Heating up competition

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Prashant Dhar, Head, Marketing at Racold Thermo Ltd. is looking at 2013 as the ‘transformation year’ for the brand. He talks about insights behind a complete change in brand image, immense growth scope for the category, consumer influencers, the brand’s latest campaign and more…

Q] The brand has recently undergone a change in terms of brand image and communication? What were the insights that led to this exercise?

We conducted a study in 2011, which showed that we needed to work on building our connect with the youth, as well as an overall emotional connect with consumers. Though Racold has been around for 50 years, 2012 has been a landmark year because we looked at giving a new whiff of excellence to the brand which was obviously not there earlier, as the brand has been operating in a low engagement category. Even if you look at the competitive scenario, the activities in the media were low scale compared to other white goods category, but over the last few years this significantly increased. As market leaders, we thought it is the right time to concentrate and take our marketing initiatives to the next level.

To build a consumer as well as emotional connect with the brand, we needed to understand the brand’s role in the life of a consumer. We also tried to build the brand internally. By sharing the TVC on our intranet, we created mobile ringtones of the TVC which were circulated internally, for the new brand imagery and feel to percolate across the board .We have also revamped our website.

Q] How does the ‘Reborn every morning’ campaign take the brand’s new imagery to consumers?

The earlier positioning was of a hot water specialist; more of a manufacturer-driven kind of a statement, but the emotional angle was clearly missing. What is the role that the brand plays in the life of a consumer? What is it that Racold needs to touch lives? We asked ourselves these questions. Our brief to the agency was to come back with a statement which takes the brand to the consumer. Our entire approach was to look at the brand from an angle which nobody had looked at, so it was radical communication that we developed, ‘Reborn with hot water’. Every morning when you get up, you prepare yourself to face the world. Bathing plays a pivotal role in terms of rejuvenating and metamorphosing us. We also looked at the rituals of the morning and found that 91% of the consumers said that ‘If I don’t take a bath in the morning, I feel a sense of incompleteness’ through a survey done by BBDO globally. We took this insight as communication for our new positioning.

There have been numerous commercials made with cricketers, so we wanted to look at it from an angle which was different and gave an insight into how the real heroes do the same thing again and again, like the professional life of an umpire which is often overlooked. Having the same passion for your job on a daily basis is a concept that applies to everyone.

Q] How is the brand positioned currently?

Our positioning statement is reborn everyday with hot water, different from the earlier positioning as a hot water heater specialist. We are moving away from a completely features driven approach to the actual difference the brand is making in the lives of consumers, and emotionally connecting with them, which is our differentiating factor.

Q] What is the growth scope you foresee in this category?

The penetration level of the category is only 10% even in urban cities, hence the scope of expansion is multifold. Unlike a commodity like the refrigerator, a geyser is needed in multiple bathrooms of the house, which is why you have multiple players entering the category as well. The penetration is definitely going to increase. In the classical white goods category, washing machines would have around 17-20 % penetration. Water heaters are still lower placed than washing machines though they are a necessity, especially during the winter in certain parts of the country where the scope of penetration is high.

The market for water heaters is growing at 8-10% every year, which is an impressive growth compared to other white goods, which register hardly 2-3% growth.

Q] What are the major influencers of a consumer’s purchase decision in the water heater category today?

There is a strong influence of retailers/traders whenever you go to buy consumer durables. You might have something on your mind, but change your opinion depending on the dealer; so there is considerable weightage on the dealer’s

opinion as well. Apart from the influence of trade partners and traditional media, digital media plays a huge role as a conversion platform. TVCs and Print advertisements play a role in spreading awareness, but a significant number of people research online. Even on our site, we have created a column for a customer to choose a product, wherein he or she can put in the requirement and get the correct product on the screen and go and purchase it.

Q] What are the digital initiatives undertaken by the brand?

The brand has to talk the language of the consumer, without talking about the product and features. For example, post our current TVC, we ran contests on our website like ‘What was the colour of geysers shown in the TVC?’… we also had ‘What was the reborn moment of your life?’ On the same lines, we also started various ways in which people can rejuvenate themselves and ensured that our website is updated at all times. After the revamp of our website, we have seen drastic change in numbers - in June, we had around 10,000 visitors; now we see 27,000 visitors every month. Moreover, on Facebook, we have about 2,700 members in just three months. This is just the beginning of the brand-building we are planning to do. This year looks very exciting to me in terms of making the brand more active on social media. We will also be exploring new age mediums like mobile applications.

Q] What can we expect from the brand in 2013?

We will have an equal focus on solar heaters as well as electrical heaters. We had one TVC last year… we are planning to have two or three TVCs this year. We will be very active on social media and BTL activities, and work on our marketing activities from the perspective of building both consideration and conversion. We will be holistically taking the brand to the next level. People are already seeing the difference in the brand, and we are going to ensure 2013 is even better. We are looking at 2013 as the transformation year for the brand.

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