DELIVERING GOLD FOR WGC

Manish Porwal & Usha Sikdar

When the World Gold Council (WGC) came to Starcom, they already had good-looking commercials done by creative stalwarts O&M that were doing a fantastic job of promoting gold as a lifestyle enhancer.

When we came on board as their media agency, we went to our drawing boards and tried to understand consumer insights, the competitive set and the real challenges of a marketplace.

Consumer insights showed us:

Over 85% of gold sales in India are triggered by festivals and weddings.

Women buy gold for its aesthetics whereas men buy it as just another form of investment. To trigger gold sales women are far more important, especially traditional women.

These so-called 'traditional' women are passionate about serials onTV. They watch the maximum TV. Not just that, they even discuss and write to production houses and channels on what they feel and how the storyline is going. Many of these soap-opera queens often dictate fashion trends and thereby guide audience behaviour and motivation.

Even though there is a general aversion and cynicism around advertising, they related well to social messages and causes promoted by these characters (eg. Be strong like Tulsi and Jassi; compassionate like Kumkum; don't be bitchy like Pallavi etc) in their screen role and believed in them.

We then acted upon these findings by creating 'quasi-TVCs' which are nothing but commercials that have a specific purpose, are short and snappy and are low-cost.

These quasi-TVCs were created by our own in-house media magnification agency - ACE. Starcom then ran these quasi-TVCs just before festivals such as Dhanteras, Diwali, Akshaya Trithiya, Rakshabandhan etc to remind the consumer to buy gold on those events.

We also used the afternoon slots to air these quasi-TVCs, realising only too well (thanks to the consumer insights) that our target audience would be watching religiously.

We also tapped into prime-time serials and used soap queens like Smriti Irani from 'Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi', Nikki Aneja and Varun Bandola from 'Astithva', protagonists from the serial "Yeh Meri Life Hai' to star in these quasi-TVCs.

These characters are unlike larger-than-life film filmi characters so half our work was already done because our target audience identifies with and worships these characters.

Finally, we amplified the effect by creating a buzz around these quasi-TVCs to arouse curiosity.

The results showed, and how. Gold sales went up anywhere between 30% and 100% on those specific days and these numbers were ratified by jewellers across the country.