Boxful of opportunities

Snapdeal's new campaign moves the category narrative to the user and her desire to upgrade

When is it time for a brand to go for a makeover? Do you proceed only when there is a mismatch between what your brands and products claim to do and what consumers actually experience? Should you try a makeover when your business is poised to launch a product or enter a new market or industry different from the one it served before? Or should you take the leap when your brand simply needs to catch up with competition and customers and the changes in the industry?

Not a very easy question to answer, but experts aver if you decide it's time for change, make sure you follow an all-or-nothing approach.

Snapdeal, one of the top three players in the Indian e-commerce market, has decided to go for a rebranding and is doing so with a huge bang. It has embraced a new identity and logo and has supported it with a multimedia advertising campaign.

Building on its earlier brand promise of "Dil ki deal", Snapdeal is now urging consumers to "Unbox Zindagi". The key promise: each purchase on Snapdeal is not just a simple act of transaction, but an opportunity to upgrade to a better life.

For online commerce, the first 50 million consumers came largely from the metros - youth looking for deals and convenience, says Kanika Kalra, VP marketing, Snapdeal. These customers were relatively homogeneous, their needs were simple to identify and straightforward to fulfill. The first needs that marketplaces met were the surface needs. Now, says Kalra, "the next 100 million users will neither be that homogeneous nor will the needs be so uniform or explicit". So the need to go beyond plain vanilla functional advertising.

With the new positioning and identity, the e-commerce player hopes to be able to offer a platform that helps users unlock aspirations. "This is why we are moving the narrative to the user and to her desire to upgrade to a better life," explains Kalra.

The new campaign has been conceptualised and executed by McCann. The new logo, with two arrows forming a box, conveys Snapdeal's aim to be a partner and enabler, and indicates progress, says the company. Now on, the company's delivery boxes will be in a unique shade of red, Vermello, capturing "new India's unconstrained aspirations and dreams and their fulfillment a recurring moment of celebration".

Prasoon Joshi, chairman, Asia Pacific, and chief executive and chief creative officer India, McCann Worldgroup, says, "When a 'boxed' existence is opened up, it unleashes great human potential. It urges one to go ahead and free a world full of dreams and hopes." The brand, adds Kalra, believes that the best is yet to happen, the extraordinary is yet to come and history is waiting to be written by the new generation of Indians. The new brand identity will be visible at each touch point with the customer.

At a time when rivals Amazon and Flipkart are focusing on highlighting their product assortment and hassle-free delivery capabilities, why is Snapdeal making an emotion-laden, aspiration-driven pitch? Kalra says the delivery of functional benefits such as speed, convenience and value are hygiene in the category now and a higher aim for the brands would be to create a bridge between aspiration and access. That's precisely why the new idea, "Unbox Zindagi", is a good fit.