How paint brands make you care about the paint on your walls

It’s not easy creating a paint brand.

Paint falls into the low-involvement category in the basket of goods and services you buy and consume. To make it simple, you buy the category - in this case, paint - but you aren’t too involved in the brand.

You make the decision to re-paint the house, it’s your money - and the decision on the brand is the painter’s.

To get you, the actual user and beneficiary of the product that you’re buying is a tough task in a category where you benefit from the product -but you leave the decision to an ’expert’. For example, it’s the carpenter who decides which adhesive to use (which forces brands like Fevicol to get your involvement increased) it’s the mechanic who decides which lubricant two-wheeler owners use, and so on.

Since these ’experts’ know more than you do, you go by their decisions.

What if you were an expert? What if you knew as much as the mechanic or the carpenter?

What if you knew more than these experts?

What if you knew more about paints and painting than the painter, and that your knowledge made the painter only the implementer, an implementer acting on the decisions made by you, the expert?

That’s what Asian Paints sets out to do with two new commercials currently on air. An entertaining depiction of how a consumer becomes an ’expert’, thanks to a guide to painting that he got from Asian Paints. What did he have to do to get the guide? Send an SMS, that’s it.

The ads, created by Ogilvy, build on the earlier strategy of educating the consumer. Last year saw the creation of a website www.asianpaints.com , which was the guide; this year, the guide to painting is just an SMS away - becoming an expert in painting is just an SMS away.