they launch, is there something they take forward from the original category, and so on.
The key finding was that in most such cases, a key design motif from the original category was taken forward in the new category. For eg: the Burberry design motif.
For Titan Fragrances, we decided to take forward the Dial of a Watch, as a reminder of the original category, into the bottle design itself - of the perfumes, and the different variants (Day, Night, Out) were colour coded. We won the pitch.
Cloudnine Maternity Hospitals: Popular Culture Analysis
A massive study was undertaken to find out various codes in the portrayal of maternity/motherhood/pregnancy in the Indian popular culture - cinema, books, magazines, literature, etc.
This was part of the larger exercise of arriving at a Big Ideal for brand Cloudnine (the Big Ideal for the brand is confidential hence not included).
Consumer Segmentation Study: Needscope
For an online education brand, a large scale consumer segmentation study was done, dividing all consumers into segments and clusters based on their basic needs, triggers, fears, inspiration, etc.
We arrived at clusters like Stamp Seeker, Reassurance Seeker, Success Seeker, Acceleration Seeker, Status Seeker, Inclusion Seeker, Capability Seeker and Respect Seeker.
These were further subdivided to arrive at more specific segments and these segments were used to create targeted communication, catalogues, offers, etc. There were online quizzes developed to understand which segment a potential consumer falls into and directions and processes developed on how to communicate with each segment.
ITC Bingo! positioning - semiotic analysis of advertisements
Semiotic analysis of each TV advertisement was done by studying all TV advertisements of ITC Bingo! Potato Chips and its key competitors - Lay’s and Kurkure, over a 5 year period.
Each ad was analysed on the following elements - 1. Visual, 2. Aural, 3. Protagonists, 4. Non-verbal communication, 5. Linguistic, 6. Time, 7. Technique, 8. Montage, 9. Argument, 10. Juxtaposition, 11. Narrative. The residual codes, dominant codes and emerging codes were identified, and from here the Cultural Norms and Cultural Contradictions were identified leading to disruptive positioning spaces for Bingo!