The new Voltas campaign plays second fiddle to the original one. Mr and Mrs Murthy will need to do things a little more differently the next time in order to keep the magic alive
Campaign name: Voltas 2013 All Weather Campaign
Brand: Voltas All-Weather AC
Company: Voltas
Agency: Soho Square
The Campaign
It is a series of three TV commercials ? one each based in Chennai, Delhi and Rajasthan. In each ad, the character Murthy talks about how his wife, Meenakshi, faces problems in different climatic conditions?namely humidity (Chennai), heat (Delhi), and dust (Rajasthan). The wife becomes irritable due to the harsh weather and Murthy then switches on his Voltas AC to provide necessary relief and cool down his better half. All three ads end with Murthy explaining how Voltas All Weather ACs can work in different weather conditions all year round.
Our Take
As temperatures begin to soar and the mercury gets mercurial, the character of Murthy is back on our television screens in a reminder that this is the peak selling season for air conditioning systems. A fairly successful campaign in the past that made that Voltas campaign as well as protagonist Murthy a familiar face, Murthy 2.0, as one may call this new three-part campaign, is primarily a progression of a campaign formula that has worked well for the Voltas brand. The introduction of Mrs Murthy in the films is surely an attempt to broaden the campaign appeal by having the character of a quintessential Indian housewife. After all, there is enough evidence ? anecdotal and otherwise ? over generations to suggest that housewives are the most influential buying group, particularly when it comes to consumer durables and white goods. We can safely say that it’s a decent attempt and retains the basic essentials of the earlier campaign, giving it a strong connect and continuity in the minds of the target audience. With stiff competition within this segment, Voltas can heave a sigh of relief as it already possesses a campaign with top-of-the-mind recall. As far as the creative execution is concerned, there is hardly any really change in the look and feel of these new films, as they end up toeing the same line as the previous one. Of course, the addition of Mrs Murthy to the campaign doubles the effective cast of the campaign, it’s more or less the same old wine in a new bottle. Interestingly,Voltas has gone with a regional-focus formula where each ad talks about the climatic conditions of three different regions, respectively. This helps in focussing on specific functions of the AC in specific ads rather than dishing them all out together in a pan-India ad. It’s a good move. The focus also shifts a little and the main talking point of the ads is the different problems that Mrs Murthy faces in varied climatic conditions ? humidity, heat, and dust ? during summer months. This again enhances the appeal as housewives are the ones who stay home mostly and are perhaps the biggest users and beneficiaries of home air conditioning systems. But the campaign sticks to Murthy being the narrative voice.
Often a major dilemma faced by brands and successful campaigns is how much should they be tweaking a winning formula in order to maintain the brand identity while still managing to show something progressively different. This campaign too seems to be caught in the same quandary. While it succeeds in delivering the brand communication, laced with its well-intended but stereotypical humour, it somehow doesn’t manage to excite the audience. But Murthy’s first interaction with the audience and consumers was a great one, and the brand continues to reap the benefits of that. And while this works for Voltas for the time being at least, it is also a dampener, as it essentially means that this campaign on its own doesn’t quite leave a mark and at some levels plays second fiddle to the original campaign. Effective it sure is, but it doesn’t stand in the mind of the consumer as an independent communication. Our advice to Mr and Mrs Murthy would be to do things a little more differently the next time in order to keep the magic alive.