Solomon Wheeler, Vice President and Head - Marketing & Communication, Lava International talks about the launch of the Pixel V2 smartphone with the camera as its USP, and the brand’s plans to grow its market-share in the aggressive smartphone market in India
By SALONI DUTTA
Q] What were the insights behind launching the Pixel V2 smartphone in India and what are the brand plans to promote the product?
Like every good product, this has one very strong USP in terms of marketing – a fantastic camera which pitches it above anything else in this class or category of phones. With the fast knit option of technology and the growth of Internet, people have also started using social apps in a smarter way to express themselves. For example, on Instagram, you can see the profile of a person pictorially along with his or her interests, be it food, fashion, travel, etc. Everyone has started expressing themselves through pictures today. Therefore, the concept of this launch and the communication around it is that life happens everywhere and there are perfect moments all around, and you just need to be ready to click them. We felt that in this segment, there was need for a great camera phone and therefore we came up with this pixel series of phones which have the camera as their USP. We are working on the campaign and it should be out by end of September. The campaign talks about how life is happening all around you, how there are these great moments around you and how you should keep one of these devices handy so that you can capture the right moment.
Q] What is the media mix employed at Lava International for different products?
While selecting media, we don’t go by the conventional strategy that we have to do TV, Print or Radio. Instead, we focus on what medium does justice to the message of our campaign and in this case since the message is more visual, we would be looking at Digital, Television, Cinema and Outdoor strategically across select cities. So that is broadly the media mix that we will look at.
Q] Can you give us and idea of marketing spends by Lava?
Our marketing budget is upwards of Rs 200 crore, and deployed across a mix of media. Our strategy is to focus around building brand imagery, taking the product message out to maximum consumers and therefore Television becomes our lead media and it is heavily supported by digital which is again a critical element in our media mix. At least 10-15% of our budgets our parked in Digital because the influencers and the social word of mouth which is built around any new product or any new feature today, goes a long way in impacting and making consumers choose and decide on what products they want to buy.
Q] How is Lava positioned in the market to score over competition?
Our corporate philosophy is to create possibilities and out of creating possibilities emerged this product positioning and the marketing message of ‘We put the Art in Smart’. Everyone is making smartphones but we focus heavily on design – not just in terms of form factor, but also how technology is used within a particular gadget and to enhance the user experience. It could be sensorial; it could be how a particular feature optimizes a certain aspect of your phone and so on and so forth. It is about making technology smart and also making it friendlier and more amusing with a touch of art; and make all these handsets great-looking products because irrespective of the strata of society or the income gratification column, everyone appreciates a great-looking product.
Q] What is the market-share that the brand garners?
Currently, we have about 10% market-share and this space is very competitive with three new phones on an average being introduced almost every day. We saw 100% growth last year in terms of the business and our recent brand track shows that there has almost been a 30% improvement in brand scores for us, in terms of saliency and top of mind awareness. So those are very good indicators. Now, it is up to the product and up to us to ensure through added awareness that more and more customers actually give business to us or add up to the uptake of products and that grows the market-share too.
Q] How does the brand leverage distribution to reach more and more consumers?
Our distribution model is quite unique as we distribute directly and it is one of our biggest strengths. This helps us control the market and pricing and prevents any kind of infiltration. It also allows us to ensure that there is one Lava brand which is available at one price across the country. Our focus is more on building general trade and the offline product. We believe in maintaining the sanctity of price in the online space as well. We are obviously present online but that is not our focus channel now. Our focus and key channel for distribution is general trade. About 10% of our sales come from online and the rest come from offline. We are a fairly new company and we started out with the North of India, so that has been a traditionally strong market for us. West again is a growing market and it is one of our focus markets. The curve is moving very fast upwards in the West and South for adoption of technology, and these two are our focus markets going forward.
Q] How do you work on associations (events, television, movies, etc.) for Lava to leverage maximum brand-building?
In terms of television properties, we are a mass brand and our attempt is to reach the maximum people with our product message. Therefore we bank a lot on something like cricket – it gives you immediate impact, a connect, transcends all geographical, language, socio-economic barriers and it has worked beautifully for us. Movies and music are genres where our TG has high affinity and high interest and therefore, we feel that getting into them makes a lot of sense for the brand. We selectively pick partners for investments. We are also looking at investments in regional media and local channels, because our focus going forward is in those markets.
Q] What are the brand’s plans for the upcoming festive season?
As far as the festival season is concerned, gone are the days when one size fits all could work - that you could make one big festive promo and run it across India. We need to understand the triggers across different geographies, and what works in a particular geography at that particular point in time. We recently concluded a successful promotion around Onam in Kerala. We are working out where the next big inflection point is around festivals for our brand, and what is it that we can leverage and what kind of promotions, etc., can be worked out. Everyone appreciates two things – one is great design and the other is right value. With these two promises and working on them consistently, we would be meeting the needs and expectations of our customers and we would be offering them better and better products each time.
ABOUT THE BRAND
Established in 2009, Lava International Limited is one of India’s leading as well as fastest growing mobile handset companies. Headquartered in New Delhi, Lava and Xolo are the two product brands that operate under the parent company. With ‘Create Possibilities’ as its corporate philosophy, Lava, is on an ambitious journey. Its talent pool, including on and off roll, comprises more than 7000 people. Lava achieved revenues of $ 1.2 billion in FY 14-15 registering more than 100% growth over FY 13-14. Lava has a wide product portfolio encompassing tablets, feature phones and smartphones with various models in bar and touch form factors at multiple price points to suit all segments of consumers. Lava has a complete in-house R&D and product-testing set-up in China and India. The company has overseas operations in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Middle East and Russia. In keeping with the spirit of ‘Make in India’, Lava has major plans to commence manufacturing operations in India in the current FY. Lava has already set up its first manufacturing plant in Noida and plans to invest Rs 26.15 billion in a phased manner to scale it up. The facility will be gradually ramped up to ultimately have production capacity of 216 million phones per annum and generate direct employment for 53,000 and indirect employment for 3.6 lakh people respectively.
FACTS
CREATIVE AGENCY: SHOP ADVERTISING
MEDIA AGENCY: ALLIANCE ADVERTISING & MARKETING
SOCIAL & DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING AGENCY: REPRISE MEDIA
CMO FILE
Solomon Wheeler, Vice President and Head- Marketing & Communication at Lava International, is in charge of ATL, BTL, Digital and Creative campaigns for the brand across India and global markets. Prior to joining Lava, Wheeler worked at SpiceJet, where he led several marketing initiatives pan-India. Before SpiceJet, he was associated with Airtel as part of the marketing team. In a career spanning 14 years, Wheeler has serviced various brands at leading agencies including Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG & Cheil Communications. He graduated with a degree in Arts from Delhi University and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing and Communications from The Delhi School of Communication. He also attended the Management Development Programme (MDP) – ‘Developing and Managing Brands’ at IIM, Ahmedabad.
MARKETING TIP
Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be focussed.
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