Advertising on hoardings is an age-old advertising strategy and many brands adopt it to create brand awareness and also brand value amongst their regular customers and others as well. However, until now, very few Indian lingerie brands have taken this route; recently though, Sonari ventured into this less explored territory by home-grown labels and decided to have hoardings all across the city. Mr Dipesh Kubadia, Director, Shalibhadra Creations Pvt. Ltd., tells us more about the initiative.
“The reason to have is that the space for hoardings has gone up now and hoardings will be visible to people travelling by road and Mumbai’s burgeoning population as well,” begins Mr Kubadia. “Today people don’t have time to read newspapers, magazines, etc., and are busy on the mobile; they work through the mobile. So, when they go for an outing, they can spot these hoardings that are at strategic places,” he explains further.
Speaking about brand awareness and recall Mr Kubadia states, “We’ve picked a good size and hence there is a brand recall as well. Besides, there’s brand awareness too; those who are not aware about Sonari, will become are of the brand due to the hoardings. So, it’s mainly for brand awareness and brand recall.”
The brand’s hoardings are all across Mumbai…from South Mumbai, to Central, Western, and also New Mumbai. Mr Kubadia though states that Sonari is not the first brand to have hoardings. “We are not the first brand to do this as brands such as Jockey, Amante, Triumph, have done this before but they are all international brands and we are the first Indian lingerie brand to go for hoardings.”
The reason for this he cites is that Indian brands do not have that mentality to go all out and do not spend so much. “However, personally, I felt that if we do something like this, we also would stand up in front of international brands. If these brands keep coming to the fore and are constantly in the public eye due to their advertising, then we will almost cease to exist. And slowly, our Indian brands may also become obsolete,” he adds.
Speaking about the response he mentions, “We’ve only just begun; the hoardings are only a few days old and we’ve planned to have them up in a week’s time at the 25 locations we’ve selected. We’ve got a nice response… dealers, local distributors, friends, industry people have appreciated this initiative and said that we’ve gone one step ahead. We will be extending this to the metros and also Tier II cities in the near future.”
As to how he arrived at the decision to put up hoardings, Mr Kubadia explains that it was a joint family decision. “We all decided that though this was a little expensive, we have to try this out. This initiative will 100 per cent increase the visibility of the brand and those who are not aware of the brand or have seen it somewhere, will have a strong recall value and it will stay in the minds,” he concludes.
