CASE STUDY: Ponds White Beauty FacewashCampaign: Reveal the best in youClient: Pond’s White Beauty FacewashBackground: The first Pond’s product was created in 1846, since then the brand has flourished as Unilever’s fifth most profitable Personal care property globally. Pond’s Cream was invented in the United States as a medicine by scientist Theron T. Pond in 1846. With a presence in over 56 countries, Pond’s is a name synonymous with skin care for almost a century now. It has passionately led the way in understanding a woman’s skin care and beauty needs. It has cut across age groups and skin care requirements. But the scenario was changing for the ‘whitening’ products. An industry that once was associated with Fair and Lovely and Vicco, now included international heavyweights like Dove, Nivea, L’Oreal, Garnier, Nuetrogena and Emami, with more joining them every year. Ponds was getting lost in the battle. Face wash is a category where constant buzz or chatter value of the brand drives sales and Ponds face wash in the year of 2012 had nothing new to offer.The Challenge: Lost in the deluge of brands and advertising, Ponds found it hard to discover and connect to its target audience. The challenge was to create a buzz amongst the young college going girls for a ponds face wash variant. The traditional media approach was not cutting ice with this TG. The existing TVC communicated the functional proposition of ‘Reveal your natural fair skin’ and hence lacked the youthful effervescence. It realized that there was a need to bring the buzz back to the brand. They turned the brand proposition into a campaign idea, which also captured the talent needed amongst the target group.The Execution: Ponds decided to tie up with the Bollywood movie “Student of the Year” – Karan Johar’s most anticipated launch of the three freshest faces in Indian cinema. These fresh faces became the prospective covert faces of the brand and in turn could lend the talk- ability to the brand.Now, the brand could talk about its new proposition of ‘Reveal the best in you’ through these 3 To-be-superstars. Knowing the TG’s voracious appetite for multi-media, an integrated media strategy was devised . Each medium manifested the message ‘Reveal the best in you’ – and in a manner which would appeal to the TG. The 3 ‘brand-protagonists’ engaged with the brand TG, talked the brand lingo making “Ponds Facewash” the most talked about Facewash brand.

Digital and mobile were core to the engagement design of the campaign. The hook was the opportunity to interact with these fresh faces and hence consumers were offered multiple opportunities under the core theme. An IVRS was promoted as a call for entry by Alia Bhatt herself and live web hangout with the stars further added to the engagement value for perfect social interaction. Thematic Branded content was deployed on MTV as ‘Date of the year’.

TVC- Two co-branded TVC’s were created, one with Call For Entry (CFE) and one without call for entry. Both the TVCs were created with Alia Bhatt depicting how “Ponds White Beauty Facewash” helps her reveal the best in her everyday life whether it is attending a party or prepping for a date. The CFE TVC ends with Alia asking the TG to call and win a chance to go on a date with Varun Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra by answering 3 simple questions.

DTH: Tata Sky was chosen as the DTH partner since its penetration in metros is extremely high compared to Dish TV & Airtel DTH for airing the call for entry co-branded TVC for a period of ten days.Cinema – The co-branded TVC (without the call for entry) was aired across cinema halls in high priority markets to further establish the brand connect.Digital: There was a simultaneous call for entry on the Ponds India Facebook website along with the TV leg. The brand also gave its Facebook fans a chance to interact with the cast via a “live hangout”.Branded content- Two lucky girls won the chance to go on a date with debutants Varun Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra. Alia Bhatt helped the girls get all decked up for the “date”. This aired on MTV as “Date of the year” vignettes for the week after the release of the film.Results: Within 3 weeks, the IVRS garnered response from almost 8.5 lac girls across different markets.The Brand Talkability scores moved from 49 to 55.Brand Awareness scores moved from 93 to 98.There were 6 .5 lac views on Youtube within 2 weeks.Over 31,000 RSVPs for the live webchat /hangout and over 10,000 live questions registered via brand’s

Facebook and Twitter assets.The activity received 1300+ entries