Anchor, household name in switches capitalized on its brand and expanded its offering to offices, hospitals, hospitality and even retail over the last five years. Though there has been a slowdown in terms of construction in the office space area, its believed to be only a temporary phase and expected to gain momentum soon. Recapping the journey of the company, Dinesh Aggarwal, Director Sales & Marketing, Anchor Electricals Pvt. Ltd. says, “When Panasonic acquired Anchor in 2007, the first couple of years just went into re-setting the company. It was a family-owned company for more than 40 odd years. Systems were not in place; manufacturing was not well organized; quality processes not in place, etc. Yet, they added to the existing products of Anchor and at the same time, infused few of the Panasonic products.”
Aggarwal has no worries on the expansion front and is already excited about including automation solutions in his product basket. We have energy management products at present. What well get into is energy generation products and energy conservation products. One of the ideas for energy generation is solar energy. We are consciously building on a portfolio of energy-saving products, he smiles.
The biggest challenge for any manufacturer today is consistency and sustenance of the growth of the company. And Aggarwal doesn’t see a lot of impediments except for the foreign policies for some of his new products. One of the assumptions that we’ve taken, especially for our new businesses is the government support in policies, whether its solar, LED or even automation. A lot of our projections today are based on certain draft policies, which the government has made today, he says.
One of the most interesting differences between the Indian economy and developed ones is their market segments. The opportunity to develop different products for different economic strata is what gives us an edge over the competitors, says Aggarwal. Success in this was witnessed with the launch of Viola, a premium range of modular switches a year ago. Automation products seem to be the next natural extension and are likely to have an equally fast adoption from to the consumers.

The teaser campaigns involved lifelike 3D cut outs of men hanging off billboards and drew people in, keeping them guessing about the brand. The three phased campaign, conceptualized and executed by Outdoor Advertising Professionals (OAP), started off with the first teaser launched on June 11, which ran for five days; the next teaser ran for six days, followed by the reveal, which will go on for 15-20 days. It announced a change in logo and also a development in the company.

In 2007, Panasonic's parent group, Japan's Matsushita Electric Works, had bought 80 per cent stake in Mumbai based Anchor Electricals for about US$420 million, while Anchor's board members continued to hold the remaining 20 per cent. In September 2009, the company bought the remaining 20 per cent stake, thus making Anchor a 100 per cent subsidiary of Panasonic. Following this development, the company felt that a corporate image revamp was needed.

"The client brief to the agency was to communicate in the most effective way that the logo of Anchor is changing. The aim is to show the birth of a new identity for Anchor through gradual change of the old logo and emergence of the new one."

In the first round of teasers, the billboard showed old signs of Anchor being brought down; here, the Anchor emblem/symbol was highlighted. This was done because in the past, Anchor had changed the font quite a few times but the emblem remained untouched and the trade recognized Anchor with this emblem.

The billboards were also made to look as if the logo, now removed, left in its place a white watermark, while the rest of the hoarding looked a little yellowish, depicting that the logo had been removed after a long time. Lifelike installers were seen handling the removal of the signs. The only copy read, 'Change is inevitable'. i

n the second round of the teaser, bamboo scaffolding was used, giving the impression of an installation team working on putting up the new logo units, while the third round revealed the new logo and message 'Anchor by Panasonic'.
 

"The challenge here was to bring about the 'real looking' action that could have been done with either live people or mannequins and fabricating those massive signs – but that would have been much more expensive and a logistical nightmare as well. Rather, we chose to give the life-like and 3D effect on the print itself

Technically, creating the creative were a tough task because each site had to be treated differently, depending on size, position, light and sun path. The agency worked to create 45 3D artworks for the first two rounds, which took about 15 days.

The campaign has been launched across 37 cities covering all the metros and mini metros. Different media formats apart from billboards, such as gantries, bus shelters, kiosks, railway station signage’s, airport displays, railway station branding and King Long Bus branding have been used to generate a multiplier effect and top of mind recall.

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