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Campaign Extension- Wasting Jaago Re

13 December 2010 2,517 views 4 Comments

Nearly everybody fell in love with the Jaago Re campaign of Tata Tea. The campaign showed simple aspects of our daily life, highlighted on how we have forgotten our basic duties as citizens of India, and urged the audience to ‘wake up’. These set of ads stood out of the crowd, who mostly focused on the functional aspect of tea. There have been some attempts by other players to build emotional associations; one that comes to mind is by ‘Bagh Bakri’ Tea, which claims to revive family ties. However, they seem to be either too farfetched, or too lame to create any major impact. Waking up, in a literal sense is deeply associated with tea. The campaign Jaago Re, very smartly leveraged that connect, and took it to a whole new level of social responsibility.

By picking up issues so close to the averages consumer’s average day, Tata Tea was able to connect with the audience, and by bringing in an emotional angle to the whole experience of tea, the campaign was hugely successful. Here is one of the ads from that campaign.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ECJrnqPcI

Tata Tea tried leveraging the same concept of ‘waking up’ to sell its latest offering, Tata Tea Premium, whose core differentiator seems to be the ‘balance of the large & small leaves’, which gives the optimum taste, smell etc. Here is the TVC.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK26IH0dIPg

While watching the ad for the first time on TV, based on the setting of the ad, I was able to guess that it’s another one from the Jaago Re campaign, and was looking forward to the climax. However, as one can see, it was a big letdown. They tried to marry the goodwill created by the emotional appeal of the existing campaign to the functional communication required for the new product. I believe this is terribly wrong, as now Tata Tea is doing what any xyz brand is also doing, talking about the functional benefits. Yes, there might well be some extensive consumer research which may have showed that tea drinkers want to have a ‘balance of large & small tea leaves’… but then, that should have been communicated with a different campaign.

Thinking about it now, it just struck me whether there is something called ‘Campaign Extension’. Just like brand extension, where one decides to launch a new product under an existing brand name, a marketer decides to launch another advertisement under an existing campaign. It is not very difficult to relate the two based on the benefits & risks associated with both.

Major benefits of brand extension include leveraging existing brand’s equity to gain trust, cost saving & continuing on a trusted formula (in terms of brand elements). The biggest risk of brand extension is the fit between the new product, its target segment, usage behaviour etc with the existing brand. Similar is the case with ‘campaign extension’. Where brand extension leverages the tried & tested branding formula, a campaign extension benefits from the tried & tested campaign formula. Where brand extension helps build trust among the consumers, campaign extension ensures that people would be interested in viewing the campaign (as happened with me in the above mentioned case of Tata Tea Premium; as would have happened with you in several Fevicol ads). These were the benefits. The risk of mismatch between the product & brand is, if not more, equally high in case of campaign extension; just that it becomes the case of mismatch between communication idea and campaign theme in case of campaign extension. This is where an emotional campaign should not be used to communicate functional benefits of a product.

A really successful example- Airtel. Airtel has always had more than one campaign going on air simultaneously. While one campaign would be aimed at brand building, the other one’s purpose is to communicate the functional aspect, schemes etc. Corresponding to the two different communications, the theme of the two campaigns is different. While there have been some AR Rehman ads (and some others shown below) high on emotional appeal, there have been others, especially the Madhavan – Vidya Balan series focusing completely on the functional benefits being offered.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFa2lMXvqUQ

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4SoE8mSpXo&NR=1

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu_2RsftLwA

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ymVBxJ3Zms

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ShashankShashank Bajaj is a PGDM (2011) student at IIM Calcutta. He holds a Bachelors degree in Manufacturing Processes & Automation Engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Delhi University and can be reached at shashankb2011@email.iimcal.ac.in.

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  • Gokul Badri

    I agree with Arvind’s point that tea is a commodity. The fact that brands like Tata tea have successfully brought an emotional angle to selling the same doesn’t in anyway change this fact.

    Your idea as a whole, of keeping an emotional campaign separate from a functional one has great merit and indeed is true in case of a product like telecom service.

    But I feel the same can’t apply for Tata tea. For one, you can expect a new offer and a new package everyday from an operator like Airtel and customers have to be continually kept informed of the same, which is why they have a constantly running functional campaign. At the same time the brand has to be built and an emotional appeal created, which is why they have the other emotional campaign.

    In case of Tata tea, such innovations and new offerings would be very rare. In fact I dont know when was the last time that a tea brand claimed to have come up with something new. Thats why they generally resort to campaigns either surrounding social awakening, or relationships and so on.
    Now that Tata tea has a new offering, it either could have gone with a new campaign or stuck to the old one. As such an innovation is one-off, it makes sense for Tata tea to stick with the old campaign.

    Also they have combined the two quite well, and I must say, if you dont put on the analyst’s glasses, you would hardly find it any less interesting than the previous ads.

    But again, the concept of campaign extension you mentioned is good, and something novel. Good read.

  • Shashank Bajaj

    @arvind

    I do not agree with “tea is commodity”. Had this statement been made a few years earlier, i would concede that it would hv been relevant

    But after the recent campaigns by the major players, and most of all by Tata Tea itself, quite a bit of emotional appeal had been created abt the specific brands

    Now tht we’re talking abt commodities…i believe a telecom service scores far higher on the degree of commodity-ness vis a vis tea

    @netika

    I am not against ‘explicit marketing’ so to say… just that i don’t think one should be ‘milking’ an exiting emotional appeal based campaign for conveying the functional info. This approach might work for one campaign…but it surely kills off the appeal of the original campaign. Now when i see the next Jaago Re ad, i don’t think i’ll look fwd to it as much as i used to earlier

    THAT is where the thought of ‘campaign extension’ similar to brand extension crossed my mind.

    You may use an existing well established brand to launch a new product, even if it doesn’t go well with the brand. The new produt might well benefit from the existing brand’s equity…however, the brand would definitely lose its charm in the long run

  • http://www.arvindshastry.blogspot.com Arvind Shastry

    I agree that the second ‘Jaago Re’ fails to appeal as much as the first one because of the functional aspect being brought out in the latter. AFAIK, combining emotional appeal with functionality in the same ad has not been a regular feature in ads…However, in this ad, it’s brought in a satirical fashion which appeals to some and not to others. Almost, like the movie “3 Idiots”, which attempts to trivialise a serious issue (and campaign) in an effort to woo the masses..

    The Airtel ads have always been very clear in their message. The ad showing Sachin inviting people to play football in the rain strikes a chord directly with people. On the other hand, the Madhavan-Vidya Balan ad is clearly about the benefit. However, at some level, it’s easier marketing a mobile service (where technology plays a critical role in bringing newer stuff like 3G etc. and provides considerable space for new ideas) than a commodity like tea!!

  • Netika

    It’s two way actually:

    Personally, the campaign is just okay. Nothing great. It doesn’t have the “wow” effect, the inspiring effect that Jaago Re campaigns have, and the “functional benefit” communication is also okay types.

    Combining The emotional appeal they’re playing on+ communicating the functional benefit, good!!
    At the end, you’re marketing/advertising for a reason.

    Jaago Re has great recall value and has been a successful campaign, so now that you have the customers attention, gradually shifting to EXPLICITLY MARKETING is fine I guess.

    How long could they have gone with the Jaago Re camapign and not introduce a fresh aspect any way?

    PS:Nice!! Fresh perspective!! :) I did not think of it like this!! :)