A guy walks into a shoe store and asks for a pair of shoes, size 8. The obviously well trained salesman says, "But sir, you take an 11 or eleven-and-a-half."
"Just bring me a size eight."
The sales guy brings them and the man stuffs his feet into them and stands up in obvious pain. He turns to the salesman and says, "I've lost my house to the bank for default bank loan.... I live with my mother-in-law, my daughter ran off with my best friend, and my business has filed bankruptcy."
"The only pleasure I have left is to come home at night and take my shoes off."
Most of us have business ideas and want to start off something or the other. The rare ones who dare to do, want a website as well.. Even toddy and arrack shops have websites and that is what BigRock.com seems to be playing for.
The internet domain registration brand BigRock.com of late commenced a noisy integrated campaign to further its services of personalised web presence solutions… and that too in a category where Noise and being Loud is kind of unheard of.
The television commercials feature people talking about their strange businesses - a recovery agent boasting of ground-breaking ways to recover money from debtors, a lady talking about her maid training institute, a businessman talking of his nut making company, and an acting school called 'Rambo Acting Classes' and so on….
Eying an early mover advantage or the prime player plus (as I call it) , this guys seems to be reassuring business men (small business men & entrepreneurs mainly ) that structuring a website is not rocket science and hence does not require large sums of money or time…. Moreover the strategy to unleash some disruptive communication so that at the end of it all, people will equate website creation to Bigrock.com , seems to be quite laudable at least for the time being…
BigRock.com is part of the $300+ million Directi group,( an info for those who care) did appoint Mediacom as its media buying partner and assigned the creative duties for its ongoing multimedia campaign to Ideas@Work -a creative shop. That was two months back and with an outlay of 10 crores INR (I still don’t know how to type an INR symbol) this fiscal towards advertising spends, this hungama was bound to happen. Now ideas @work ( true to its name) is successfully entertaining us with this four films with humour as its DNA .It for sure has helped in sales of the service in the short term but will help in achieving category leadership and brand leadership for BigRock.com as well.
These ads seems to recognize the basic insights like :-
MOST people are not aware of the price at which a website is available. ( No…….. I do not mean the hi flying , hi society livingAd brains type) &
The ads have a straightforward proposition and combined with humour the proposition is more memorable.
One negative stuff I found in some reviews is that the ads could have been funnier with slightly more absurd, slightly more illusory jobs and businesses… That is one feel I have as well ,given my love for deadpan humour ..
It is certainly the GoDaddy.com strategy that the GoDaddy guys used in the US, and successfully well. Godaddy of course had more humour, (and more dirty stuff that was not that good for family viewing) more stupid jobs and businesses and most importantly it gave real products with real value and less of hidden costs..
The last part I doubt in this case ( BigRock.com) going by the reviews that I read in the net… In spite of all good ads and clutter breaking, if you are in the business of making some quick bucks at the expense of long term band building, then God save your business…
Three cheers !
Credits:-
Direction :- Sanju Ayappa
Production :- Footcandles ..
The team -Roy Abraham, Joshua Newnes, Mahesh Gorde
and ideas@work co-founders Prashant Godbole and Zarvan Patel.
Tril was supposedly a path breaker with Endura007 which cleaned the clothes, killed germs and gave sparkle like no one else did… It still wasn’t sinking into the jug head Indian buyers mind set that India and its dirty clothes needed German help to sparkle… The Indian detergent market was not the same like Europe from where Tril came from if it was P&G ‘s Ariel which ruled the charts , in US it was Tide and no Ariel would be available… definitions of premium varied and so did the varieties of Tide or Ariel that one got in their respective markets
The Rs.5,700 crore detergent market in India which is segmented into two product categories - powder and cake was one tough nut for Tril to crack….. Sub categories like concentrates/compact (variants of Surf, Henko, Ariel), premium (variants of Surf, Henko, Ariel), mass premium/mid price (Rin, Mr.White, Tide and regional brands) and popular (Nirma, Wheel, Chek) made it difficult for the brand managers and the advertising agency to decide where to enter and where exactly to position. Tril after careful analysis decided to take the mass premium category and that is why this actor from the south was chosen to come all the way and dip dirty clothes, take them out and show ho it sparkles…research said she had the appeal… she was loved by the mass and yet had a premium appeal… she looked premium and yet was mass like material…
The first Tril advertising (launch ad) which Ram and co had made with no famous star in it had shown the offer of this unnamed product for maximum whiteness effect…. The sparkle and the clean which no one else did gave,….. The house wife tries the product and lo and behold, she gets the promised whiteness. After which the product's brand name appears from heaven as Tril….
The competitor was not to be left behind…. He had to prove that this unnamed detergent powder that is offered for trial does not provide that super whiteness and even if they do the unnamed new fellows cannot be trusted…. And they showed a lead female actor who wore cotton saree to look like an ordinary bharathiya nari waxing about the super whiteness of the time tested age old brand while unnamed detergent gets pushed to the background by a group of women talking about the excellent performance of the old brand…
What could Tril do but get another star to counter propaganda..? And the research luckily agreed to the very obvious… get the competing star to kill the other one….
The phone rang again….
Hello … said Ram….
Hey Ram…. We are on the way… said Guru….is everything ready?
Ram didn’t say YES… it was understood that when the unit was there since early morning they would be ready and tired of waiting….
Ram let out a huge sigh of relief … he had his plans for the ad shoot and release… had to rush back to Chennai after the post shoot works… had other brands in his kitty competing for his attention… The life of a client service director was in soup… the more clients in his kitty the more was the confusion… the bigger ones got the better attention and the smaller ones were never happy with that fact of life… the bigger ones weren’t happy either with the divided attention that they got… after all they paid through their noses for listening to them at least ,full time…
The phone rang again….
Hey Ram ..said some one… this time it was not Guru…
Khurana here… I have sad news for you and Tril…..
What is that? Asked Ram
The other guy is reducing its price by half… said Khurana who was head of the research team back in the Chennai agency office…
That means?… asked Ram visibly annoyed
That means now Kite detergent powder will be available at 23 Rs and not 43… said Khurana…. They call it as the biggest ever consumer advantage transfer… My foot …..said Ram…..
He knew what it meant to his brand… Tril…. It was a price war that was launched… and quite unexpectedly,,, the whole shoot now became futile an effort.. after all the strategy was to talk about value for the mass premium segment…
A car came and the whole unit stood up….
Like a dream which came true, the star descended from it…
