How we turned power drills into Olympian thrills.

Courtesy: The B&D Power Trophy Campaign.

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Sometimes drills can’t penetrate age-old habits:

One of the toughest challenges a brand faces, especially when targeting a B2C audience is fighting a preconceived ‘stubborn perception challenge’ ingrained in culture. It’s one that is resistant to change demanding a shift in a lifestyle habit (you can look up The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg in this context). The point here is: habits and perceptions eventually turn into a belief which over time, hardens like stubborn rock, becoming impenetrable.

Early 2004: When B&D drills hit a wall

We faced the ‘classic stubborn perception challenge’ in a domestic market back in 2004. I was working as the Copy Head in GMASCO for the Black & Decker account in the UAE, which we had just won in a pitch, along with my team of champions back then: CD Jatin Vadgama , Account Manager: Muthanna Muckatira and SA Sajan, the Senior Visualiser. The awareness or rather: the ‘intent to create a demand for purchase’ for Stanley Black & Decker’s range of power drills in the domestic B2C market were falling and the sales were dipping. On the other hand, the institutional sales for Black & Decker showed good seasonal spikes and steady results in performance, enhanced by its subsidiary company: DeWalt, for meeting demand and growth, in its industrial and construction segment.

The reason for the dip in B2C? In-depth research among our intended domestic audience in the UAE and at the shop floor, revealed that there was a certain misconceived perception on the brand, translating into growing levels of inertia towards using or considering the product.

An added behavioral pattern: when it came to power tools being used for household chores by most Asian men or Arabs, the common practice was to pass this chore to a hired help: a carpenter or handyman with tools to do the job. And we’re talking even simple domestic jobs like drilling a hole in the wall for a nail to hang a picture!

In short, the concept of DIY just didn’t resonate with this audience.

Getting B & D to turn drills into thrills!

We decided to amplify the ‘fun’ in ‘function’ and reposition this chore as a ‘sport’.

Popular drilling challenges done in the USA mostly revolved around clubs and teams, but to replicate that same ‘culture template’ into the UAE with no overarching Big Idea, posed a slim chance in attracting a community of new ‘drillers’ on your side.

The strategy was to proactively create a fresh new concept: an altogether new ‘cultural space’ in the minds of our customers by building a ‘fun family/community sport event’ around the drilling activity: turning it into a thrilling activity!

Enter: "The Black & Decker Power Trophy"

A sporting ‘champions’ event where contenders had to clock the fastest time in drilling and boring perfectly rounded holes through 5 blocks of wood in the shortest possible time! The top 3 drilling participants who lived up to the challenge of achieving fastest speeds on record, were awarded championship status across gold, silver and bronze.

The Power of a Champion Idea:

We decided to capture the spirit of sportsmanship and equate it to the glory of winning at the Olympics. While this was literally an approach that took to ‘ad spoofing’, the sheer irreverence of mimicking Olympian symbols of championship in ‘saluting the winning spirit’ gave rise to powerful visual ad stoppers and sporty imagery that used ordinary every day steely nails as the heroes of our campaign.

We ran a multi-ad campaign across concepts such as “The Olympian Torch”, “The Victory Stand” and of course, our favorite key visual of the campaign: “The Olympic Rings”.

In retrospect, we mischievously got away from any sort of copyright infringement by not mentioning or saying ‘Olympics’ across our campaign, (just left it to the power of pure visual suggestion).

Changing a static community culture into a sporty one:

We ran print ads and posters, supported by radio spots and RJ countdowns, across the week leading up to the event which was spread across a 2-day weekend. It got families largely among the Asian subcontinent, across the UAE to ditch their ‘fears and presumptions of DIY’ and turn into active, sporty participants, happily competing with each other at the event.

Some, even translated into significant footfalls at the B&D showrooms (because hey, when you think of the strategy: what could be a better demonstration of your product, than an interactive sporting event such as this one, that puts the power of the drill in one’s hands)?

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Key learnings:

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-????????????? You need a brave client who defines the problem and an equally great client who champions your creative response to solving the problem. Fortunately, we had both in the form of our dynamic and wonderful senior manager: the late Manoj Panicker of B&D.

-????????????? Be a visual writer by thinking in unison with your champion art director (in this case, I worked jointly on this with my incredible CD, Jatin Vadgama.) Remember to make space for ‘visual writing’: it can be your champion in story writing your concept, not just copywriting.

-????????????? Sometimes, the solution isn’t an ad – it’s a Big Event and One Big Bold Idea around which your communication can act as powerful satellites or spokes in a wheel in amplifying it.

-????????????? Let your idea equally reflect the high-ground of your brand’s worth and nothing less. We got a higher brand recall and value on the back of this event by sticking to a concept that reflected the brand leadership of B&D in its category. While also creating a distinct ‘sporting/interactive’ brand personality, that separated us from functional power tool players in the segment such as Makita.

-????????????? When you have a big legacy brand, the scope for experimentation is always wide, so one never stops pushing!

-????????????? As a famous adman once stated: “There’s no such thing a bad product. Only bland advertising.”

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