Wide Open

Sometimes, all it takes for a winning communications campaign is a clear and lucid brief. Actually, not just ‘sometimes’; it should happen every time, but things have come to pass where both client and agency blame urgency and turnaround for why that rarely happens anymore. A rather lame excuse when so much money, time, energy and potential sales are riding on ad campaigns.

But back in the late eighties, one combination of client and agency at least got it perfectly right. And it all began with a disarmingly simple, yet lucid brief.

Extra Wide

The client was Dunlop, the makers of tyres amongst other things. It all began when the company was about to launch its new range of two-wheeler tyres, developed by its Japanese collaborator – Sumitimo. These tyres were unique in the market for one single reason: They were wider, by up to 10 mm. The widest in the marketplace.

The agency, Trikaya Grey, may have wanted to start with the branding; alas, that was already decided by the previous agency who had come up with ‘Spectra’, which didn’t mean much. Unfortunately the moulds were already made and tyres were being rolled out with Spectra stamped onto them. It was an opportunity lost – the right brand name can tell an entire story. Spectra was cerebral at best, but how many would get that it possibly referred to wide spectrum, if at all?

Trikaya’s hands were tied over the branding (but, as seen later in this case-study, they managed to work around even that!), so they turned their attention towards the main communication. It didn’t seem to help to stay along the broad and well-beaten path of tyre advertising of the day… screeching shiny bikes, smart looking protagonists in race driver gear, snazzy helmets and leather jackets, cued to power-chorded rock music. The imagery was good, even if hackneyed; but it wouldn’t help differentiate Spectra – which really had a differentiator and USP.

The Interpretation of Wide

As mentioned, this differentiator was ‘width’. And that was right there in the client’s crystal-clear brief: ‘Promote it as a wide tyre’. It was, in fact, the widest. So the agency decided to go to the end user themselves and find out what they thought a wide tyre meant. Two-wheeler riders in India’s four biggest cities were asked precisely that.

The response was surprising, and yet not so surprising. The contradictory latter because it was expected – along the lines of ‘better grip’, ‘manoeuverability’, ‘greater safety’, ‘less chances of skidding’, ‘less wear and tear’, ‘better mileage’, etc. And ‘surprising’, because these were all benefits that various other tyre brands routinely advertised… singularly each time – but here they could all be conveyed simply by saying it’s a ‘wide tyre’. On its own, ‘wide tyre’ stood for the sum total that all other brands were falling over themselves to convey separately.

The client was damn right! ‘Wide’ it had to be, and ‘wide’ it was that became Trikaya’s Single Minded Proposition. The positioning in place, it was now down to the creative guys to interpret it and grab the eyeballs. Which they did with a series of commercials that simply hammered away at the ‘wide’ proposition. But without any hard sell; the agency achieved it through sheer creative thought.

Creative Width

Sports was the conduit – an extra wide cricket bat or hockey stick, a far wider gymnastic balancing beam. The word ‘wide’ was the be all and end all. To etch the same in the minds of viewers, the ads ended with a cricket umpire signaling a wide – something that anybody could immediately associate with, even from mere action, without any words.

And yes, Trikaya did work around the branding too. They simply snuck in the suffix ‘wide’ into the advertising, calling it Spectra-Wide. Which made it a unique situation; possibly the only time when the advertised brand name and that on the product differed.

But nobody seemed to mind – not the customer who happily paid a premium for the reassurance of a safer, more stable, incident-free ride. And certainly not the client, who saw sales surge threefold within a year and a quarter, carving out a 17.5% of the market share.

 More than three decades later, the Trikaya Grey team that worked on the campaign have moved on, dispersed, maybe even retired. But ask any of them the secret behind the Spectra-Wide success, and it’s a cinch they’ll say it was the client’s simple, yet categorical brief.