UltraTech Cement: How UltraTech Leveraged Multiple Mobile Channels to Establish Itself as a Home Building Companion

 

Campaign Summary

In India, UltraTech created a mobile-based website addressing all end-to-end home building queries, thus establishing UltraTech Cement as a go-to destination for information on home building.

Strategy

Objective:

UltraTech Cement is the largest manufacturer of cement in India. It owns 57 percent share of voice in the cement category and 11 percent in building and construction. The entire cement category's narrative has always been focused on the functional aspect of cement i.e., strength. Top players are looking for unique ways of saying the same thing and focusing on different aspects like longevity, durability, and exaggerated claims of strength. The cement industry has historically been a low involvement category, and the consumer relationship with the category was purely transactional.

Ninety percent of people building a home in India are doing it for the first time. Also, this is their only chance to build what they aspire. Most individual home builders rely on their contractors or relatives for information while starting on their home building journey. Lack of complete knowledge and no reliable source of information leads to a huge gap between their dreams and reality. This is where UltraTech Cement saw an opportunity to connect with home builders and establish itself as an "expert home-building companion" brand.

The crux of the campaign was to communicate with the brand's audience on different challenges one faces while building a home. The focus was to create a one-stop solution addressing all end-to-end home building queries, thus establishing UltraTech Cement as a go-to destination for home building related information. All of it was created under one banner called "Baat Ghar Ki," the Wikipedia of home building. This was an industry-first initiative to educate audiences on different stages of home building.

Target Audience:

The primary audience was IHBs (Individual Home Builders), males between the ages of 30-50 living in Tier 2-3 cities and rural areas in India. They contribute to 75 percent of the business.

Empirical data suggests that only three out of 10 people in UltraTech's focused markets had access to the internet. However, data also suggested that the mobile penetration stood at 90 percent (2.5 times higher as compared to TV) in focused markets. Considering the diverse landscape, UltraTech had to focus on audiences wired for the internet at the same time as its audience that resided in media-dark areas.

Creative Strategy:

Research indicated that home builders from smaller towns UltraTech largely depended on multiple sources like family, relatives, friends, masons, contractors, and dealers, leaving them perplexed instead of giving them a sense of control. On the other hand, home builders with internet connection were constantly searching for home building solutions but hardly came across any relevant content that was easy to comprehend and engaging. Hence, UltraTech first started with identifying the challenges faced by its target audience. It segregated the most common home building queries searched online into seven stages of home building: planning, choosing land, budgeting, selecting team, selecting material, supervising work, and moving in.

These stages were further backed by 77 pocket-size infotainment videos in the top seven Indian languages that explained solutions to deal with the most common challenges like how to choose a land, how to select material, and more.

Considering the low literacy rate in rural areas and the high penetration of mobile, voice became the brand's preferred medium. UltraTech built familiarity by replacing a standard robotic voice with popular regional celebrities. Relatability was addressed by delivering content in layman's language.

The brand's website was revamped to a knowledge center that classified the seven stages of home-building: planning, choosing land, budgeting, selecting team, selecting material, supervising work, and moving in. These seven stages were then replicated to different platforms driving traffic to the plethora of content exclusive to the seven stages of home-building. This became the foundation of the campaign, and UltraTech built the campaign one piece at a time.

Context:

Home building is an emotional journey for every individual home builder. It is one's identity, pride and badge of competence. But lack of complete knowledge and no reliable source of information leads to a huge gap between the way people want to build the house and what they know about building the house. This is where UltraTech saw the potential to make a difference. With an objective to enhance the brand perception as an "expert home building companion," the Baat Ghar Ki campaign was launched. The campaign was phased into different stages, starting from understanding the problems faced by the target audience to connecting with the audience beyond internet connectivity.

On the shoulders of technology, UltraTech built a 360-degree integrated solution catering to different consumer queries on home building. With this campaign, UltraTech not only reached out to countless home builders, but also established the brand UltraTech as the "Wikipedia of the home-building journey."

Execution

Overall Campaign Execution:

UltraTech launched an integrated mobile campaign to position UltraTech Cement as an "expert home building companion." UltraTech decided to educate the audience to make the right choice towards every stage of home building in a relatable way. The approach was:

  1. Understanding the pain: To know the challenges faced by the target audience, UltraTech consolidated all search queries.
  2. Create an educative platform: On the basis of the queries, UltraTech phased the process of home building into seven stages. A detailed solution to all queries was hosted on the website in the form of 77 bite-sized videos in seven different languages.
  3. Drive awareness and engagement: Once the content was created, it was time to make the world notice. Several leading video platforms were leveraged to amplify the reach and build awareness of the content. To make the content discoverable, UltraTech partnered with Jio (a leading telecom operator in India) and hosted the entire repository of content on the My Jio app, one of the most popular apps among the target audience. UltraTech further explored high-intent platforms like Quora and Search to drive meaningful conversations with its audience.
  4. Build advocacy: The brand partnered with leading media influencers to drive advocacy through an episodic Ultratech B series and bite-sized educational content. This content was promoted on leading over-the-top (OTT)/video platforms.
  5. Innovation in crisis: The campaign was gaining momentum until the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country. Everything came to a standstill, as did the Shivir activations. But UltraTech's zeal to partner with home builders continued, unfazed and uninterrupted. The brand decided to replicate the Baat Ghar Ki Shivir to an interactive virtual program. UltraTech created an extensive virtual studio, mirroring a state-of-the-art demonstration that offered round-the-clock access.
  6. Connect beyond connectivity: It was a challenge to reach the bulk of the audience living in many media-dark areas with low internet and low TV penetration. Hence, UltraTech leveraged outbound dialers through 30-second informative content in the voices of famous regional celebrities.

Mobile Execution:

Mobile was the backbone of this campaign. The whole campaign was deployed on the shoulders of technology through an informative mobile-based UltraTech website and replicating the information on various mobile-friendly platforms. UltraTech left no stone unturned to reach its audience on the most preferred device, mobile. Due to the pandemic, the on-ground 'Baat Ghar Ki' activation was replicated on an interactive online platform. To reach the media-dark areas UltraTech further leveraged all three Vs: vernacular, voice and video. Home builders were engaged with 30-second voice capsules in several leading vernacular languages.

Business Impact (including context, evaluation, and market impact)

At a time when all players in the category were talking about strength and durability, there was a huge lack of detailed knowledge on homebuilding.

Results:

  • The campaign reached 150 million people.
  • It garnered more than 200 million video views across all Baat Ghar Ki content.
  • It received more than 450 million audio impressions in rural India.
  • The campaign received more than 500,000 missed calls from individual home builders to share their stories within a span of one month.
  • The brand saw a 200 percent increase in brand searches in the span of one year.

The return on investment included:

  • Sixty percent of consumers successfully associated UltraTech Cement as an "expert home-building companion."
  • A 15 percent lift in brand recommendation score surpassing all past benchmarks.
  • An 89 percent lift in brand message recall.

The results proved that the combination of content, platforms, and targeting successfully outperformed the industry benchmark, establishing UltraTech as a home-building companion in such a low involvement category. However, more than numbers, UltraTech was happy to see that ambitions came alive as more and more homes were built with less waste of time, money, and efforts.


Categories: | Industries: | Objectives: Cross Mobile Integration | Awards: X Silver Winner