Livspace, a home renovations and interiors platform has partnered with Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli, and has come up with a series of ‘humorous horror’ campaigns.
Kartikeya Bhandari, chief marketing officer, Livspace, shares the makings of the campaigns, how the category has evolved and how Livspace is planning to shift customers from the unorganised segment to the organised in the home décor space.
He says once you are done with the interiors, you can’t really change them. It’s not a T- shirt that you can discard if you don’t like it. You have to stick with your interiors for a while.
Edited excerpts
Why did the brand decide to go with the theme ‘Humour with Horror’ for the campaign? And, what was the rationale behind collaborating with Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli again?
They are a power couple. Virat is one of the most loved celebrities outside India as well. Both of them reflect professionalism and excellence — values that we stand for. Also, if you look at the home interior category, it is not an individual purchase, it is a process where consultation is involved between couples. We wanted to reflect that in our communication as well.
Once you are done with the interiors, you can’t really change them. It’s not a T- shirt that you can discard if you don’t like it. You have to stick with your interiors for a while. Once the interiors go wrong, it’s a very nightmarish experience. You have to look at it, live with it. With that being the insight, we wanted to reflect that creatively. We used a little bit of creative exaggeration by introducing ghosts.
The market is mostly organised. We have done home visits and immersion marketing. We have realised that there is something in everyone’s house they are stuck with. Being with it day in and day out is an extremely frustrating experience as it is expensive to change the interiors.
One of the ad films shows the couple finding their home interiors to be scarier than the ghosts. The surprise is not related to the ghost but to the interiors.
So as horror mixes with humour, it becomes an engaging experience for the viewers. Also, we didn’t want to depart too much from what we have built on. The messaging was very much about quality. It’s important that whatever campaign we do, it attributes back to the brand.
How does the World Cup help Livspace?
The World Cup is a media choice for us. Even non-cricket fans come to watch the matches. Take for instance, the India-Pakistan match. Even casual sports viewers are attracted. Thus, there is a tremendous amount of audience reach. World Cup advertising signals that it is a brand that can be trusted. It elevates the brand.
What is the market size of the category? Who is your ideal target audience?
The category is split into two: larger and smaller. If you look at the larger market, it is 80 percent unorganised and 20 percent organised. Within the organised sector, we have about 65-70 percent of the market. The larger task is to make customers shift from the unorganised segment to the organised. That’s where brand advertising of this kind helps.
We are down the funnel from real estate. Two-thirds of our business comes from real estate. Essentially, the real-estate market is the market size. Of course, there is a section of people who get renovations as well. We are present in 40 odd markets. Most of our business comes from the top 10 cities.
We get two sets of people – one is a couple in their early thirties buying their first home and the second in their early to mid-forties buying their second home. Both of them are triggered by lifestyle changes. The forties’s couple, for example, moves into a bigger house, probably due to their kids or their parents moving in with them.
There are also knowledge migrants, people who move from Delhi to Bengaluru, and now call Bengaluru their home.
How has the category evolved? What are people looking for?
The real-estate market has expanded, with a lot of people buying homes. The importance of one’s own space has really imbibed, after COVID. After COVID, a lot of people actually want to own their space and want to do up their space, like your workstation or gym or spaces where you can do multiple things. People want that multiplicity of space utilisation.
People want convenience, peace of mind, great designs, and good quality for a price they don’t find too expensive or cheap. They want the right value equation among all these variables.
How much are you investing in marketing?
We spend 10-15 percent of our revenue on marketing. Given the reach the digital medium has, consumers, in their quest to find the perfect interior, start their journey online a long time before they make the final purchase decision. So you need a very good online footprint. There is a lot of origination happening there. We are quite digital-heavy from that perspective.
It’s an expensive infrequent purchase, people want to validate their choice, and so there is a huge element of touch and feel. People desire tactile feedback. We have opened multiple experience centres in all cities. We make sure that we are available to the consumer at every digital touchpoint.
How is Livspace different from competitors?
Most people opt for carpenters and contractors. Therefore, it is about moving people from the unorganised segment to the organised. That’s where growth is. When people start looking at interiors more critically and their expectations of the final delivery increases, you see a gradual shift towards the organised market. Tier 2 markets are also now adopting such brands.
Livspace is a one-stop shop. Thus, it’s very convenient for someone to reach out to us as we do everything from design to build to post-sales. It provides an immense peace of mind for people with extremely busy lives. We have probably the largest number of designs in the country. Also, on the quality side, we have factories at the backend. We meet all standards when it comes to the way raw materials are sourced, and testing is done, and we provide an experience that is extremely consistent.