New Delhi: Though the Copenhagen summit last month may have failed to persuade world leaders to come up with a global treaty to tackle climate change, but it seems to have inspired Indian advertisers and marketers to join the green brandwagon.
Idea Cellular’s latest campaign, ‘What an Idea Sirji—Use mobile, Save Paper’, is designed around fighting deforestation, while Nokia’s ‘Planet Ke Rakhwale’ communication propagates proper recycling of used mobile handsets.
IT companies like Cisco and IBM have already been harping on their respective positions of ‘sustainable planet’ and ‘smarter planet’ for some time now. This reflects the increasing awareness of the perils of global warming — one of the two biggest issues the world is facing along with terrorism, in the words of US president Barack Obama, and one of the most ‘searched’ terms in Google last year.
Market watchers say it is a larger global trend that is mirrored in India.
Rajan Chibba, CEO of advisory firm Intrim Business Associates, thinks it marks the start of a trend. “Green is the next big story in the corporate world and more such campaigns would not surprise many,” he says. He believes that marketers will soon realise that there are environment friendly ways to boost business and make profits. “Companies are at least beginning to talk green. Action shall follow speech.”
Idea Cellular, which launched the ‘save paper’ campaign earlier this month, will run it for another three months, according to its chief marketing officer Pradeep Srivastav.
“We keep coming up with innovative campaigns time and again and this is our latest attempt. The campaign is a simple idea that we have extended. Mobile does save paper and we have tried to convey it,” he says.
Nokia India has also come out with a TV advertisement this month for its mobile recycling campaign.
“Fundamentally we have a responsibility to be mindful of the environment in the way that we work; this is very much within our heritage as a Finnish company and our values as an organization. We also see business benefits in being environmentally responsible,” says Viral Oza, head of activation, media and online sales & marketing at Nokia India.
The company installed recycling bins at all Nokia Priority Dealers and Nokia Care Centers for consumers to drop their old handsets, batteries and chargers a year ago. The first phase of this campaign was carried out as a pilot in Delhi, Gurgaon, Ludhiana and Bangalore, with the company collecting more than three tonnes of waste in 45 days. This drive now covers 28 cities across the country.
Cisco, which highlighted carbon emission in its campaign for Telepresence video conferencing service, claims the strategy has paid off.
“The adoption rate of Telepresence by Indian corporates is high as they understand how it helps them save costs and earn carbon credits too,” says Amit Sinha Roy, VP, marketing, at Cisco India. “Planet sustainability is the underlying theme of all our Telepresence campaigns. It is part of our larger communication strategy and we hope to take this position for the long term.”
However, not everybody is convinced. Some like Santosh Desai, MD and CEO of Future Brands see the recent green campaigns as a cosmetic exercise. “I don’t think that enough serious effort is going at taking society the green way. While it is a good corporate position to take, there is a very small set of consumers who make purchase decisions based on what’s ‘green’,” he says.
“There are other marketers like ITC, which are probably doing a lot in the direction and yet not advertising it. Going green requires serious business reconfiguration, re-engineering revenue models and merely advertising does not suffice,” he adds.
Well, it’s too early to say if the trend will catch on and nobody expects marketers and advertisers to help save the planet, but definitely there is more money on marketing and advertising eco-friendly and energy-efficient products.
Source: ET
No comments:
Post a Comment