Puf: the Tale of a Cool Superhero

Way back in 1985, Al Reis and Jack Trout likened marketing to warfare. Their handy marketing manual intelligently defined strategies, plans and campaigns; talking about attack, defense and even guerrilla tactics. It was all about marketing, but the bottom line remained the same: Take no prisoners!

Around that same time, an interesting marketing battle started to unfold in the Indian refrigerator market. This was before the invasion of the foreign giants. Kelvinator may have had American origins, but it was by then almost considered an iconic local brand. Its ‘Coolest One’ campaign had sufficiently endeared itself to the upwardly mobile Indian of the eighties. Then there was the homegrown legend, Godrej. Other brands existed too, but clearly, the refrigerator race in the eighties was between Kelvinator and Godrej.

The Not-So-Cool War

It was pretty much neck-to-neck, when Godrej got hit by a compressor issue. Kelvinator smelt blood and went straight for the jugular, hammering home its single-minded message – that it had a sturdy, trouble-free and power-saving compressor you could depend upon. Godrej engineers scrambled to set right its compressor debacle, but by the time they succeeded, the marketing guys at Kelvinator had successfully imprinted into the consumer’s psyche that a good refrigerator was nothing but a good compressor.

Godrej sales bled. It was no more a two-horse race; rather one strong stallion cantering to victory, leaving its crippled competitor far, far behind. Panic stations got hit… Godrej internally brainstormed with everyone who mattered – primarily the engineers and the marketing crew. Ideas got thrown up – and rejected with as much alacrity. The eternal discordant views between technical and marketing staff led to an impasse.

The backroom engineers felt the fight-back should be driven by technology. The consumer-facing marketers stubbornly dug their heels into their domain of consumer perception. The decision makers were at their wit’s end. They knew, as things stood, snazzy new design features would not overcome the technical setback perception that the brand had suffered. Godrej’s old fall-back positioning of ‘Trust’ naturally didn’t hold water any more. There was no real new technology to trumpet about, either.

The Big Idea

The multi-department brainstorming team literally took the refrigerator apart to look for something they could hook a new communication promise on. From the deepest core of the machine they worked their way outward. At what was possibly the final layer, they chanced upon the big idea.

Up until then, to keep the cooling inside the box, refrigerator makers used a material called glasswool as insulation between the door and the main body. It was old and dated technology. Godrej engineers suggested that this could be replaced by a recently-introduced refrigerator material called polyutherane foam. A far more effective insulating agent, it ensured better insulation and temperature control, which resulted in quicker cooling and less compressor stress; which in turn translated into lower power consumption. As a bonus, it sealed the door with the box so effectively, it was the perfect deterrent to insects.

That was it! They had their USP – or at least the perceived equivalent. The trick now lay in putting a marketing spin to it. To be sure, polyurethane insulation was already being used by other brands, though not yet Kelvinator. But the game-changer lay in saying it first.

Superhero PUF

And so, the agency was called in; HTA in this case. As is their wont, the advertising guys put the perfect consumer spin on it. Polyurethane Foam would have been quite the mouthful, and too technical, to market. So, they just acronymised it and gave it a personality. PUF was this amazing new refrigerator feature that sealed in the coolness and protected your refrigerator and hence was a kind of shield for the family. PUF was given form and feature – a superhero makeover… complete with a shimmering costume, cape and mask to go.

PUF was an absolute masterstroke – both, by way of marketing, and on the sales floor. Conventional consumer research had somewhat erroneously constructed the refrigerator buying process. It built up the husband as the technically-knowledgeable decision maker, with the wife barely an influencer, more interested in the refrigerator optics.

The ground reality was different. Yes, the husband often made the final buying decision, but he did not do so with any level of technical savvy. In fact, the average husband was perhaps as clueless as his wife when it came to technical matters such as what a compressor really did and how a refrigerator worked. At the appliance store he would mask his inadequacy by pretending to appreciate the marketing pitch of the salesman who, in most cases, was himself only parroting a prepared spiel.

Communication Masterstroke

That’s what made PUF, or at least its communication avatar, a winner. It was no more technical but something that both husband and wife could identify with – and instantly appreciate how it translated into cost savings by way of lower electricity bills. Godrej’s PUF relegated Kelvinator’s compressor to distant second place. In fact, the perception was complete as the consumer was re-schooled with new knowledge that a better insulation (PUF) ensured a trouble-free compressor. The tables had turned completely!

The year Godrej broke its PUF advertising campaign, its sales surged nearly 40%; clawing back most of the ground it had lost to Kelvinator, thanks to the compressor fiasco. The following year, fate came around a full circle when Kelvinator suffered crippling labour issues, allowing Godrej to further ambush them and regain the top spot.

This case study only goes to prove that perception is everything. All things remaining equal, as would be the case with almost any two on-par brands squaring off with to each other, it’s the communication spin that can often win the day. Albeit, it isn’t always sitting up there to be taken. Perhaps perfectly summed up by the philosophical quote attributed to Michelangelo: “The idea is there locked inside. All you have to do is remove the excess stone”.