Limca: Slaking a bigger thirst

The new ad for cloudy lemon brand Limca aims to position the drink not

only as a quencher of physical thirst, but also as one for emotional thirst

‘Har pyaas bujhaaye.' One look at this tagline, and it's obvious that Limca is onto something. Something big. And quite different from the pure functionality typified in its old line, ‘Gala gayaa sookh, Limca ke liye ruk.' For the idea embedded in ‘har pyaas bujhaaye' lends itself to a bigger canvas, and is open to as many interpretations of thirst as possible. The idea is un-limiting, so to say.

Take the latest theme commercial for the brand - the first since O&M won the account early this year. The ad is about this football coach who is ‘inspiring' his team in the locker room during the lemon break, even as the rival team and the referee wait on the field for the match to resume.

With a piece of chalk, the coach passionately charts moves and passes on a blackboard, "Rivaldo to Vivaldo…Vivaldo to Avaldo… Avaldo to…?" One of the huddled footballers eagerly raises his hand. The coach points to him, ‘marks' him on the blackboard, and with a deft flick of the wrist, draws a line into the goalmouth. "It's a goal!" The assembled footballers cheer deliriously.

On the field, the rival team and the referee confer impatiently, as time goes by. In the locker rooms, however, our coach unmindfully continues drawing flanking strategies on the blackboard. "Donaldo to Ronaldo… Ronaldo to…?" Again his footballers volunteer to score the goal. The coach points to one of them and draws the chalk from one goalmouth to the other, "It's a goal!" The footballers throw themselves upon one another in joy.

All this ‘goal scoring' has the coach and his team thoroughly pooped out. As they huff and puff tiredly by the blackboard, a voice from the heavens asks, "Kyon bhai, bahut pyaas lagi hai?" Bottles of Limca plonk out of the skies, and the coach and footballers gratefully guzzle down the liquid. Just then, the refreshed coach looks at the blackboard - which shows a score of 0:20 - takes a duster and quietly erases the zero on the number 20.

"Every soft drink is about quenching thirst," says Virat Mehta, vice-president, client services, O&M. "But Limca is the only one most clearly positioned as a thirst quencher. The colas are about youthful images and attitudes, Fanta is about fun and pranks, and Sprite challenges the notion of image as projected by colas. Limca is the only drink that really talks about thirst."

Which is why O&M has not deviated from the core brand promise. But it has certainly tried to add a spin to the proposition. "Our objective is to retain Limca's position of a thirst quencher by sticking to the core value," says Mehta. "But by saying ‘har pyaas bujhaaye', we are looking to enhance the brand's positioning as something that quenches all kinds of thirst - not just physical thirst."

One reason for the change in Limca's positioning is that the agency felt that it needed to do something about how Limca was being showcased. Says Pankaj Gupta, management supervisor, O&M, "The brand audits that we conducted among Limca loyalists showed that although there was immense loyalty, the communication for the brand had been inconsistent. Luckily, the communication had somehow managed retaining the core promise. So we decided to add value and show Limca in a slightly different light from the past."

The interesting thing is that Limca has sustained itself on its basic promise for more than 25 years now. The brand still commands the largest market share among non-cola soft drinks in India - it has over 11 per cent market share in the estimated 6,500-million-bottles-per-annum market. And in the cloudy lemon segment (where it competes with Mirinda Lemon), it has close to 75-per cent market dominance.

If physical thirst can get the brand so far, emotional thirst can take it to a higher plane, perhaps. "Ultimately, we would like the suggestion of a lofty desire to be equated with Limca," says Mehta.

Agency : O&M, Delhi

The Team : The O&M Team

Filmmaker : Prasoon Pandey

Production House : Highlight

Model : Boman Irani

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