Campaign: For your many moods
Brand: Lavie
Company: Lavie
Agency: TBWA\India
The Campaign
The ad opens with actress Kareena Kapoor stopping at a counter in a handbag store. She asks for ?something in black? and before the smiling salesman is able to pull out a black handbag, she interrupts him by saying the colour is ?too black?. She tries another shoulder bag and examines the look in a mirror. Changing her mind, she asks for a darker shade of black. Cut to the next frame, now the undecided shopper wants a lighter shade of the same colour. While the salesman struggles to understand the desired shade of black, Kapoor builds the pressure and adds to his confusion by saying that she is not looking for black but ?just black?. After looking at all the available shades of black in the store, she ends up buying a fluorescent orange bag. When told by the flustered salesman that the bag she has picked up is not black, she replies that she had never asked for black.
Our Take
The ladies handbags market in India is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore. It is projected to grow at about 15% annually in the next five years to Rs 4,000 crore. The key growth drivers include increasing number of working women, their rising incomes, increasing fashion consciousness and aspiration levels, and growing influx of foreign brands. Hidesign and Da Milano are the two established brands in this segment.
Launched last year, Lavie is a fashion lifestyle brand that claims to target the GenY young woman who is multi-faceted, successful, independent and vivacious. The company offers a collection of handbags ranging from satchels, totes, shoulder bags, hobos to box bags. The ad successfully depicts a woman?s obsession for picking up the right handbag without knowing what she?s really looking for till the time she comes face to face with it. In fact, the brand seems to have won half the battle by bringing Kapoor (known for her ultra glam act in Sony Vaio ads) on board as its ambassador. Her character in the ad seems to have shades of Poo, a role played by her in Bollywood movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. In a way, the salesman (with a smile on his face) represents the plight of all men who strive to be Nick Marshall (a man who can hear women?s thoughts) in the Hollywood film What Women Want. Considering how a large part of the handbags market is unorganised and how the demand for branded bags is increasing, the campaign will surely help Lavie get more footfalls at its stores.