We are synonymous with clarity in glass: AR Unnikrishnan, Saint-Gobain

French multi-national Saint-Gobain’s recent campaign highlights the measure for purity in a glass. Their latest campaigns include #PuritykaPerfectMeasure and #DekhoMagarSideSe to drive the conversations on digital media.

We spoke to AR Unnikrishnan, Director, Sales and Marketing, Saint-Gobain India Private Ltd. - Glass Business, about 654 PPM - the new standard in clarity and purity, the challenges in communicating the purity aspect and more.

Edited excerpts:

What is the primary objective of your new campaign? 
Saint-Gobain started in India in 2000, and our first campaign in 2001 spoke about establishing Saint-Gobain as a brand in the clear glass category. We created a differentiation for Saint-Gobain and established the clarity of the product. Since then, we’ve had other campaigns which were product specific - for mirrors, solar control glasses etc. 

For our latest campaign, we are again focusing on clear glass. We are synonymous with clarity in glass, and our latest campaign - ‘Subway Baby’ - goes beyond clarity and brings in purity as a new dimension and establishes that glass can also be measured for purity, just like other precious metals. The lesser the iron content, the clearer and purer will be the glass, and we have the lowest amount of iron content in glass. We have brought down the PPM (parts per million) of iron content to just 654 compared to the present offerings within the industry, that are at 1000+ PPM of iron content. Simply put, 654 highlights the perfect measure for purity in a glass. All this is very technical, and we needed a commercial which conveys this in an interesting fashion within a very short period of time, without getting into explaining all the technicalities. 

We have also created #PuritykaPerfectMeasure and #DekhoMagarSideSe to drive the conversations on digital media. Whenever you see glass with a greenish tinge, it indicates a high iron content. If you look at the glass from the top, it is very difficult to make out the difference, so if you really want to see the difference, you have to see this from the edge. That’s why we are telling customers, #DekhoMagarSideSe. 

What is your media mix like? 
The TVC is just one part of it and we are supporting that with a 360-degree campaign. We are doing a lot on the digital and social media front. There is a lot of action happening at the point of sales (PoS) on the ground at our dealer outlets, close to 2,000 outlets across India, and with our influencers. In terms of spends, roughly around 70 per cent is spent on television, around 20 per cent on digital and the rest 10 per cent is on BTL activities.

On the ground, we are educating our dealers about purity and what 654 stands for so that they are able to convey this message to their customers. Explaining the technical aspect about PPM is complicated, so we have created tools such as shade cards, demo kits and comparison kits, which help the dealer easily explain to his customers and clearly demonstrate the difference between a Saint-Gobain and other products.

What was the brief you gave to the creative agency? 
As I mentioned, our first campaign established clarity as the medium, and once you have established that, the brief was, how do you build on that? The first campaign had a novelty effect at that point in time, but you can’t repeat yourself. You need to do something very different while building on clarity, which was the challenge on the brief. Emotional connect is very important in this category, as is humour, and the commercial has to have a likeability factor. Our latest campaign starts off with a mystery, like in a horror film, and ends with you having a smile on your face when you see the glass panel at the very end. In fact, our TVC is for 40 seconds, and the average time that people have spent is 38 seconds, which means almost everybody has seen the full ad.

You operate in a low involvement category, so what is the challenge in marketing and remaining foremost in the consumer’s mind? 
Yes, it’s not a daily purchase category, but it’s an important category. You buy glass for your house, which is a one-time big investment that’s close to your heart and very emotional. Also, over the last 20 years, the amount of glass that is used in buildings and homes has gone up. For eg., gone are the days where you had a wooden dining table, now it is a glass dining table. Similarly, glass is used in furniture, partitions, showering enclosures, etc., so there is a lot of glass getting used in the house. So even though it may not be a high involvement product, when you buy glass you should have a reason to choose a particular brand. We are attempting to connect with the consumer, fabricator, carpenter, and interior designer, giving them a reason to choose our brand and products. We have been successful in influencing a large number of people, and people do ask for the brand when they go to buy.

How do you engage with the influencers? 
In addition to clear glass, we manufacture a host of other products that are used in the interior and exterior applications for windows, and our influencers – carpenters and installers – need to be educated about the products, their applications, and the new trends. We conduct educational sessions for them. We provide our influencers with simple tools and catalogues to educate, suggest and convince their customers. For example, they could suggest to a customer to use a solar control glass instead of a clear glass.

What is the brand philosophy for Saint-Gobain in India? 
Saint-Gobain is a 354-year-old company that is 100 per cent French. The image and brand association with Saint-Gobain is multinational, truly world class, trustworthy and sophisticated. We are sticking our necks out and saying we will give you 654, as we can deliver on our promise. It’s all about building on that trust.

What’s interesting is that Saint-Gobain doesn’t advertise in other markets. Why did the company choose to not follow the path tested in the other markets and advertise in India? 
That’s the beauty of Saint-Gobain. We don’t follow one kind of approach and understand that each market is different. France is very different from India, in terms of the size of the population, the sophistication, the education, and the aspirations and likes and dislikes are very different. 
In a developed market like Europe, we never had to advertise because we are several steps away from the consumer, and you sell your product to an intermediary, which could be a channel, and then it finally reaches the end consumer. 

In India, it was very different. Saint-Gobain was a brand that was completely unknown 20 years back, and the challenge was how to make people aware of the brand Saint-Gobain within a short period of time and also ensure that they are able to recall the brand. The easiest way was to take the TVC route, because in a short period of time you can get the reach and impact. In India, our business is much closer to the end consumer, and our mission in India has been that we should bring out more products with more functionalities like soundproofing, preventing fire from propagating, etc., and electrochromic glasses where the amount of tinting can be controlled. We have a wide and sophisticated range of products and want to bring in multiple other products. Therefore, it was necessary for us to be connected to the end consumer, and important that people recollect the brand.

What are the challenges that the company faces? 
There are many challenges, because India is not a very easy country to operate from multiple points of view. It’s a large country with varying tastes and difficulties. Logistics can be a nightmare, as reaching every part of the country can be a challenge. As a market leader and as a company that believes in India, we are constantly investing in the country. We have a pan India presence, and can’t omit any district. The third challenge is: it’s also an industry where your cost increases can be quite substantial from time to time, especially when oil prices go up, but the ability to pass on the cost inflation to the consumer is limited. Therefore, there are times where your margins are really squeezed. Another challenge is at the commodity end. The Indian government has imposed an anti-dumping duty on China, who in turn has invested in South-East Asian countries with whom India has a free-trade agreement, and from where these goods are being imported.

What can we expect from Saint-Gobain looking ahead? 
More new products, as we have made a big investment in a huge R&D facility in India at the IIT Madras Research Park. We have over 100 researchers who work on all our products and are looking for solutions for the hot and humid climate.