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Purvita Chatterjee

New-age ad guru, Mr Andy Law.

MUMBAI, Jan 31

AFTER a series of visits to India, courtesy the new Indian account of Home Trade bagged by the UK-based St. Luke's, Mr Andy Law, its CEO, is looking for more business in India. Especially from those Indian companies which are looking at building global brands. Home Trade is one such company which is aspiring to go global with its products.

"This is one company which was actually searching the world for inspirational ideas," states Mr Law, who has been appointed as Home Trade's Creative Consultant.

In the past it was a local agency (Horizons) which unleashed the company's first hero-centric campaign featuring many megastars.

By doing so Mr Law believes that the company has already managed to turn conventional advertising on its head. The only message conveyed about the company through the use of stars like Hrithik Roashan, Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar, was `Life Means More'.

Now, Mr Law has decided not to tamper with this original baseline. Taking the example of biggies like Lever Brothers in the UK, which announces product launches based on extremely high brand expectations, he believes that Home Trade has moved away from conventional advertising and used just the company's name to create brand recall through these idols.

As far as his strategy to grow the Home Trade brand goes, Mr Law says, "Home Trade is finance in a box. It is a packaged product and the idea behind the creative is to have fun with finance. The idea is to link the creative to the heart of the organisation." Law is referring to the launch of the first two sets of financial products by Home Trade - `Let's Learn about Money' and `Home Trade One'.

While the first product is about Investing for Beginners and an `edutainment' solution for those who want to know about the basics of investing, the latter is a multipurpose investment account. St. Luke's has had some successful financial products-based campaigns in the past. For instance, it has launched the brand of `First Direct' in the UK for telephone banking products.

Commenting on the recent slowdown in the advertising business worldwide, Mr Law observes, "Advertising revenues may be dipping but marketing expenditure has certainly gone up. There may be an advertising downturn but certainly not a consumer downturn."

Although Mr Law admits that he has not observed Indian advertising very closely, he feels that it is pretty much like all over the world, dominated mostly by MNCs.

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