Appealing to a higher cause

We got free passes through a friend to attend yesterday’s Parikrama and Saif Ali Khan’s concert at Palace Grounds. Once we reached and the opening band got playing, only then did it dawn on us that this wasn’t actually a concert for a concert’s sake. This was a concert for the launch of a car brand. We did see Chevy’s name splashed all over the place. They must be the principal sponsors, I guessed. But soon enough, the host for the evening (with questionable compeering skills) kept raving on about the ‘heart beat, sexy beat and smart beat’ of the Chevy Beat. Not until the show troupe of dancers and jugglers were on stage did it become apparent that the star of the show was not really Parikrama or Saif; but it was the Beat. They had the corporate triangles (meaning the top guys) of Chevrolet come to say ‘a few words’ to a stoned audience.

To say the least, it showcased some poor PR work by the company. One of the triangles went to the extent of saying “Please endorse our product.” You never say please to a potential customer. You’d like them to buy your stuff, but not to the extent where you say ‘please’. Saif’s stage presence was average. But the applause rained for Parikrama from the open skies above them. Good job, fellas!

Advertisements today need to appeal to a higher cause of the buyer. At least if not directly, every customer on a sub-conscious level needs to feel like he is associated with a brand that has a cause beyond selling products and straightening its bottom line. Vulgar marketing of this age will mean telling the world what your product is through a celeb and jingle and blatantly asking for the crowds to endorse it. Like what Chevy did at the concert. The smart advertiser of today is the one who can take a product and sell it to the world by embedding it as part of a bigger cause.

Let me quote two instances here.

Funnily, both of these examples come from the telecom world. Idea Cellular’s ad sells the idea of conserving forests and reducing the use of paper by using more phones instead. Similarly, Aircel’s ad features Baichung Bhutia saying that he’s now a part of the Tiger Conservation project in India. In both these cases, the celebrities employed to endorse the brand end up speaking about the larger community issue of forest conservation and tiger conservation respectively; and the brand name slipstreams into the ad towards the end as a matter-of-fact. To an average customer like me, who is fairly concerned about both the social problems, I now perceive that my involvement with the brand could potentially help solve the larger issue. Again at a subconscious level, I’m now buying a role in saving a tiger’s life and not just buying a sim card.

This approach has a better chance to pay off for companies adopting them rather than the direct approach of tell-and-sell, for at a logical level it’s a win-win situation: higher profits, more awareness and marketing mileage for the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) matters.