After a recent campaign by boAt Lifestyle, there has been a lot of debate about the good and bad of it. The mass audio wearable brand took on direct with Apple in this campaign. This is not something new. Many brands across different categories of smart devices have attempted such campaigns in the past only to prove ineffective.
There are two reasons to it. One is logical and another emotional and both are very strong. Having experienced so many TWS earbuds, the quality of audio and overall experience of airpods is unmatched. However, it’s not alone. There are some strong competitors from Samsung Electronics, Sony, and other high end audio brands. The point is this is altogether a different league. Also, since these are R&D driven companies their customers do expect them to keep the product improving in next iterations. Contrary to this the ‘trading’ led brands will either copy them or introduce superficial features which they just acquire from the value chain. We have seen for instance how much a success was Noise’s gesture control buds!
The other reason is very emotional. It has to do with society. It has to do with the status in the society. It has to do with the logo one is wearing. It has to do with the exclusivity, a cult that the brand is creating. For all these reasons, there is still no personal tech brand that comes close to Apple. We can’t force anyone aspiring for a Mercedez to buy any other mass brand. Even if it’s given free!
So, while the advertising pundits might shower accolades on #boat for this ‘bold’ stance, it is going to have no change in business on the ground. Families will continue to live in an ecosystem, whichever they like, be it Apple, Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, realme or others. It would be a very imaginative scenario where a parent is ready to fund for an Apple device and the child resists for buying something else. After all what is stopping anyone from owning any Apple device is only and only price. Nothing else.
Brands like Boat, Noise, Boult and others in the league have to take a gradual journey. First, they have to come out of this league and stand different to the ‘hyper-competition’ out there. The issues and concerns about the products for all these brands are very similar. The very important fight and real achievement for any of these brands would be to come out of this league and graduate to next level, where, by the way brands like JBL, OnePlus are occupying fast. One of the key achievements for any of these brands would be to change the perception of consumers that these products last longer than a season or a year. This perception cannot be changed by marketing but by fundamental product innovations that impact the quality of the product. Unfortunately, brands like Boat, Noise, etc., in the wearables category are not valuing the love they got in a very short period of time from consumers. Only the sentiment of being an Indian brand won’t work. Something what Lava International Limited recognised and worked upon. While they talked of being #ProudlyIndian, they also made humble restart and made a fundamental rejig of its product designs and philosophy, which is why its noticing the effort being appreciated and recognised by the consumers and other stakeholders.
Campaigns can be fun and do generate a lot of attention and interest as well as the very important engagement, but that’s not all. This is why the marketing, and sales teams need to work closely in this era of performance marketing, where any display of messaging directly impacts sales. The recent boAt campaign might have been one of the great successes for its marketing team; its digital team might have overshot on performance indicators, but it is very unlikely to result in proportionate sales or build a solid funnel for the brand.
