Kinley: A swig of the trust factor

For packaged drinking water brands, advertising propositions have primarily been about two elements – purity and trust. Kinley, the bottled water offering from Coca-Cola, is looking at strengthening and taking a step further on its 'trust' quotient, with its new tagline, Vishwaas Karo. A new television commercial is all set to punctuate this firmly persuasive tone of voice.

The creative emotion

The fifth sequence has an old man making an attempt to make it to the finish line even after the stipulated time of the race – he celebrates his victory with a sip of Kinley.

"The commercial talks about Kinley as a brand, playing a role in literally urging or instating trust in individuals. Take the instance of the wife getting jealous – the trust on her spouse gets her to contain herself. Kinley was shown as part of the motion that she was going through," he explains.

Avinash Pant, director, still beverages, Coca-Cola India, is of the opinion that brand Kinley stays at the core of trust. This time around, it is about engaging and making the brand a part of larger conversations.

Montages have been used to portray the emotional aspects of how people relate with the brand at a larger 'life' level.

The film has a strong music score composed by Amar Mangrulkar of the Airtel ads fame. Even the previous commercial for the brand had a luring emotional score – it was put in place by Dhruv and Ashu of Bluefrog, and was sung by Shubha Gurtu, renowned Indian classical singer.

The members from the creative team at Ogilvy who have worked on the brand include Mayur Hola and Preeti Kaul. The film has been shot in Mumbai and Pune.

The opinion montage

When contacted by afaqs!, the ad drew mixed opinions from the ad fraternity.

"Yet another montage let loose on the unsuspecting public just because it has been decided to represent the cross-sections and the length-breadths," he shrugs. However, the original Boond Boond Main Vishwaas had a hook that stays with oneself, and could have been exploited a tad more, he suggests.

Naresh Gupta, executive vice-president, strategic planning, Publicis India, asserts that purity one can trust is the basic insight on which the brand Kinley has been built. However, "in the sequence where the husband meets his old flame, and the wife opens the bottle of water - somehow it drowned under the overarching trust theme," he opines.

Anirban Sen, executive creative director, TBWA Delhi, considers that the best thing about the film is that the stories have water as an integral element. "The stories nicely use the texture of our culture and the emotional layering makes the film poignant, touching and viewable. The army jawan sequence is outstanding. It's different and the contrast of offering water in a war torn area is the ultimate demonstration of trust." As a creative product, he gives a thumbs-up to the commercial.

Purity and trust is hygiene: what more?

Packaged drinking water, as a product, has purity at the basic core. Trust being an extension of purity, is not virgin territory left to explore for the category. So what, apart from purity and trust, can packaged drinking water possibly tom-tom about?

Singh of Euro RSCG contemplates that the portion of the populace that carries bottled water has already been converted. "I'd suspect the marketers are now looking at expanding the consumer base. That could be a reason why purity and please-believe-me are still the routes adopted."

Bottled water is a simple category where every brand wants to scream 'pure'. Gupta of Publicis analyses that the category, being a low involvement one, needs to find ways to engage the consumer in an interesting way. "It should be a high leverage game for them, for which they should be able to push limits and boundaries."

"With Bisleri owning trust because of heritage and longevity, brands do need to go beyond. I did hear my teenage daughter saying 'it's only water' to the communication. It is a bit of a tear jerker; it could have been really memorable if the fun quotient was pushed higher," he adds.

Others like Sen of TBWA feel that the moment a brand starts talking that language, it becomes a blind spot for the audience. It may also rake up suspicion - after all, every brand is 'supposed' to be pure and trustworthy by default.

Furthermore, when it comes to insights, the relevance of water in our lives is infinite and vast, providing the marketer with enough opportunities to make the brand relevant to the consumer.

A dip into history reveals that Coca-Cola launched Kinley in the Indian market in 2000, and at the time, McCann Erickson was entrusted with the creative duties. In about late 2002 – early 2003, the business shifted to Ogilvy and has been with the agency ever since.

When it was launched, Kinley was marketed with the tagline, 100 per cent Trust. In 2002, McCann initiated Boond Boond Main Vishwaas and released the first commercial for the brand. Subsequently, the brand was dormant in terms of advertising on television for quite some time. The next commercial (created by Ogilvy) broke on television in 2008.

One of the most successful leaps taken by Kinley was in terms of relooking at its packaging – it changed the look and style of the brand last year. It got itself a transparent pack with a translucent see-through label – in line with the brand's symbolisation of purity and trust.