Cannes Contenders: Lowe Asia Pacific
How will Asia Pacific perform at Cannes this year? During the lead up to the Festival Campaign Brief will be showcasing the work we hope will impress the judges ….
Lowe Lintas India
Despite today’s age of modern communication, brands still face a problem in reaching out to the heart of India – the rural population. Currently, about 70% of India’s population resides in rural areas. Hindustan Unilever, has been trying to explore this untapped market further. Most of rural India lives in darkness due to lack of electricity, and hence it is also ‘Media Dark’. This gave birth to the idea of integrating one of the oldest mediums of entertainment, the radio, with the most used device today, the mobile phone. About 80% of people in these rural areas are mobile phone users, providing a much larger scope of reach than traditional mediums.
From this was created the Kan Khajura Station, a ‘free mobile radio’ providing users access to entertainment content worth 15 minutes per week. To access the content the consumer is required to give a “missed call” on a given number. He is then called back with some content, which includes RJ speak, jokes, and Bollywood songs – giving the entertainment hungry audience exactly what they want. Kan Khajura Station has now become the biggest media channel in Bihar, reaching out to more than 24 million consumers, with 70 million ad impressions in the last 6 months.
A Kan Khajura is an insect that enters the ear, and gets lodged there. It is quite common in North India.
Lowe Lintas India
Kissan Ketchup’s challenge was how to convince mothers of its differentiator and claim of ‘made from 100% real tomatoes’. We wanted consumers to believe through their own experience – and the inspiration for the creative idea came from the tomato itself. We created a simple, inexpensive, tomato-shaped bottle cap. While it had a distinctive shelf presence, inside the cap were tomato seeds, and the cap itself could be inverted to serve as a pot to grow the tomatoes.
Mothers were excited, and the engaging family experience of seeding and growing tomatoes in urban homes bought alive the authenticity of ‘made from 100% real tomatoes’. We collected the tomatoes and put them back to the ketchup thus proving to mothers – what you grow is what you eat.
The tomato cap had 6.17 million mothers bringing Kissan home. They allowed their kids to eat more ketchup – 2.5 times more over category and the brand witnessed 14.4% growth vs category at 4.6%. As the ketchup got used, the tomato plants stayed in window sills, parking lots and balconies. We then celebrated our little farmers by putting their faces back on our ketchup bottles – a wow for all our mothers.
Lowe Philippines
Lowe Philippines and Save the Children raised awareness of positive discipline in the Philippines with a campaign that reminds parents to treat children with Softhands. Not just an ordinary advertisement, Softhands is an appeal to parents disguised as a hand lotion. While it looks like an ordinary handcare product, the back label talks about the long-term negative effects of spanking and promotes positive discipline as an alternative.
A booth was set up in the popular Karl Edward Bazaar to launch the product. In exchange for a pledge, everyone took home a bottle of Softhands hand lotion. Hundreds of pledges poured in on the same day. By tagging #Softhands, they also helped spread information on positive discipline and changed the conversation about corporal punishment.
Trees
Lowe Singapore
We wanted to communicate the benefits of CLEAR shampoo to fashionable, image-conscious women. Healthcare advertising is very prolific across the region, and is typically very functional, medical-sounding, and often requires numerous disclaimers. To make our campaign stand out and appeal, we wanted to make it look simple and elegant. The creative idea was the tree – an often beautiful natural object, which grows strong from its roots. CLEAR deeply nourishes your scalp because just like a tree, your hair’s natural strength comes from its foundation.
Versus
Lowe Vietnam
Kids love playing with modern gadgets. Parents do not mind this because it keeps the child busy and distracted. This campaign idea from Lowe and OMO acts as a counterpoint against the modern ways of parenting using devices. It visually illustrates that while indoor games can act as distraction, outdoor games can be fertile grounds for discovery, learning, team work, co-ordination, interaction and friendships.
The illustrations use game iconography from devices such as the iPad and Playstation to articulate how much more games can be. The idea urges parents to reconsider outdoor games by comparing indoor and outdoor forms of play. ‘Dirt is Good’ even in a modern developed world.
