‘Jewellery is a part of the Indian DNA’

As Tara Jewellers unveiled its first TV campaign comprising of two ad films, Campaign India caught up with Vikram Raizada, executive director and CEO (retail), Tara Jewels, the holding company, for more on the objective of the communication, the core audience, and the brand’s journey so far.

What was the thinking behind going on television?

We currently have 30 stores across 19 cities in the States of Maharashtra, Gujarat, MP and Delhi. Our aim was to expand in the North for which we are opening 20 more stores in Punjab, Rajasthan, UP, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh. All are stores are company owned and managed. Now that we are gaining footprint across central and North India, we believe that we are ready to go on television. Soon, we will be 50 stores across 37 cities; this justifies the use of television. And moreover, we are in our third year of business and so the time was right to release TV ads.

What is the objective of the communication?

India is an emotional country and for a category like jewellery thee has to be an emotional and rational connect. Therefore, there is the unique approach of having two commercials. We want to place our brand in the emotional context in which jewellery is consumed in India. It is very much part of the Indian DNA. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries... jewellery is an integral part. It is consumed in a family context and therefore we wanted to go for the very core of that and associate Tara with that. Both the commercials feature very real life situations, as we want to be a brand that our consumers can truly relate to. We want to form a connect with the consumers.

Who is the target audience for Tara Jewels?

There are two people we talk to: one is the younger woman in the age group of 25 to 35 years who aspires to buy her own jewellery. She used to trust the family jeweller because she didn't have knowledge but is now armed with it she wants to make her own decisions. The other TG is the older woman in the age group of 35 to 55 years - she is the larger jewellery buyer. Her motivations are slightly different as for her it is about having newer designs or being the first one with it. This TVC talks to both of them.

For our stores, we have adopted the saturation mode - it’s not only a width model but a depth model as well. We don’t just have stores in metros and mini-metros, but also class one and two towns and even smaller towns as well.

How has the journey been so far from a communication stand point? What are the targeted objectives for 2013?

We started with education being the point of focus of our communication. We did that as we believed that there was an opportunity in the market to redefine the jewellery buying process; we believed it could be made more open, transparent.

We did a research with a company called Third Eye which made us realise that while there is much aspiration as far as jewellery is concerned, there were factual barriers to purchase such as the belief that diamond jewellery was very expensive, because of the context it we seen in (palatial stores, Bollywood stars wearing it). To address that we went to a leading design company called Fitch and asked them to design our stores. Secondly, people said they trusted their local jeweller more therefore education became an important part of our communication strategy.

The target for 2013 is that we are just opening these 20 stores, so the objective is to stabilise them. And our mission is to add another 20 stores even in 2014.

What is the media mix? How important is digital?

Broadly speaking, we are conservative. tThe marketing budget is around 4 per cent of our sales. Of the marketing budget, 50 per cent of our spends is for ATL activities and the rest is for BTL. Half of the ATL budget is kept for TV and the remaining is allocated to print, radio and outdoor.
Digital spends are very low but we have decided that from this year onwards there will be more traction and franchise built on the digital front.

The market is dominated by the unorganised sector. How do you plan to compete with them?

The jewellery market in India is estimated to be in the region of US $ 30 billion which is huge. Of which 94 per cent is unorganised while only 6 per cent is organised. But the general estimate is that number must have gone up to nearly 10 per cent. The scope is huge, and due to media intervention, there has been education amongst consumers making them aware that they need  to look for hall marking, etc. Even hygiene factors are responsible for the shift from unorganised to the organised jewellery segment. It gives us a very large and potential market.

Could you comment on the timing of the campaign and seasonality of purchase?

Timing-wise, in Maharashtra there was Gudi Padwa, and more importantly Akshaya Tritiya is coming up. These are big jewellery buying occasions in India. This is a very good time for us to be on television and be out there opening new stores. These two months are definitely strong and account for nearly 60 per cent of sales across the market.

Also read: Tara Jewellers positions itself as a companion for life’s unbreakable relationships