Creative agencies in Kerala hope to make a comeback this Onam

With the people of Kerala gearing up for Onam festivities, marketing agencies are leaving no stone unturned to ensure maximum gains. Several national brands are using this opportunity to strengthen the emotional connect with consumers, and minimise the losses due to rain and floods.

We spoke to agency heads to unravel their strategies, and peep into their hopes and challenges for this year’s Onam.

According to Raju Menon, Managing Director, Maitri Advertising Works Pvt Ltd, Onam is a challenging time because everyone's vying for the consumer's attention and breaking through the advertising clutter during the season is a huge task.

“Onam's the busiest time of the year for us. Everyone's celebrating, everyone's out shopping - it's up to us to help them decide where to spend their hard-earned bonuses.”

However, Menon said the real challenge has been to convince local clients. “Most of them had big losses last year and were facing real cash crunch. When the state started witnessing heavy rain, the clients panicked as their goods were stuck on highways of Maharashtra and Goa. So, the biggest challenge was to convince them for making a creative ad.”

“Thankfully, we have bold clients who champion strong creative ideas, so we always manage to pull off some of our best work during the Onam season. There's a lot of pressure on the agency, but there's also a lot of excitement. The entire office works on a sort of adrenalin rush leading up to Onam. That's why we've made it an agency policy to give the entire office a holiday for Onam, allowing everyone to recuperate and return fresh.”

According to Vimal Raj, Client Leader, Motivator, the biggest challenge for agencies is to create brand love by connecting the festival and their consumers.

“Many national brands starts focusing on local festivals to create a connect with the consumer. The strategy is to consolidate the market by creating top of mind awareness,” said Raj.

Shelton Pinheiro, Executive Creative Director, Stark Communications, says: “With the implementation of GST followed by demonetisation and the floods, the 2018 Onam was truly a difficult one for trade, consumers and brands. Onam is the peak ‘sales’ period for most businesses in Kerala, and the same applies for some of our clients, including leading media brands. When we started the work for ‘Onam’ campaigns during the late summer of this year, we were still looking at the trailing effects of GST, demonetisation and forecast reports that pointed to a tough monsoon.”

Speaking on the Onam campaigns, Pinheiro said, “The key insight was the general feeling among Keralites that the worst was behind them. It was time to tell brands and businesses that Onam will be back with a bang and signalled that it was time for national brands to be showcased across Kerala. Taking off on this, we created ‘The Magic of 93%’ and ‘The Maha’ campaign for our media brands.”

“Both campaigns had elements of fun, celebration, humour and positivity. These campaigns were targeted at brand managers and planners across the country through Print, Digital, DMs and activations. In fact, both these media houses are seeing a year-on-year increase in their ad sales for Onam season.”

Speaking on innovative Onam campaigns, Menon said: “We've already rolled out our Onam campaigns for most of our clients well in advance. One of our most exciting pieces this year is an interactive print innovation we pulled off for the Mathrubhumi Group, where media planners across the country got to write their brand's name on a print ad and saw it appear in the illustrations and ads on subsequent pages. We coupled it with a microsite, direct mailers and a contest and the results have been fantastic.”

“Another interesting innovation was for Brahmins - an interactive Onam sadya game where players had to figure out the missing dishes and serve them in the right place. It was a perfect blend of Brahmins' traditional values interacting with the online space where consumers spend most of their time. The game has seen massive participation already, with Brahmins gift vouchers and a smartphone up for grabs,” he added.

Elaborating further on how Maitri helped the client to address a strategic issue, Menon said, “We've also helped our clients at KLF, the coconut oil brand, address a strategic market problem - coconut oil prices dropping during the Onam season. We introduced a contest where customers were challenged to find impurities in KLF coconut oil. We established public confidence in the product and helped boost sales.”

Most agencies said this year’s Onam season started on a promising note.

“We were again hit by floods this year, affecting the northern part of the state mostly. However, the manufacturing and media industry has slowly attained normalcy in terms of revenue growth. Our comparison is based on the 2017 figures, as last year was a total washout. With increased efforts the industry should be able to achieve more than what we did in 2017,” hopes Menon.

As per Vimal Raj, they are expecting a 30-40% growth compared to the last season.

This year, Onam spirits were on a high by the end of May. A bout of rains did dampen it a bit, yet the mood across the state has been bullish. Showrooms decked up with lights, products tagged with discount offers and six mega movies, including those with Kerala’s favourite superstars, have been lined up for Onam releases. GECs too are announcing blockbuster movies on Onam days. Travel agencies too have been offering innovative tour packages and the government is all set with several cultural events across the state.

“A good sale this season is more crucial than ever for the businesses in the state. With multitude offers, promotional activities and special fairs, the business community in Kerala pins high hopes on this season. Several of the big brands have already announced prizes worth several lakhs, new cars to be given away, gold prizes, exchange offers and attractive EMI offers to woo customers. Leading white goods brands would be expecting businesses to the tune of at least Rs 250 crore. The trade fairs sponsored by the government are also attracting huge crowds. Keralites seem to be determined to celebrate this Onam as a ‘comeback’ festival for Kerala,” said Roy V Mathew, Managing Director, Stark Communications .

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