Eveready, the market leader, was under severe threat in the emerging urban youth segment. Torches and transistors, the traditional end products running on the ubiquitous D-sized large batteries, were fast giving way to Walkmans, toys, remotes and calculators running on the slim and sexy AA-sized ‘pen cells’. And Eveready’s new offering in this segment was a good six months away. The Japanese brands, on the other hand, had already gobbled up almost the entire segment.

What Eveready needed was a piece of communication that would counter the Japanese threat, position Eveready as ‘the one’ for power-hungry applications, and give the fuddy-duddy, semi-rural brand the sheen and style that the urban youth would vibe with.

The answer lay in Eveready’s product range. While the simple, no-frills ‘White’ Eveready had become synonymous with torches, the metal-clad, techy-looking ‘Red’ was the more urban product. Could this be leveraged to reposition the aging leader? It could indeed.

Thus was born the iconic ‘Give me Red’ campaign. Three simple words that held out a brash promise of raw power. That gave the brand an in-your-face attitude, and served as the anchor for a commercial that was like no other seen on Indian television. MTV before MTV.

The film opened on a stark white bar counter. In walked a hunk, slapped the counter top and spoke the magic words ‘Give me Red’. The burly bar tender set a glass down on the counter, filled it to the brim with a mysterious red liquid, and with a powerful flick of his meaty paw, sent it sliding down the bar counter to our man.

And that was where the film left the tried and tested linear style of story-telling and burst into a rawly energetic, pulsating montage set to a pounding track, punctuated by a war-cry with a ‘Give me Red’ refrain.

The journey of the glass as it slid past the riveted customers at the bar was punctuated with a series of racy, high-energy visuals like a huge red bike, somebody plucking at a red electric guitar in a frenzy, a drummer going hammer and tongs at a red drum in the pouring rain—all adding up to exactly the kind of hip, high-energy imagery the brand needed to reposition itself—and the competition. The others were mere batteries, but Eveready was this new cult called Red.

The campaign got splashed across all media—press, magazine, outdoor, POS—using the same edgy, stark red-on white imagery and ‘Give me Red’ blazed across in funky, electric letters.

The campaign became an overnight sensation, and the film—directed by Mahesh Mathai of Highlight—a benchmark in terms of style, pace and sheer energy.

And the results? Everything one could ask for—and more. Not only did it energise Red Eveready, and pave the way for the AA Red, which rapidly zoomed to 38% market share, it also gave a fillip to the entire range. And strangely enough, it was not just the urban youth who connected with it, but the brand’s loyal rural base as well. Lal became as much of a buzzword in the villages as Red was in the cities.

The rest is, in a real sense, history. The campaign proved to have legs time and again, being easily extended to accommodate new launches and new products, starting with the hugely successful launch of the AA Red, followed by the equally successful Heavy Duty Red. From a fuddy-duddy image strongly linked to rural markets and traditional uses like torches and transistors, the brand till today is associated with youth, modernity and high-end gizmos.

And the final proof of its success lies in the brand’s advertising today. The iconic Amitabh Bachchan became the brand ambassador—but the brand’s mantra remains Give me Red.

—The author is national creative director, Rediffusion DY&R