Suzlon powers new campaign for cleaner air called p.a.l.s

Wind energy company Suzlon is targeting youth for the first time, with a new campaign called p.a.l.s (an acronym for Pure Air Lovers Society). We met Dharini Mishra, global head of brand at Suzlon, to find out more about the campaign:

CI: How did the p.a.l.s campaign come about?

DM: We are a wind energy company, and somewhere Suzlon was synonymous with wind energy in India. But actually our corporate philosophy goes way beyond just making wind turbines. The whole idea was that if we are committed to sustainable development, and India is your home market, then at some point we needed to elevate our messaging to more than business, and reach out to an audience that is more than business. How do you connect with people on the street on the message of environment? The challenge was how do you get a wind turbine company to relate to a college going student or a housewife or a working executive.

That is where we got Lowe Lintas in. We gave them the brief in early 2011, and they came up with the idea of creating a society of Pure Air Lovers (or p.a.l.s). The connect worked out beautifully, as Suzlon’s business premise of wind energy does result in purer air. The strategy of talking to the youth (and we define that as someone of any age group who wants to do something different) was scary and different, but brilliant; we’ve never done that before. Suzlon on MTV in the media mix wasn’t something I thought I would ever do in my career here.   

CI: How will you sustain interest in the campaign, and stay involved with it yourselves?

DM: It’s easy to create a nice, beautiful engaging website, and then a month down the line, nobody really cares. If you see the website today, it has basic information, some tools like the PUC reminder, some green vendor lists, but this campaign has been planned in such a manner that it’s going to go through an evolution every week. The surprise element is what is going to keep this campaign alive.

Screenshot of p.a.l.s website

We want p.a.l.s to be the movement of the people, so we will have to allow them the freedom of running it for as long as they want. As people who are powering it, we’re planning to consistently work on this campaign till December for sure, in terms of advertising, and March 2012 for the digital activations.  In March, we will do a review and figure out to take it forward. Going by the initial response though, we may have to do a review in December itself. 

CI: How important is digital to this campaign?

DM: Digital in terms of the Internet and mobile both are going to be the lead engagement mediums. Television is, of course, the number one medium to take it to the penetration that you want. But finaly, the engagement will be through digital. There will be a lot of applications, online tools, share engines. The website will also go through several rounds of metamorphosis and become more interactive. There’s a Youtube channel being developed; it’s in a very basic stage right now. In a month’s time, we are working on creating a very collaborative channel where members of p.a.l.s can upload their own videos. Facebook is going well by itself. To a great extent, the success of this campaign will hinge on digital.

CI: Who are your partners for this campaign?

DM: Lowe Lintas is the creative agency who also came up with the concept of p.a.l.s. We have three agencies in the digital space: Mudra Max who’s doing the digital media, Webchutney who’s doing the digital creative, and Dentsu Digital is doing the Online Reputation Management (ORM) and social media strategy.  And Zenith is handling mainline media for us. The idea was to get together a bunch of like minded people who are passionate about the cause, and it’s working out great.

TVC Credits:
Client: Suzlon
Agency: Lowe Lintas
Creative: R.Balki, Amer Jaleel, Shriram Iyer, Garima Khandelwal, Arjun Balasubramanian, Ameya Gokhale
Business: Anaheeta Goenka, Vandana Joshi, Jayesh Shivdasani, Neville Katrak
Planning: Suraja Kishore
Production house: Flying Pigs
Director: Bharat Sikka