Bajaj Electricals celebrates 75 years with new campaign

Conceptualised by Onads Communication, the campaign shows the growth of the product portfolio through slice of life stories

Sohini Sen | Mumbai | September 5, 2013

Click on the image to watch the TVC.

It is one thing to make a campaign to launch a new product and quite a different task to follow up an iconic one to show the growth of a brand. Bajaj Electrical's new campaign has set out to do just that – to celebrate 75 years of its existence.

Beena Leji Koshy

"We gave a simple minded brief to the agency. We knew that a 75th year milestone doesn't come easily in the industry. At the same time we wanted to put a fresh perspective to the brand. As such, we did not want to be known as a '75-year-old' brand, but a 75-year 'new' company'. With the milestone, we have been able to increase the trust factor and attain loyal followers. We wanted to use that experience and trust to reach out to the younger generation," said Beena Koshy, VP- Advertising and Brand Development at Bajaj Electricals.

The new campaign, designed by Onads Communication, is a collection of short stories from everyday life involving Bajaj Electrical products. It opens with a baby being startled by the sound of the pressure cooker whistle, followed by more visuals such as a girl getting dressed for work in clothes ironed by a Bajaj steam iron. A kitchen seems incomplete without the induction cooker or the toaster. Similarly, the bathroom has the water heater, the living room has the ceiling fan – all everyday products made by Bajaj Electricals.

The two TVCs end with visuals from the iconic Bajaj bulb commercial, showing an old man sneaking for a midnight snack from the fridge.

"The heritage of Bajaj is tied up with the history of the country. Our objective was not just to announce and celebrate the 75th year of the company but also to bring out the scale of the brand. The campaign had to be youthful and peppy so that the younger generation would be able to relate to it and be interested in it. The campaign story was weaved around the little known fact that Bajaj Electricals makes 1,400 products. So we decided to tell short, charming quirky 2-3 second stories around some of them," said Jignesh Maniar, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Onads Communication.

The background music is a trendy jingle consisting of names of the products. Incidentally, this is the first time a brand has used a jingle made out of only product names. The song is composed by Sneha Khanvalkar (of MTV Soundtripping & Gangs of Wasseypur fame). The TVC ends with visuals of several products and projects which use Bajaj products such as the Wankhede Stadium and Bandra-Worli Sea Link in Mumbai, Terminal 3 in Delhi and the Vidyasagar Setu in Kolkata. The voiceover declares: '75 years and 1,400 products. Bajaj Electricals. Shine On.'

While the old Bajaj campaign is etched in everyone's memory, would this new campaign be able to drive home the point? Koshy said, “I don't think remaking an old classic would make sense. People know Bajaj by the old 'Jabh mein chota ladka tha' campaign. They relate to and remember it. But be it movies or anything else, iconic things shouldn't be tampered with, which is why we wanted to show something new.”

“The old Bajaj Electricals ad still brings in a lot of nostalgia. The initial idea was not to include the visuals from the old campaign. But we figured that it would be an apt way to showcase the journey of the company – from just a bulb maker (the original ad was a campaign for Bajaj bulbs) to a company boasting of 1,400 products portfolio,” pointed out Maniar.

The TVCs:

https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/

Credits:

Agency: Onads Communication

Founder and Chief Creative Officer: Jignesh Maniar

Creative Director: Milind Palav

Creative Group Head: Shruti Nayak

Production House: Early Man Films

Sohini.Sen@BestMediaInfo.com

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