A hint of wood in our lives... Century Ply !

We are living in such paradoxical times. And still surviving, succeeding to say the least!

In a time when a certain brand called as OLX is making people sell off their old furniture, old vehicles, old artifacts (that are still in workable conditions) through OLX website and OLX Mobile Apps and make instant money, there are brands that take pride and suggest the same to the masses for using the old items.

Today it is Century Ply I am referring to that has very recently launched a bevy of four fresh ads and is based on emotional appeal of 'delivering happiness'. 

"Khushiyon ka rangmanch" ( a Hindi punchline that means a Stage(performing) full of Happiness ). We have been testimony to Ply and wood brands talking about the toughness or finesse or the image upliftment that the products made out of wood give to your place till now. How offices become more useful, how furniture is more durable, worse -- there are local furniture brands that actually show female body parts (crass!!) akin to furniture...aargh!! There are some brands that have talked about being anti-rodent or anti-white ants et. al too. 

This was the era of delivering product values and attributes and talking about them! When Russi Mody took over Tata Group, an ad campaign used to run in Business India talking about how a bit of steel was present in every one's life in India and the punch line at the end would say ... and we also make steel!! Mr Mody was furious on that positioning and commanded the ad campaign to reflect the meaning that it is only Tata's who make Steel! The point to bring home is, the Brand image was built on the strength of the product per say. Just like two wheelers or automobiles, how much new technological innovations can a company do? Albeit, how  frequent and how many and  NEW technological innovations can the company do and for how long can you keep on parotting the same? 

 Ambassador, the brand has been battered so oft by marketing experts (and rightly so) could not either innovate or promote correctly and had to shut shop recently as they closed the production. Marketing history is replete with examples of such brand failures where either the product was not good yet was promoted to be good or the product was good but due to lack of enough marketing support and promotion expenditure have bombed. Well, one could easily conclude this was true for CPG markets. However, the similar phenomenon is slowly entering other sectors like Infra, Commodity, Automobiles and scores of others.

Coming back to Century Ply, it has with this ad campaign tried to move away from regular brand associations in these category of Ply & Wood. The Ad agency for them, DDB Mudra is trying to build emotional appeal and emotion based brand associations. Towards this, they have roped Indian actor par excellence Nana Patekar who apparently is the voice of conscience through out the four different ads. 

Quoting from campaignindia.in website, -- Rajiv Sabnis, President, DDB Mudra West said, "Khusiyon ka Rangmanch is an idea that is a take on life, from the point-of-view of the furniture. If all inanimate objects had a life of their own, and could see the world around them, then they would see themselves at the centre of a family life. Then furniture could see the joys, the bonding, the celebration, the success, the romance, the love, the gossip and many other emotions that a family goes through in the course of their life together. Furniture is a mute spectator today, but if it had emotions, it would believe that the family comes together around the various pieces of furniture which make a home." 

May be this is a different kind of advertising for Century Ply as also for the category. May be this ad shall be the torchbearer for rest of the category promotions. However, whether this ad campaign has a longevity beyond 3-4 months maximum is to be seen. Current audiences require freshness in communications from Brand.  Clearly we are living in an era of new consumers who are enjoying their new found love for brands in almost every category ranging from ear buds to panty liners to computer processors to their politicians !They become close to ads like Cadbury, Amul, Maggi, Titan after eons of ad spends and constant refurbishing of ideas. Century Ply has entered an arena that demands all this and more. 

Will the brand be able to withstand this, needs be seen. Consumer attitudes take time to change, both positive to negative and negative to positive. It's a slippery turf for now for Century Ply.

Nana Patekar joining the band wagon of Indian Brand Ambassadors is sure a pleasant move, personally. 

~~Dr Swati Nalawade~~

Brand & Markets Observer

5th June 2014

(The advertisement can be watched here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1m0oB7HIC4)