Selling nostalgia: New-age ads? Yawn. Brands are going retro

Large consumer brands such as Maybelline, Mountain Dew, Asian Paints, Pepsi and Onida are hitting the rewind button when it comes to advertising. Brands are replaying some of their iconic taglines, jingles and resurrecting logos of yesteryear as competition intensifies across mainstream brands amid rapid emergence of direct-to-consumer firms and increasing market share of regional players.

Maybelline Cosmetics has decided to revive its jingle ‘Maybe It’s Maybelline’ through a campaign with superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana Khan announcing the comeback of the tagline which was all the rage in the 1990s. “We believe this jingle will inspire renewed confidence in our consumers,” said Jessica Rode, general manager, Maybelline New York India.

According to a Nykaa Beauty Trends report released last month along with consulting firm Redseer, “a vast group of homegrown beauty brands has emerged across price points and categories, also fuelled by VC (venture capital) funding, yet only a few brands have managed to truly stand out and scale”.

Besides intense competition, shorter attention span of consumers in the era of Instagram is fuelling the trend, according to industry executives.

“In the digital era specially, everyone is looking like everyone else. Hence the need to bring back what clicked originally, be it colours, logos, identities, jingles,” said Harish Bijoor, founder of Harish Bijoor Consults. “The jury is still out, though, if the retros will work in terms of bringing in sustained sales.”

Mountain Dew, PepsiCo’s lime-lemon drink, is reviving its ‘mountain’ logo on cans and bottles after a gap of two decades across markets “to bring back consumers”. The logo was dropped in 2009, when the brand was revamped.Similarly, Asian Paints said last week that it is reviving its ‘Har ghar kuch kehta hai’ campaign, which was first released in 2002, written by ad agency Ogilvy India’s then chief Piyush Pandey, complete with the veteran ad man’s original voiceover. Pandey is now in an advisory role at the agency. The paints brand, has over the years, been endorsed by cricketer Virat Kohli, actress Deepika Padukone and film maker Karan Johar.Better numbers likely in Q2
For the April-June quarter, Asian Paints, which dominates the paints market in India with more than 50% share, reported 25% year-on-year decline in net profit, which it attributed to “a challenging demand environment, impacted by the severe heatwave and general elections”. The company’s domestic decorative business volume went up 7% during the quarter, while revenue declined 3%.

ICICI Securities said in a report on October 8 that paint companies are likely to report mid-high single digit volume growth year-on-year for the second quarter of this financial year, with demand revival in the subsequent festive quarter.

Brands across consumer segments are dipping into their archives to reinvigorate brand loyalty. This summer saw PepsiCo resurrect its 1990s ‘Yeh dil maange more’ campaign featuring actor Ranveer Singh, amid renewed competition in the cola category and a third player, Reliance’s Campa, gradually expanding its presence across categories. The campaign was first created by Anuja Chauhan, then executive creative director at ad agency JWT (which was later renamed Wunderman Thompson), and featured cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and actor Shah Rukh Khan.

“Bringing in a string of actors to endorse any brand without a big idea just doesn’t work. The brand gets simply lost in the crowd. Hence, moves like these,” said a beverage industry executive.

The summer also saw appliances maker Onida, now a marginal player, bringing back its ‘Onida Devil’ campaign for air-conditioners, though without the ‘neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride’ tagline which it had first created in 1984.

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