For someone in the field of marketing, it’s always a mad rush to “capture eyeballs”. The traditional media of television, radio and print are certainly not out fashion, but marketing budgets now need to accommodate digital media, out-of-home, ground level activities, direct mailers and what have you. In the cluttered, colored, branded world, standing out and delivering brand awareness has become increasingly challenging. No wonder most of us would term the irritating commercial breaks in between our favourite show as “pest-ering”.
Pests are not necessarily the priority for the average Indian family to lose sleep over. And considering most of the traditional media vehicles for communication were not to be included in our list, we were scratching our heads to come up with innovative ideas to make Rentokil’s presence felt by the masses in a unique way. And that’s when we came across one of our punch lines – Pests have more ways to enter your house than you do!
I wouldn’t write a poem on the diligent ways pests find ways in residential properties. But I might design a campaign to follow suit… to make our brand enter homes. The creepy crawlers get in through cracks and crevices less than millimeter wide, flies get through open window, and rodents or cockroaches find their way through the sewers. Sneaking into residential properties might not be law abiding, but we were close with our idea. We decided to piggy back onto some regular household supplies to get into homes.
Most of Chennai (a major Indian city) households get potable water in large plastic bottles. These are supplied by local retailers, who come and replace it once they are empty and a bottle lasts a day or two. And since these bottles get into urban households, a good number of these form our target consumers. I am not entirely sure about the quality of water (!) but beyond an unexciting label, there was nothing else on the bottle. So I thought that anything unusual on the clear space would instantly grab some attention.
Hooking up with the local retailers, we tagged the bottles. Hundreds of Chennai houses received a simple message coming into their home:
Pests have more ways to enter your house than you do.
5 Comments
Welcome aboard to India – the first International contributor to deBugged now that it has moved home.
An interesting way to convey a message – hope it proves to be effective.
This is a brilliant message. Very clear and it will certainly get people thinking – i know i have already!
Rajeev, what an innovative marketing idea – interested to get your feedback on how many enquiries it generated. Do other Indian cities, such as Bangalore also use bottled water? If so, do you have plans to extend this campaign and raise even more brand awareness around Rentokil Pest Control in India.
Caroline, we had a good number of residents calling in after the campaign.Bangalore also has water in plastic jars, however there are other mechanisms available, e.g., cooking gas cyliders. Piped gas is yet to take off here in a big way.