Instead the new communications strategy -- the television ads will debut in the first week of June -- being implemented now seeks to address women directly with messages that appeal to their sensibilities and their concerns. So the decibel levels have been dropped, the cluttering of information on the product abandoned and there is an air of quiet subtlety about the new messages.
LG Electronics India is also extending the `health' positioning adopted for almost all product categories to its communication for washing machines. After all, clothes function as a second skin and they too need delicate handling, the company reasons. The new advertising and communication messages for the washing machines, has been developed around thefollowing underlying principles:
LG Electronics had already established its technological edge in the market across all product categories.The process of reworking the messages started last year, during a brainstorming session between the LG Electronics' senior marketing executives and ad agency Ammiratis Puris Lintas to conceptualise strategies for 1999. It was an established fact that all washing machines -- irrespective of whether it is a lassi-churner model or a hi-tech one fully loaded with computerised features -- clean clothes. So, the cleaning ability of its machines as its USP, doesn't make sense to LG.
Even as the search for a new USP was on, especially since a new range of models were on the anvil, the company wanted to create a sub-brand that would effectively communicate the product attributes. Thus, the `Fabricare' system wasfinalised as the sub-brand to communicate the ``caring'' attribute of the product, which when extended further meant ``longer life for clothes''.
Also, Fabricare sounds like skincare, and thus evokes similar feelings from customers, explains Lintas creative director Benny Thomas. Therefore, the logo -- comprising a soft pink bud-too has been designed to inspire a very soft image.
The new campaigns, both print and film, emphasise the fact the people are generally fond of their clothes and thus plays on the consumer's emotions such as love and affection. The new print ads, which have started appearing in the Mumbai press, reiterate the point that the new washing machines knocks out dirt but preserves life.
The new film, scheduled to be on air in the first week of June, focuses on the soft, gentle wash the clothes receive in LG washing machines. Unlike the earlier ads, featuring a busy working couple who are stretched for time, the new film does not use people to convey the message. Result: the ad isneither chatty nor preachy. To reinforce the point of that the machine preserves life, the opening frame of the new ad shows a delicate, yet-to-bloom, lotus bud getting knocked around in any other washing machine, forcing the petals to open and the bud to wither prematurely.
Slowly, the focus shifts to the cleaning process in the new LG machine-how the machine handles the clothes delicately because its has a unique process where the powerful currents of water are pushed through the clothes by a combination of punch delivered by the large pulsator at the centre and three smaller ones around it. A rotating outer drum makes the water whirl. ``These combined processes ensure the clothes don't tangle and stretch or rub against each other -- the primary factors responsible for fabric damage,'' says LG Electronics India vice president-sales and marketing Rajeev Karwal.
End result: the lotus bud emerges unscathed after the wash with its pristine beauty intact.
Why did LG choose a lotus for its leit-motif?Well, the company was definitely not trying to be politically correct! ``The lotus symbolises purity even though it grows only in the swampy area'', Lintas director accounts Santosh Sood reasons. The customer would agree. Wouldn't she?
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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