AO Smith's topically contextual messaging

I had a sore throat almost all of last week and early this week. Drinking warm/hot water is obviously beneficial while having a sore throat, but laziness usually takes over :) To heat water every time (that too very easily, in the oven or the induction stove) still seems like a chore. All you want is to fill a glass of water and just drink. 

So, this ad by AO Smith in today's Times of India rang a bell immediately!

To be sure, AO Smith is not the only brand of water purifier in India that has a hot-and-cold water dispenser. LG, Bluestar, Livpure and Aquaguard have it too. But, from what I see, AO Smith is the first one to connect the benefits of drinking hot/warm water during a pandemic that mainly affects the respiratory system. And the communication connects it to AYUSH Ministry's recommendation too, is a smart move, for added credibility.

At first glance, one may wonder 'Water? And immunity?'. But within the context of respiratory health, the benefits of warm/hot water are very well known, at least in India where such natural remedies have been passed on from generations.

Timely, contextual and topical marketing communication from AO Smith!

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And now, a round-up of my posts from this week, for your weekend reading:

1. Given the easing of lockdowns around the world, there is an increase in campaigns to get people back to their high-consuming selves. But this get-back-to-consumption is also being positioned as 'help the entrepreneur', to give it an emotional context. Two recent campaigns, one by Axis Bank in India and another from Belgium, pitch this emotional angle in highly creative ways. More on the 2 campaigns.

2. Indian soap brands have completely stopped positioning their products for hand wash. 'Handwash' now means liquid soap in India. In fact, Lifebuoy has even denigrated the use of bar soaps for hand wash with their famous, 'Bunty, tera sabun slow hai kya' line :) Given this backdrop, Santoor soap has rekindled the use of their bar soap for hand wash, in context of the pandemic, even as they have a complete range of liquid hand wash! It almost feels like the team that manages liquid hand wash doesn't see eye-to-eye with the team that manages the bar soaps! More on Santoor's new campaign that also took a dig at newspapers possibly spreading the virus.

3. The Swedish insurance company Hedvig has released a new campaign. The crux of the campaign is, "It's just stuff", to reduce our attachment with material possessions that can be replaced. I pondered quite a bit on the crux because I was conflicted between two contradictory feelings - during and after a pandemic that shows us how fleeting our lives are, do we get more attached to our limited material possessions (that is, we start to value them more) or do we get less attached (that is, when life itself is fleeting, what's the big deal about material possessions)? More on the campaign.

4. Why do dentists who sell us toothpaste meant for sensitive teeth always practice in the UK? And why do those dentists always are of Indian-origin or have obviously Indian sounding names? Turns out that I'm not the only one curious about this, given that Sensodyne has used this tactic very successfully over many years and drilling our heads with imagery of Indian doctors from UK on TV ads. So, I dug deeper and found out why. I also found that another product category has now taken on this template as-is really well. Find out more about this mystery!

5. Most people associate 'personal branding' with 'boasting'. Or talking about self. So drinking your own kool-aid is the thought that comes to most people when the topic of personal brand is brought up. This is entirely understandable because they are looking at personal branding from a pre-internet period. With social media, I can assure you that personal branding *need not be* about boasting at all. That's just a failure of imagination. In fact, I'd argue that personal branding can be an entirely purposeful win-win activity for both parties - the person indulging in it and that person's readers online. Here's how!