Tanishq, from the Tata Group, is taking its diamond education campaign to the next level with the launch of a new online campaign called ‘The Curious Case of the Missing Diamonds’. In April this year, Tanishq had launched the ‘True Diamonds’ campaign featuring Bollywood’s leading couple Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan. This campaign is aimed at making consumers aware of the various aspects of diamond quality.
Tanishq has been synonymous with excellent craftsmanship, exclusive designs, and guaranteed product quality. It has built for itself the reputation of being a brand that strives to understand the Indian woman and provide her with jewellery that meets her traditional as well as contemporary aspirations and desires.
Parvesh Debuka, Brand Manager, Tanishq, who spearheaded the entire project, said, “Our main aim was to educate buyers and enable them to take an informed decision when it comes to buying diamonds. We wanted them to understand as to how to determine how good or bad a diamond is, and ask the right questions when they walk into a diamond jewellery store.” Tanishq has embarked on the first ever educational campaign on such a large scale about diamonds in India. The campaign is similar to the gold purity campaign that the brand came up with years ago.
In most of its ads, the brand has featured ordinary women and their diamond stories. What prompted them to opt for Bollywood’s power couple this time? Parvesh explained, “When we started out, it took us nearly 13-14 years to educate people about gold purity. Today, we are a far stronger brand and a name to be reckoned with. However, if I speak as a brand, it will take a longer time to create an impact on the minds of consumers than if I employ a person who has a very high impact. Our target group is the 40-50+ group who have lived through the ‘Bachchan era’. When he talks, most people will listen. People look up to him and take his word. He has a dominating presence and shares the same values as we do.”
On the pairing of the real life couple in an everyday scenario, Parvesh pointed out, “Our earlier ads were mainly focussed on the woman where we concentrated on the design and emotion aspects. This time around, we wanted to talk to the lady as well as the man together since the man plays an equally important role in the buying process. While the woman decides on ‘what to buy’, the man decides on ‘where to buy from’. By getting Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, a real life couple rather than a staged couple, to portray this, the TVCs had the elements of reality as well as charm, establishing a connect with the viewers.”
While the TVC comprised the first phase and went off-air in June, the online platform is the second phase of the campaign. The main objective of this campaign is to take diamond education to the next level and at the same time, make the process more engaging. Online, being the most interactive of the mediums, was chosen as the lead medium for this educational campaign. Parvesh explained, “We chose the online medium as we wanted to educate the buyer and also allow interaction and engage with consumers. No one, as such, wants to be ‘educated’ these days. So, we decided on a game to provide infotainment – to entertain as well as educate. People can play the game and gather information about diamonds. The ‘Curious Case of the Missing Diamonds’ takes consumer engagement and education to a higher plane. This was critical for us while planning the second phase of the diamond education campaign.”
This project was brought to life by a close collaboration between Tanishq and their agency partners Maxus, Lowe, and Interactive Avenues.
The microsite that has been specially created for the online campaign is missingdiamonds.tanishq.co.in. The site enables users to help Amitabh find the missing diamonds through an online game. This game has a series of clues in the form of videos of suspects who would have stolen the diamonds. According to Sirish Chandrashekhar, Marketing Manager, Tanishq, “Getting the modern city dweller to learn about diamonds was a challenge. We embarked on this education campaign online through the ‘missing diamonds’ idea. Interaction, engagement, and education were the key words around which this idea is based on.”
Sairam Ranganathan, Digital Head, Maxus-South, said, “We wanted to make diamond education more interesting and engaging for the urban upscale audiences. Through ‘Maxus creativitis’, we arrived at the missing diamonds idea. This is a social design enabled game, and we worked with KRDS to create this experience.”
Parvesh added here, “Brand tracks showed highest associations for our brand after the TVC was aired. The ad garnered more than 1 lakh views on YouTube. We thought ‘How do we ride high on an already high wave?’ We came up with the idea of taking one element from the TVC and building on that. That is how the online campaign’s idea took shape. This will also ensure that people who have not seen the ad will watch it now.” The brand is promoting the online campaign on Tata Sky today onwards. He further said, “We are also targeting people in the 35+ category. Mostly, people are well-settled in their jobs and in life by this age. So, the idea is to start talking to them today itself when they can only influence decisions so that when they attain this age and move on to become decision-makers, they can take an educated decision. Also, most 35+ people are watching a lot of TV when they are offline. That is why we chose to promote it through this medium on the DTH platform.”
The online campaign will filter out offline into an on-ground event. Tanishq will fly five people who complete the task of finding the missing diamonds in the shortest period of time down to Mumbai to take part in the on-ground chase to hunt down the culprit. The winner of the hunt gets the chance to gift the diamond necklace personally to Jaya Bachchan. The game can be played online till September 23-24. The ‘Missing Diamonds’ campaign will be on till the last week of September or the first week of October.
Commenting on the main idea behind the commercial, Chander Mohan Sethi, Chairman & Managing Director, Reckitt Benckiser (India), said, “We have focused on the brand tradition of celebrating beauty and confidence for Veet users all over, with youth icon Katrina Kaif embodying the confident style of the modern Indian woman and specially designed for no-fuss waxing. The USP of the new “EasyGrip tab” comes out effectively using the “pull-up” motion to showcase the ‘ease and convenience’ of use. The EasyGrip tab has been designed to make the waxing process more intuitive for the consumers and as a result save time and hassle of specially going to a parlour for waxing, which is shown through the visual medium with great effectiveness, as Katrina zips through her entire routine.”
“Health is low on priority for us Indians and we wanted to address that,” said Sambit Mohanty, Executive Creative Director, Bates141, adding, “We are more worried about disruption diseases (flu, etc.) rather than chronic and serious illnesses. Further, we keep swaying between the feeling of ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me’ to ‘what is inevitable is inevitable’. With that in mind, we wanted to start a movement that discusses benefits of healthier living. Our TVCs use slice-of-life situations with a humorous twist - we're sure most people would identify with them. And judging by the great response to the ads, each one of them has connected in a unique way.”
Elvis Sequeira, National Creative Director, Cheil Worldwide, felt that while the message was clear, the brand was missing from it. He added, “I think the commercials are well intentioned, but miss the point, and that's because the idea isn't sharply thought through and needs several steps on the viewer's part to get to what the brand is trying to say. Do we understand it's about insurance? Yes. Do we get the insight that a family is more concerned about your health than you are? Yes. Do you want the head of the household to take a health promise? Sure. Now what's the brand doing in all this? Dunno.”
Commenting on the ads, Nirmal Pulickal, Executive Creative Director, North & East, DDB Mudra, said, “I think the commercials are terribly trite, at every level, as the insights are dull. The script is boring and looks like people in client servicing wrote it. The performance of the old man in the smoking ad is so amateur it is shocking. I am not sure if the ad will register with the viewers as it is hardly innovative. If I am a viewer, I don’t know if it will make me think any better of Max Bupa.”
Commenting on restricting the campaign to print, Anupam Bansal, Executive Director, Liberty Group, said, “The whole campaign is being limited to the print media. This has been done for impact and focus and also to avoid any wastage considering the availability of our products.”
Speaking on the creative execution of the same and strategy behind it, Nidhi Arora, Group Head, Montage Advertising, said, “Liberty has been on the growth path for the past few years after the backend consolidation. The product range under the Liberty portfolio has undergone a big change and has become more stylish, more trendy and more with it. What was now required was a campaign that would entice the youthful, new target audience of Liberty to come and see for themselves the new range and also experience the brand by trying it out. In order to showcase the big change, we felt this would be an opportune time to rope in a youth icon that would connect with a large number of our audience as well as with the new set of youthful buyers who may not have any prior experience of our brand. To make the connect emphatic and very direct, a creative execution with Hrithik holding the brand logo was decided upon.”