Our endeavor is to deliver our brand promise of establishing a connect with the end consumer that lasts for generations: Nilesh Malani, Polycab India

• In the past few years, manufacturers cables, wire and fast moving electrical goods Polycab India has been investing on marketing strategies that have been making it more visible.
• It recently launched a campaign featuring actor Ayushmann Khurrana and has been investing on IPL too.
• We speak to Nilesh Malani, Chief Marketing Officer, Polycab India, who helps us understand the brand’s marketing strategy, how it has benefitted from its IPL association and what its roadmap ahead is.

Over the last few years, there has been a sea change in the way consumers shop, be it small purchases like groceries or the bigger purchases like cars etc. Consumers have become much more involved, thanks to the easy availability of information. A lot of research goes into making a purchase, making it important for brands even in relatively low-involvement categories to build strong communications to stay top-of-mind for consumers.

In the past few years, we have seen manufacturer and seller of wires, cables and fast moving electrical goods (FMEG) Polycab invest increasingly on marketing. It has been associating with the Indian Premier League to grab eyeballs, and coming up with regular campaigns. Recently, it aired a campaign featuring actor Ayushmann Khurrana.


In a recent conversation with Nilesh Malani, Chief Marketing Officer, Polycab India, we tried to understand the brand’s marketing strategy, how it has benefitted from its IPL association and what its roadmap ahead is.

Excerpts:

Q) We are almost at the end of a particularly challenging year. How did Polycab fare in 2021?
At Polycab we have redefined our marketing approach to make prominent emphasis on enriching the experience of end-user. Thus while the market goes about treating products such as LED or fans as typical commoditized items, we have placed our proposition on the lifestyle elements of aesthetics, design, and style to carve out a distinction. Take for example our Purocoat range of fans which are designed over NANOVA technology loaded with features such as being anti-rust, anti-dust, anti-fade, and anti-bacteria. Likewise, Polycab’s Superia range of fans offers higher air coverage basis max air technology.

For our LED product range too our Smart LED and Emergency bulbs are designed with best-in-class features such as color and temperature-changing capabilities, are remote-controlled, have higher energy-saving capabilities, and are equipped with Bluetooth connectivity.

From an end-user engagement point-of-view, our focus is on stepping up the phygital experiences by way of setting up Polycab Galleria Knowledge Centers as well as shop-in-shop format-based Polycab Arena stores in prominent cities.

Overall, our endeavour and resolve remain to deliver our brand promise of establishing a connect with the end consumer that lasts for generations.

Q) You recently came up with a campaign featuring Ayushmann Khurrana for your complete range of products. Tell us a bit about the campaign and why Khurrana was a good fit?
With the enriching experience of our end-users at the fundamental core of our redefined marketing strategy, our belief was to capture the essence of feeling liberated and joyous as encountered by consumers upon using Polycab range of products such as smart-home automation solutions, green wires, cables, fans and LED lights. Also, we intend to reach out to the younger generation and millennials through this campaign as we believe that these segments have largely been kept out of consideration set till now by the industry and it is high time to revolve specific marketing campaign targeted towards them taking into factor their relevance as one of the largest target groups.

Thus the idea of Dance with Joy came into being with the musical notes and dance grooves aimed towards establishing a closer connect with the target audience. And who else better than India’s youth icon Ayushmann Khurrana to lead this with his huge fan following with youngsters, his joyful outlook, energetic personality, and evergreen young traits as distinct aspects of his identity.

Q) For ads of brands in the low involvement category, a lot of campaigns are usually informational and functional. How were you then able to build a connect with your audiences to make sure you are top-of-mind for them?
Contrary to the general perception of FMEG products belonging to the low involvement category, new-age well-informed consumers are rather known to elaborate in detail before initiating any purchase. Thus the consideration set is not confined merely to usage aspects of the product and now encompasses wider lifestyle elements. At Polycab we have identified this latent need of the consumers and are focusing on engaging with the end-users through a meaningful and relevant content that they can identify themselves with.

Q) How did your IPL association help you grab eyeballs?
Indian Premier League (IPL) indeed serves as an ideal platform for consumer-facing brands to engage with their target groups in an effective as well as a wider scale. Our association with IPL has been encouraging and fruitful. We have leveraged the medium to not only launch short-term advertising campaigns linked to business objectives but have also used the medium to generate brand awareness through creative engagement.

Q) What is your current market share and where do you want to take this number in the next 1-2 years? How are you going about ensuring you meet that target?
As a brand and in alignment with our market leadership with an 18% market share in the wires and cables categories, it is our endeavour to perform similarly in all the lines of business that we operate and have a presence. We intend and strive to be in the leader’s quadrant and be counted among the top performing FMEG players in the country.

With this as our objective, our approach is to leverage both organic and inorganic avenues to achieve this. The expanded line of business is testimony to the organic focus while the recent acquisition of smart home automation specialising firm, Silvan Labs is in line with the inorganic pursuit.

Q) What is your media mix? What kind of investments did you put behind marketing this year? Do you plan to further increase it next year?
Our media mix is balanced and comprises both the conventional media as well as the new-age digital platforms. Thus we have advertisement arrangements across genres aired on multiple channels including social media and influencer-based outreach. Pertaining to social media, we leverage from user-generated content which is observed to be very engaging with high end-user interest.

For retail network, we run specific campaigns that are further propagated through marketing collaterals and in-shop branding.

Effectively the focus remains to convey the elements of joyfulness and happiness of Indian consumers upon using Polycab products.

Q) How will the acquisition of Silvan Innovation Labs lead to more innovation from Polycab’s stable?
Having placed our marketing bet on the premise of enriching experience for end-users, it is required that we package our proposition as more of a lifestyle-enhancing one. And towards this, a natural extension is the integration of intelligent or smart home automation solutions that add up well to the lifestyle play. It also fits well in our existing portfolio consisting of smart fans, smart lighting, IR blaster, smart plugs, smart heater to cite a few. Silvan Labs thereby offered us the opportunity to upgrade our capabilities and reach within the automation market.
With consumer centricity as the focus, the combined strengths of Silvan with Polycab’s robust go-to-market capabilities, provide us with huge business potential.