Chennai: While the campaigns through social media and print have been good for reach, the major impact for a jewelry brand to reach its customers is delivered by a television campaign, posed by N. Anantha Padmanaban, Managing Director of NAC Jewellers who said in a recent exclusive interaction with MediaNews4U.
Started in 1973 as a neighborhood store in Mylapore, Chennai, NAC Jewellers has today 11 stores in and the outskirts of Chennai and one store in Vijayawada. From a small outlet, today NAC has the showrooms measuring four thousand sq ft to Eleven thousand sq ft out of which most of them are three-story buildings. “Investment of Gold is considered to be one of the holistic approaches by many in India. Traditionally retailing is done by the same set of family and in general, customers never change the retailer. However, days are gone where those sentiments matter. Most of the customers today look for variety in the design along with value for money spent”, says Anantha Padmanaban.
For NAC, TV Campaigns deliver Best Impact followed by Print, Social:
Speaking on the way new-age ads are coming up, he says that most of the campaigns by leading gold retailers are confusing the customer. “Yes. There are many ads on the TV channels and every retailer comes with a slogan and tries to authenticate themselves as the best in doing charity. However, it has to do with the customers they are targeting.”, he says and also added that those campaigns with ‘jargons’ will work only at a particular geography or targeting the consumers belonging to one specific socio/economic class.
According to him, the difference factor between one retailer and the other retailer is design as aspects like hallmark is common for most of the showrooms. “Gold in India is getting manufactured from various places- Gujarat, Maharastra, Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal. So as the designs, the customer expectations also vary. If you take, the way customer interaction happens in a place like Velachery differs from Perambur. Having located in the IT corridor, we have to equip the former store tech-friendly while the latter has a personal-level connect” he says. NAC has uniformity in the way they handle the customers. “We tell our staff, whatever happens, the customer is right. We had trained the store executives to follow the same concept across our stores. Even if the customer is confused, our people will try the level best to clarify them.” Speaking further on the customer-interface, he recalls the campaigns that go around that confuses the customers on the buying pattern and what to look at a store and what not as every store, the level of engagement between the customers and retailers change. Asked how the purchase pattern of gold differs in every Indian state, he says, every store he owns possesses a different customer buying behavior.
Decision-making process:
NAC has various brand ambassadors majorly film stars from the Southern part of India. “Our most purchases happen for marriages. Women are the decision-makers in those purchases and we try to make any BTL or ATL activities that attract the customers”, he says. NAC has many leading actresses getting featured in the campaigns. Speaking on the mode of communications, he says, television is the most powerful mode of communication. “We have a 360-degree approach in our campaigns. However, in my opinion, we had a quality brand recall only when we are presence in television. Of course, there are a good level of engagements through the first-pages of newspapers, nothing can be as good as a TV campaign”, he says further added that he will continue to invest on television campaigns and also says quality customer interaction happens through digital means also.
