MUMBAI: Media agency MediaCom India has executed activation for the car freshener brand Ambi Pur. The idea was to explode the low involvement air-freshener category, by driving category relevance through disruption. The company also roped in Bollywood actor Neha Dhupia to be a part of the activation.
P&G home care brand manager Vidya Murthy said, “Riding on the fantasy of males to go on a drive with a diva was the key hook of the idea that MediaCom came up with. Multimedia amplification through RJs, ground event, print media is what drove scale for the activation.”
MediaCom business director, P&G planning Gaurav Virkar said, “In the category that talked only about air freshening, being ‘guest ready‘ by eliminating bad odours in the car was the platform that the brand found its ground on. The idea was to sensitise male consumers to be guest ready at all times with Ambi Pur in their cars.”
The campaign was carried out in November and December 2011. Radio and PR were employed as the media to spread the word about the initiative, and MediaCom associated with Fever FM for the ‘Freshness Drive‘.
The target customer for the brand is on-the-go male who spends a lot of time travelling in the car in clogged city roads. He is so busy with his professional or personal life that he finds little time to consider the ambience of his car as being a critical factor in car care. This audience is hooked on to radio while driving to office on weekdays, and hence, radio was identified to be one of the top priority medium for this activation.
For the execution, the first phase was to connect with the audience by creating the need for an air freshener in cars via stories on freshness by RJ mentions and spots. A poll was also conducted to select the celebrity that listeners would love to go on a drive with. In the second phase, the results on the most preferred celebrity were declared. Ambi Pur gift hampers were also given away.
To drive the message of being ‘car guest ready‘, Dhupia went out on the Delhi roads, asking for a lift from cars that were passing by. She decided to stay inside a car or get out on the basis of the freshness quotient of the car. Her journey was documented as live feed on Fever FM.
Her mantra for always being ahead of the others in this game is research. Today, MediaCom is known for its extensive research and has also won a lot of laurels through awards. In an environment where television ratings drive most decisions that media planners and buyers make, Jasmin has made it a point to go beyond mere ratings and churn out addressable solutions for the agency’s clients through extensive research. It’s no wonder that MediaCom has been consistently winning the Emvies for their research papers.
We asked this MediaCom loyalist, (who only dresses in black), whether she would be game to shift to an entirely new profession for the challenge of it. “I totally love what I do, but if a challenge comes my way I would be open to consider. But it’s not really about the challenge, the work content has to interest me! There are some sectors that are extremely challenging, but don’t interest me in the least. The business has to engage me before I engage the consumer,” she confidently replies.
Her mantra in life is to work hard and shop hard! “If you’re not going to spend it, why earn it! To many it’s ‘work hard, party hard,’ for me it’s ‘work hard, shop hard’,” Jasmin confides.
When asked what her strengths and weaknesses are, she says, “Media planning is my strength and shoes are my weakness! On a more serious note, I believe my strength is my ability to nurture and motivate my people. My weakness is my inability to easily accept people who do not fit into my benchmarks of ‘good’ human beings. I try to put people into ‘black’ or ‘white’ compartments where in reality there are only shades of gray. It’s the one fault I have always been pulled up for, and it’s the one mistake I keep making.”