Campaign Summary

UltraTech Cement integrated its brand message in key moments across several platforms to differentiate itself from other cement companies and keep its brand top of mind among homebuilders. The brand leveraged machine learning and AI to disrupt the likes of movie scenes, search inquiries, and chat apps to reinforce its position as the No. 1 cement brand in India.

Strategy

Objective:

Over one and half million homes are built in India every year and 90 percent of them are doing it for the first time. Cement brands have a limited opportunity to turn consumers into customers. The competition often leads brands in the category to make misleading claims, such as being the No. 1 cement brand in their region. Moreover, there is little differentiation across the industry, with most cement bags being sold in similar shapes, sizes, and quantities.

UltraTech Cement is the largest manufacturer of cement in India. The brand owns 74 percent share of voice in the cement category and 17 percent in the building and construction. Being the category leader, UltraTech wanted to encourage people not to compromise on the quality of cement thereby strengthening its position as the country's No.1 cement brand.

Target Audience:

The target audience were men ages 30 and up living in Rural India (tier two and three cities).

Creative Strategy:

Home-building is an emotional journey for every individual home builder. It represents one's identity, pride, and is a badge of competence. One wrong decision can lead to irreversible damage. A long-lasting home needs a long-lasting foundation, and it all starts with the most irreversible element: the cement. Research indicated that home building decisions for the target audience were influenced by the "leaders of the village," or relatives and friends who also looked up to these village leaders. UltraTech's idea wanted to combine the power of village leaders and digital platforms to highlight the brand.

Context:

Home-Building is an emotional journey for every individual home builder, but there are limited resources to help guide them. UltraTech Cement's research indicated that home builders from smaller towns relied on relatives, friends, masons, contractors, the internet, and dealers for guidance, leaving them perplexed instead of giving them a sense of control.

Execution

Overall Campaign Execution:

UltraTech Cement launched an integrated campaign, deploying an alert mechanism, to reaffirm its position as the No.1 brand in the category. The campaign had five phases:

• Spreading heightened awareness
• Establishing strong relatability
• Building lasting impressions
• Turning the impossible into possible
• Influencing the unreachable

Mobile Execution:

To reach the audience in an impactful way, UltraTech launched a film, highlighting the importance of choosing the right cement, across social media and leading video platforms, like YouTube, Hotstar, ZEE5, SonyLIV, MX player, and Facebook. The idea was to alert people during high-stakes moments known as "Mauka Ek'" moments. UltraTech identified "Mauka Ek" moments across different content — including TV show KBC, the World Cup League, and different movies — and disrupted scenes with its brand message to compel homebuilders to choose UltraTech.

The brand also used machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify homebuilding keywords like "cement," "contractor," and "construction" on chat apps and other digital platforms. Every time a user used any of these keywords, a contextual "Mauka Ek" sticker would pop-up in their chat box. These Mauka Ek stickers were reshared, creating a conversation in the homebuilding community. To capitalize on the momentum, UltraTech deployed audio content recognition technology — a mobile audio fingerprinting technology that recognizes content. Every time a user spoke of homebuilding or a competitor brand, UltraTech sent them a notification. To take advantage of the surge in category and brand related queries, UltraTech also partnered with Quora and Google to understand keywords related to homebuilding and incorporate them into the campaign.

To engage homebuilders in areas where internet connection was sporadic, the brand worked with over 50,000 village heads, the most trusted people in rural villages. The brand also worked with Mr. Ravi Kishan, the heart throb of rural India, to amplify the brand message across rural markets via voice platforms.

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

UltraTech's campaign successfully reinforced its position as the No. 1 cement brand. The results included:

• Share of endorsement for UltraTech improved by 62 percent.
• The campaign reached 300 million people.
• Brand recall spiked from 38 percent to 72 percent.
• UltraTech's brand recommendation score reached 38 percent, an all-time high.
• 42 percent of people recognized UltraTech as India's No.1 cement brand.
• 44 percent of homebuilders reported that UltraTech was the most used and most reliable brand.