Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Emvies 2012: Clarity does not mean 'picture minus disturbance'
The first challenge for Maxus was to bring in a change in the consumers' attitude. Based on behavioural psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of Cognitive Dissonance (which talks about attitude change), Maxus designed a strategy to bring about an attitude change towards picture clarity.
In November 2011, to capitalise on the growing high definition market in India, Tata Sky launched a campaign for its high definition or HD set-top box. As it happens with any upcoming technology, there were plenty of jargons for high definition floating in the market.
Therefore, there was a clear need to explain the concept of HD as simply as possible.
The first challenge for Maxus was to bring in a change in the consumers' attitude. Based on behavioural psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of Cognitive Dissonance (which talks about attitude change), Maxus designed a strategy to bring about an attitude change towards picture clarity.
It launched a new innovation based on the insight, 'You don't realise what you are missing until you see it'. Tata Sky used fresh commercials to show the audience what they're missing in SD, so that it could bring about a resonance between the perception and the fact of picture clarity.
TV was an obvious choice as it not only gave Tata Sky the 'reach' but also had the highest 'cut-through' amongst all media. For the record, cut-through is vital for the brand as it translates to sales for Tata Sky and since Tata Sky is in the business of selling experiences on TV, it also became a relevant platform.
In order to create resonance, Maxus had to choose content that audiences would be deeply engaged with; and so it chose movies as they have high repeat value.
People tend to watch movies time and again as they want to relive some memories from their favourite movies. And therefore, in one of the commercials, the death scene from the original Agneepath was taken up. Through the clip, the minute detail differentiations were elaborately shown during the given commercial.
Similar commercials were created where consumers saw what they were missing on their SD feed 36 times in 16 blockbuster movies in live programming.
Result? According to Maxus' Brand Track Score study, 'product relevancy' increased by 11 per cent, while 'intent-to-buy' increased by 9 per cent. And finally, Tata Sky managed to sell 72,000 HD boxes after the campaign.