Scotch-Brite as a brand has been helping the Indian home-maker with products that are not just extremely functional but also of superior quality. The company behind it, 3M, has applied its proprietary technology to the entire range of Scotch-Brite products spanning utensil care, floor care, surface care & others. This, coupled with their deep understanding of the Indian home-maker and her needs across the cleaning spectrum, has been the driving factor for the brand being a preferred name for households across the length & breadth of the country.
Reflecting the brand’s omnipresence in the Indian household — from the kitchen to dining to the living room and every other corner of the home – is the brand’s retail presence, ranging from kirana stores to modern trade. Scotch-Brite the brand is indeed making its presence felt across modern trade in a big way. The same streak of innovation that 3M employs to the product offerings is now being employed to deliver clutter-breaking and eye riveting displays in modern trade. These innovative displays and activations are more than just a brand building exercise; it’s a category development initiative in itself, according to the company.
Says Sanjit Satapathy – GM, Home Cared Division 3M India, “The first step is accepting the fact that Modern Trade is a high-clutter environment and it’s always an uphill task to get the consumers’ attention when every square foot around you is screaming to hold his attention. From floor stickers, to shelf talkers, to wobblers, standees, FSU, dispensers, packs, promos, offers – the competition is dense and intense. Even if you manage to catch the consumer’s eye, holding it is impossible. In such a scenario how do you make the consumer remember your brand above everyone else even after she has left the store? And that’s when we realized that while the floors and the walls are over utilised, the solution was literally above us – the aerial space towering above the imposing rows of shelves became the centre of our attention and our innovation. This germ of an idea was precisely what a low involvement and hard working category like cleaning tools needed. This combined with a new product launch was the magic ingredient that we gave the agency with the specific task of not just informing the consumer but holding their attention like no other brand is doing in the current space.”
To achieve this task, a decision to extend the ATL awareness & familiarity into the retail space was taken. The scrub pad holder, a new revolutionary product that enhances the life of the scrub pad by storing it away from the dishwash bar, was used as the lead product for this exercise. A larger than life, clutter breaking display was employed to engage the consumer leading to interactions with the entire Scotch-Brite range.
With the aerial space as the canvas and the product integration as the task, the TAP was chosen as the winning concept for the large scale display. The TAP was an extremely appropriate visual key since it facilitated the falling effect that connected the aerial space with the product in a running water like manner, according to the company.
The size of the unit was 4ft in length and 2 ft in height and it was made in the brand colours. The container to collect the metaphorical falling water which in this case was the Scotch-Brite products was plastered with brand & product centric messaging along with details about the product.
For materials used in the display, the brand looked at options such as inflatable, FRP etc, but there were certain factors that needed to be considered before finalizing on the material. First, it had to be light and withstand the time frame of 20 -25 days. Secondly, post 20 days the unit had to be easy to dispose; and finally, the cost factor. Based on all these factors the team focused on a simple yet efficient material i.e., thermocol. The unit was designed by special thermocol artists and there was a lot of manual intervention and creativity involved in designing the same. Moreover, this material solved all the problem of weight, usability, portability, installation issues and yet delivered the value.
This TAP display was fabricated and installed at Big Bazaar, Reliance Mart, Star Bazaar, and Walmart Easy Day. In all, there were more than 50 such displays installed covering the entire geography of the country without restricting it only to metros. For example, cities such as Zirakhpur, Siliguri, and Mangalore were also covered apart from the metro towns.
The design, fabrication and installation of the structure was handled by BrandVak Incorporation, a Bangalore based company offering shopper marketing solutions. And the installation in this case was obviously a Herculean task. To begin with, it was critical to manage logistics and effective implementation at the store given the easy tendency of thermocol to break. Further, the installation of the tap at the correct height was a challenge because every store is different in terms of construction and bin size. Maintaining the center of gravity of the unit was also very important to maintain the perfect balance.
Well quite obviously, these challenges were successfully overcome and the efforts have borne fruit. Says Satapathy, talking about the impact of the display, “The display has been highly appreciated by the customers and the retail chains. This strengthens our positioning as a leader in the cleaning tool category who has the knowledge and the expertise to create a differentiation in the category. The quality commitment in our products is also depicted in our execution and modern trade activations, right from promotions and demonstrations to displays and customer engagement. We will always try to bring something different and valuable to the customers which will forever engage, educate and entice the Indian customers.”
