Engineering its way across

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: We are Punj Lloyd. Short, direct and succinct. Yet, you can’t possibly expect this to work for a consumer durable. However, when the campaign is for business prospects, rivals, investors and employees spread in 60 countries, the message might go straight home—how in just 19 years a small pipeline construction outfit has metamorphosed into an US$2 billion EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) specialist, second in size to Larsen & Turbo in India.

The brief to C2 Design Studio, a non-descript upstart in Singapore that emerged the proverbial dark horse among a few top Indian agencies, after a pitch called in February, was clear: announce to the world that we have arrived. The Singaporean outfit turned in an extremely functional concept and Surprise! Surprise, it won hands down, mainly for “our emphasis on the company’s multicultural employee base,” according to Gerald Chng, C2 Design Studio’s creative director.

In the final execution, the employee series features three faces of Punj Lloyd, workers from three different nationalities, getting their hands dirty and shoes wet at difficult sites for a common purpose, the growth of a transnational company.

“Initially, we toyed with a lot of ideas but eventually tanked those to go with a ‘direct’ approach; an ultra simple message that the client favoured, something ‘in the face’,” explains Chng. “Anything less direct would have missed the mark,” he hurries on to add, underscoring the usual travails of an engineering corporation vis-à-vis a consumer brand—how to communicate attributes of a brand that are not tactical or immediately visible to the consumer.

The creative hardship was resolved in another series by showing a diversity of Punj Lloyd’s business portfolio. This was easy as today the group dabbles in all things big and small: oil and gas pipelines (onshore and offshore), tanks and terminals, refineries, thermal and nuclear power and petrochemicals, besides building airports, seaports, jetties, expressways, flyovers and bridges, utilities and townships.

In tandem, the television commercial urges the viewer to believe the scale of the company’s operations in the images they see rolling out before their eyes—projects being undertaken in diverse geographies, the Middle East, the Caspian, the Asia Pacific, Africa, South Asia, China and Europe, under a 360-degree plan that includes TV, print and outdoors. There is also a “Do you know…” series for the trade journals.