Tata Steel's Doors Of India - a fresh approach or missed opportunity?

Social Samosa takes a look at Tata Steel's Doors Of India campaign created to promote Pravesh and target the B2C audience.

Tata Steel launched their digital-first campaign titled #DoorsOfIndia to promote their product Pravesh - steel doors with wooden finish catering to the home solutions market. The campaign conceptualized and executed by J. Walter Thompson, Kolkata and Hungama Digital Services, works on the insight that ‘Every Door Has A Story’ - a real-time discovery of stories and untold facts about some of the prominent doors in India.

The campaign involves creation of videos in a LIVE format by the on-ground crew led by travel experts across 6 regions. They would cover more than 30,000 KMs across 46 cities in 15 states over a period of 5 months to curate stories around the doors.

These stories are then being published almost real-time on their dedicated microsite along with social media amplification. The digital campaign is being supported by mainstream media as well as Print, OOH and BTL activations.

The campaign is promoted in 6 phases on social media running parallel as per the traveller’s journey namely – East, South-East, Central, North, West and South-West India. Each phase gives detailed information about the traveller creating social feeds by posting facts about the doors of that zone, journey details and more.

Creative strategy

The campaign was based on an open brief from the client to come up with something that could position Pravesh as a leader in this newly created category of ‘branded doors’.

Commenting on the creative idea, Surojit Sen, AVP & CSD, Digital, J Walter Thompson Kolkata, highlighted, "We found that, while there are a lot of conversations around many aspects of home, but we just don’t ‘converse’ about doors at all. However, we found that every door in the house: front and internal are witness to so many incidents (good and bad) in our lives. We decided to create something that would bring ‘door’ back into the conversations across India. So, the communication objective became ‘let everyone start looking at doors and then let them start talking about it’.”

Social media traction

According to Carlton D’Silva - CEO & CCO, Hungama Digital Services, the campaign has seen a reach of 4.4 million on digital platforms with engagement of over 1 million on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The campaign videos have received 1.3 million views with 87 percent of the views garnered from social platforms. The overall impressions have touched 6.1 million.

Below is an excerpt of conversations on Twitter:

Expert View

According to Jagdeep Kapoor, Chairman & MD of Samsika Marketing Consultants, the campaign is refreshing. “No one has launched a campaign of doors, giving a historical perspective. The campaign is innovative and will “Open Doors” for Pravesh, to enter the minds and hearts of Indian consumers. I think it is a good move from Tata Steel with an interesting ‘Door Story’ campaign, garnished with historical and nostalgic perspective." Kapoor adds.

Anshul Sushil, Co-founder, Boring Brands liked the insight the brand has tried to harp on. The idea of roping in six travel influencers in the campaign is also a well thought move, but they have missed out on involving the adventure-ready digital generation.

“Digital natives get excited when they are asked to get involved in a campaign. They get this sense of adventure when a brand asks them to share their stories, their opinions, and their discoveries, “explains Sushil.

Amitava Mitra, Founder & Managing Director, Bee Advertising finds the idea to be interesting but great for an Incredible India tourism campaign. “The whole concept in its documentary style of execution is far too esoteric and theconnect and its relevance is too farfetched. It is also not clear who the target audience is and what they expect from this communication and campaign. I guess they have the money to indulge. As a digital campaign for YouTube it may attract those who want to know more about India, interested in travelling because this is more a travelogue. I think the documentary format is too long and tedious. I can’t see this having any viral effect. All in all an interesting idea but more for tourism, travel and Incredible India,” cites Mitra.

“On digital, brands benefit from not just any content, but content that is centered on the brand promise. Here, the main challenge for a brand is to not do anything entertaining, but to make branded content entertaining, while adhering to your brand promise at the same time. A campaign like this would have worked better, if this wasn’t a launch campaign. When you are introducing a doors brand with a campaign like this, I feel it doesn't do justice to a brand like Tata,” concludes Sushil.