MUMBAI: Onida , an Indian consumer durable manufacturer, is gearing up to release a new print campaign for its air conditioners with the slogan “Torture Tested Onida Inverter ACs” with its iconic devil personality.
Mirc Electronics MD Vijay Mansukhani said, “This is a strategic move to create dealer confidence of being the first mover in the AC space and to generate customer interest pre-season. We are confident that this preseason offer will bring maximum benefits to our channel and consumers. We deeply understand the Indian family and their preferences and place them at the forefront of our innovations and offerings.”
Onida has close to 50 types of air conditioners. At the core of the new AC ad are six products: Coral as principal, others being Wave, Regalio, Iris, Indium and Onyx. These are Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Wi-Fi enabled ACs with strong 4-way swing delivering an anti-fungal environment and using green eco-friendly refrigerant and 100 per cent copper coil.
The brand is focussing on print ad-campaign across leading TOI and other regional dailies in tier 2 and 3 cities like Ahmedabad, Baroda, Rajkot, Surat, Kolkata, Guwahati, Patna, Hyderabad, Vizag, Mangalore, Mysore, and Raipur. Besides very strong BTL activities have been planned with all the MBOs across India, to deliver the essence of the brand and enhance visibility.
MUMBAI: Indian consumer durable manufacturer Onida, has launched new print ad campaign “Maximum Impact –Maximum Sound” for its newly launched KY Super thunder smart TV.
The ad-campaign reflects the positioning of the brand as a category-defying sound that will blow away the connoisseur of sound. The campaign is to tap the today’s generation who are smart and connected well with the technology. The brand continues to focus on “owner’s pride”.
The entire advertisement strategy has been conceptualised and driven by Taproot Dentsu.
The brand is focussing on print ad-campaign across national and other regional dailies spread across India. Besides that, very strong BTL activities have been planned with all the MBOs across India, to deliver the essence of the brand and enhance visibility.
Mirc Electronics MD Vijay Mansukhani says, “Television technology has changed by leaps and bounds over the last ten years. The KY Super Thunder has a great sound, 4k picture quality and much required smartness in the TV. We are the only company which has been working on both sound and picture quality, whereas others have been focussing only on quality of the picture. As promised in the past, Devil is back and now represents entire brand Onida as a brand.”
The Onida KY SUPER THUNDER with KY HORNS technology comes with the Smart feature as well. These SMART TV will run on an Android 7.0 operating system, enhancing the viewing experience. This will also allow users to have access to the Google Play store and a suite of other services, as added value. It has an Air Mouse Remote with Point & Click technology and QWERTY keyboard behind. When other leading brands offer a high-end big-screen 4K UHD TV at a price point of 1 lakh upwards, Onida offers true value in much lesser cost with distinct product features and benefits revolving around Big Picture, Big Sound.
MUMBAI: Onida, a brand that was once seen in every Indian household, seems to have lost its sheen in today’s competitive market. This was primarily due to the entry of new players. With liberalisation in 1991, Samsung, LG and other multinational consumer goods companies launched in India with much fanfare and Indians were hooked on to them. Soon, Indian homegrown companies started seeing a dip in sales and most of them exited the business sooner or later.
Just when Onida was on the brink of getting hazed out from consumer’s mind, the company decided to relaunch in June 2018. The brand made a comeback with its much loved/hated devil. Though Onida spent a magnanimous budget of Rs 20-30 crore on advertising across television, print, outdoor and digital, it failed to convert those audiences into customers.
Earlier this month, Onida appointed Pratyush Chinmoy as head of marketing with key responsibilities intended towards planning and execution of marketing strategies, brand and category management, marketing communication and working on building a strong brand presence.
Chinmoy has been appointed while the business is trying to rebuild itself after having lost a fair share of customers over the years. In order to tap in new customers and allure them with products and offers, Chinmoy’s immediate focus will be the upcoming festive season, a time when people loosen their purse strings.
In order to start afresh in the eyes of the consumer, Chinmoy has appointed new faces in the marketing department, has new ideas about product lineups and a new media mix to connect with Gen Z.
Before joining Onida, Chinmoy has been a part of bigger brands like Asian Paints and Reliance Industries. While he has experienced being a big fish in a small tank, in his second innings, he is a small fish in a much larger tank. The task to resurrect Onida will be challenging for him as he has to push these products to new consumers.
Speaking about the challenges of scale and capital, he says, “The challenge for me will be to connect with Gen Z who haven’t seen our (Onida’s) previous ads. Another challenge will be to communicate with this generation with the limited budget that we have as we can’t spend on every media out there and only have to do select targeting.”
India has over 330 million middle class consumers who can only afford mid range products and this is the perfect target audience for the brand.
Old ad:
New ad:
All these years, the company resorted to print media for better ROI at low investment. But with the advent of digital and social media, Chinmoy doesn’t want the company to be left out. In its second innings, the company will use a mix of media to segment its reach. While Chinmoy now wants to use digital to target youth, he says that going forward it will be a mix of all media channels so that the exposure is on all income ranges. Traditional media like print, radio and TV will help the brand in reaching a mass audience.
The consumer durables market in India was valued at $14 billion in 2017 whereas the TV industry was valued at $9.2 billion. For the company, TV will be its focus area as the growth trajectory in the TV segment is around 15-18 per cent.
Onida holds a mere 8-9 per cent of the total market share in air conditioner space and the penetration for air conditions in India is as low as 5 per cent which comes majorly from urban areas and metros. The segment contributes to 45 per cent of the company’s turnover, i.e., Rs 370 crore. Mirc Electronics MD Vijay Mansukhani expects it to double this year at Rs 700 crore and reach Rs 1500 crore by 2020
It’s a test for Indian brands to show their worth in this foreign cluttered market. Chinmoy said, “Personally, I believe that it’s a general perception that international companies have better products, which is not true. Indian brands have great R&D spends and they understand the nuances of Indian audiences and their needs. Patanjali crossed Rs 5000 crore mark and soon after, Hindustan Unilever Ltd launched Ayush. However, the good news is that the consumer mind is changing and shifting towards homegrown brands.”
It was only last month when Onida launched India’s first TV certified by Google that competes with international brands including Samsung and TCL in the same category. Onida launched its first Google Android 4K UHD Smart TV exclusively on Flipkart with a starting price of Rs 52,000. This was the first time that the brand launched a product exclusively online and the results, according to the company were overwhelming.
Now with a new face and a new team, it will be interesting to see whether Onida will be able to recreate its old magic.
MUMBAI: Homegrown electronics brand Onida, a part of Mirc Electronics, was one of India’s most recognised and acclaimed brands in the early 90s and 2000s. Its CRT TVs helped popularise the brand along with an unforgettable brand ambassador-a devil, replete with horns and a tail, who was later replaced by a married couple in 2010.
Though its advertising furore died down in the last decade, we are going to see a revival of the iconic devil. As summer rolls in, Onida is gearing up to release a new campaign for its air conditioners, which is timed with the Indian Premier League (IPL), wherein the company is also a presenting sponsor. Rs 20-30 crore has been earmarked for advertising across all formats with Rs 20 crore exclusively to be spent on the IPL with a focus on television.
Mirc Electronics MD Vijay Mansukhani believes that today the IPL is the hot property in India to invest and the money will be well spent. The campaign consists of 10-second and 30-second ads that will run across television and digital between April and May.
The brand has roped in Taproot Dentsu to conceptualise the summer campaign which will be followed by seasonal campaigns around the year. Onida will launch a washing machine campaign during monsoon and for microwave ovens during Diwali.
Since Onida’s devil has been one of the most memorable icons of Indian advertising, Taproot Dentsu Mumbai creative director Neeraj Kanitkar says that they just had to bring him back. The devil has been resurrected in a new avatar as a die-hard fan of Onida inverter ACs. The challenge for Onida will be to engage the generations Y and Z who may wonder ‘what’s the big deal behind a two-horned man’.
Earlier, the advertising budget was restricted to one to two per cent but has been hiked to three to four per cent today. The company is also reorienting its outlook to suit the digital age as Mansukhani believes that it is the way forward and the revenue from this medium is increasing.
Mansukhani is aware that the AC segment today is cluttered with the general perception that foreign brands such as Daikin, Carrier or O General are far superior and better and Onida wants to change that.
Budget constraints and the government’s state taxes and policies had forced Onida to cut back on its advertising and marketing for the past several years. “We had to set up 40 factories and hence the budget cuts. But now with GST, everything has come to a level playing field and Onida has bounced back with profits,” he adds.
Onida holds a mere eight to nine per cent of the total market share in the air conditioner space and the penetration for air conditions in India is as low as five per cent which comes majorly from urban areas and metros. The segment contributes 45 per cent to the company’s annual turnover of Rs 370 crore. Mansukhani expects it to double this year to Rs 700 crore and reach Rs 1500 crore by 2020. Onida will now focus on the rural market and is betting big on IPL to create awareness about the company during the league.
He sniffs at the idea of exclusively partnering with particular e-commerce sites, as is the norm today, stating that people should be given the freedom to buy from where they liked.
Onida is also a major exporter to Gulf countries, which contribute almost 65 per cent to the company’s export revenue while shipments to the fast-growing East African market (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia) and the SAARC countries account for 16 per cent of its export revenue. In addition to Gulf countries, Onida has presence in Russia, Ukraine and the neighbouring CIS countries.
With temperatures expected to soar in the coming days, Onida’s timing to relaunch alongside the IPL is apt. Can the company bring back its lost fortune with the aid of its trusty devil while competing against celebrity-backed rival brands? As they say, ‘the devil lies in the details’!
