Vaseline hits Vaughan for a six, wins over consumers

When opportunity knocks, what do you do? Take it with both hands. Vaseline’s door of opportunity arose when Micheal Vaughan tweeted, after India’s VVS Laxman was declared not out by the third umpire after repeated airings of the replay with hotspot technology. “Has Vaseline on the outside edge saved the day for Laxman?” Laxman, in effect, was accused by Vaughan of using Vaseline on the sides of his bat, which, one gathers, would prevent the hotspot technology from recording the nick. [caption id=“attachment_57772” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Cashing in on Michael Vaughan’s tweet, Vaseline’s communication partner BBH India launched a campaign to remind consumers – or inform consumers – of the multiple uses of the product. Chaloner Woods/Getty Images”]  [/caption] In response, a few days later, Laxman said, as reported on NDTV.com: “It was ridiculous,” a visibly peeved Laxman told MiD DAY after a net session on Monday. “First of all, I had never heard that batsmen could apply vaseline. I have heard bowlers using it (vaseline) to shape the ball. I was quite surprised to hear that I used vaseline on the bat. It is surprising that people can make a joke out of all this,” Laxman added. It’s interesting that Vaughan used the upper case ‘V’ while tweeting about the issue, and MiD DAY the lower case. Was this the first opportunity for the brand – that it was near generic, and that Vaughan could have meant not necessarily Vaseline but just petroleum jelly?  The upper and lower cases aside, the Vaseline tweet made news, all of it in a positive association with Laxman’s stellar knock. So there’s a brand in the news – how does Vaseline take advantage of the situation? This is how they did. The delightfully art-directed releases in major newspapers tell the story better than the thousand words that could be written: The first was a front page solus ad which said nothing. There was, however, a call to action – asking readers to turn to a particular page in the sports section. A half page ad, with the same, minimalistic art, spoke directly to Vaughan: “Dear Mr Vaughan, in India, Vaseline is used for…” and went on to list over 30 contexts of use, including ‘post-tattoo’, and ‘uneven tanning’. Take a look at the ad.  At the bottom of the ad, there was another call to action – asking readers to “Let Mr Vaughan know” by visiting Vaseline’s facebook page, www.facebook.com/vaseline. Finally, a third ad, on the immediate following right hand page, dominated by a badge which said, unequivocally, that “Vaseline is not used on cricket bats”. Take a look at the ad: The Facebook page has already received 268,000 likes and Vaseline must be more than happy with the response so far. But the page, one must add, is a bore – there’s nothing about cricket on the pages that I could see and the updates and the subsequent comments are boring and staid to a fault. After a provocative and exciting campaign as the one we’ve seen, a status update like this one, “Traveling and vacation is lots of fun but can be a disaster for your skin. Don’t forget to pamper and take care of your skin so that you return home smiling,” is a complete letdown. Vaseline traditionally has two ‘seasons’ in India; the first is the monsoon and the second is winter and sales take a dip during the rest of the year. A campaign that reminds consumers – or informs consumers – of the multiple uses of the product is one that Vaseline’s communication partner, BBH India, has been grappling with for some time, so Mark Vaughan’s tweet was manna from heaven. “The idea came from the product itself, to be honest. We had already been working hard on communicating the versatility and multiple benefits of Vaseline petroleum jelly and Mr Vaughan’s comments gave us the perfect opportunity to set the record straight,” said BBH India’s managing partner Subhash Kamath to Firstpost. Opportunity came knocking, and BBH and Vaseline opened the door.