The process of setting up a new home is exciting at the beginning but also tiring. Having shifted 5 houses in the last 10 odd years thanks to lease agreements and setting up a new house from scratch, I can vouch for it. Colouring, moving in, setting things up – exciting but tiring. The same holds for buying furniture or getting furniture done.
Exciting because, there is change. You are going to make your home beautiful. There is also the aspect of learning – reviewing and looking at new things especially material and designs.
Then, there are a whole lot of things that makes the process tiring. If you are buying an off the shelf product, choosing an appropriate design keeping in mind the dimensions and budget, checking multiple shops, figuring out what to do with your old furniture, checking the delivery schedule, the list goes on… If you are getting furniture made, zeroing on the carpenter, checking with references on the quality of his work, finalising design and budget, finalising material etc., are just the beginning of the process. After which are the few days or weeks of agony when the work is getting done at your home. Noise, smell, stowing away stuff and cleaning after the days work are very painful as well.
In this light, the new Pepperfry ads piqued me on first watch. I thought the situations were set up very nicely so I set out looking for them online. Here are 3 of them…
Then, when I looped through them a few times, I was rather disappointed.
The first question is, are the setup situations legitimate insights? Talk to any person getting furniture done, you will get them rattling off these commonplace issues. There are some more… running around, delays, finish not as desired etc., But to give Pepperfry and the ad agency credit, they are the first to exploit these will known customer beliefs leaving them unusable by any competitor, or player in the larger category.
The other reason why I will give some credit to Pepperfry is that, they seem to have expanded their competitive set. Rather than targeting those who are likely to buy ready made furniture, they are talking to those who are getting furniture done at home which is a much bigger market. And this is also the place where I think they faltered big time.
In the second part of the ad, where they need to talk about ‘why Pepperfry’, there is absolutely nothing to take the setup forward. ‘Stop suffering’, ‘don’t compromise’ and ‘leave the hard work to us’ are the most generic differentiators they could choose from. These statements can be stated by any furniture seller – offline or online. And when anyone can say these, the one who says this the loudest or the most, typically wins. And that’s where, I think, this ad fails.
‘The largest range’ is something that can differentiate them, but in the 2 ads where it is used, it is loosely thrown in without any link to the setup and you would miss it completely if you aren’t listening to the voice over keenly. [BTW, I also think this can be challenged by competitors as it can be construed as a claim and there is no substantiation provided for it in the ads. Urban ladder, are you reading this, take them to ASCI]
And just as I was writing this, I noticed an ad for Lenskart on TV, which signs off, ‘download the app and see your lenses being made by a robot!’ I felt it was so silly a sign off that I missed the key message – ‘India’s Only 3 decimal tested, 100% accurate precision lenses made by robots.’ Going through the ad in detail, I think the statements made are misleading (given the situations shown and use of reading glasses) and disputable (claim).
