During Trikaya Grey’s heydays their print ads used to be page-licking good. One such set of ads was for Carysil, a brand of kitchen sinks. This one says: ‘Sure, its a sink. And a Ferrari is just a car’. There were two other ads with beautiful shots of the sink.
Ad 2 said: ‘Webster’s dictionary defines the sink as a stationary basin attached to a drain. Should we sue them for slander?‘ and the the third ad said: ‘Imagine Yves Saint Laurent doing the dishes. Now imagine the kind of sink he would use’. Awesome. Copy: Khalid Chaudhari. Art: Vikas Gaitonde.
The brand was a big flop. The reason: the advertising got the consumers drooling and rushing to the shop only to find it displayed as just another bath accessory. Remember, this is the early 90s and specilaist bath accessory outlets were not present. The store ambience did not live up to the magic created in the ads.
Made me think of the wasteful expenditure in good advertising when the back end is poor. How many times have seen brands or services flop because of this? I have sent text messages to 58888 and the likes after seeing a print ad – only to get a message ‘This service is temporarily unavailable’. Bet I didn’t go back to send the SMS again. Poorly trained staff too could be a liability or irritant factor in high end categories, service brands. Fashion brands that claim the epitome in styling with untrained staff at the store, present a huge mismatch – the brand is not speaking in one voice. When the brand walks the talk in terms of actual experience it results in customer delight. Remember the pleasant surprise when the Kingfisher staff come and pick up your luggage from the car at the airport? Any examples of great expectations raised in advertising, marred by poor brand experience?
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Talking of poor brand experiences – plus size brand outlets like All (Pantaloons) and Mustard come to my mind. You walk in to the store feeling relieved that there are some good souls who care to think of the Plus size population like me. Once in, you look at the clothes on display, feeling great that every one of them will have your size.Wow! You thank God and gleefully ask for a size 3 or 4. And most often they look at you sheepishly and say that they dont have that size in stock. But yeah, they do have a size O on the rack!!.They invariably forget to stock plus sizes in a Plus Size store.Talk of Brand promise!! If you were a Size O then why in the world would you walk in to that store in the first place!
True. Quite like the much-hyped movie promos of late. The trailers and the sponsored shows make them appear so exciting but the actual movie would be a huge disappointment.