How an international home appliance brand changed the narrative with marketing

We helped Evvoli stand out in style with its advertising

COMMUNICATION CHALLENGE

The home-appliance market in the Middle East can be considered more complex than other areas of the world. Consumers in the Middle East will place a higher emphasis on many factors beyond simple functionality. What a brand says about status will factor highly in consumer decision making anywhere in the world. For the Middle Eastern market, however, this will factor higher still. Home appliance purchases in the Middle East often accompany the merging of families through marriage. At these sensitive moments, status-flexing happens by purchasing a premium brand over a lesser-known brand.

Delivering a winning strategy with marketing and advertising activities

Evvoli, a new international home appliance brand, was more than aware of this and looked to build upon its initial brand development and exploit this status-flexing situation in the Middle Eastern market. To do this, they called upon the experience and expertise of Zigma8 Branding and Advertising Agency.

The challenges of advertising and the Middle East

The challenge of plugging into the hearts and minds of Middle Eastern consumers would not necessarily prove to be too difficult. Simultaneously creating brand communications for an international audience, however, would be a more difficult challenge.

COMMUNICATION SOLUTION

The concept of positioning brands is an essential practice that helps avoid market overlaps and reduced sales. Evvoli, themselves, had created the foundations for this practice, choosing to differentiate themselves as a neo-modern, Italian inspired manufacturer. Saying so would not be enough, so we developed a multi-phased strategy that would step-by-step appeal to the consumer’s sense of pride and passion. We supported this by linking to commonly understood ideas about Italian pride and passion concerning design.

Creating a winning marketing campaign

Our solution would be to provide a compelling story about style based on existing ideas about Italy. Italy is the home of Evvoli, and for those in the Middle East, Italy is the home-of-style.

Successfully advertising while also appealing to a Middle Eastern audience

To kick-start our story, we chose to go big. We opted for premium media to effectively present an authentic Italian feel in a big way. To achieve this, we deliberately avoided the conventional international ATL adaptation and opted to use the Italian language to help grab attention and better sell our story.

Creating a new chapter with marketing activities

Having established an authentic association with Italy, we then brought the story to a new chapter. We extended the advertising campaign to BTL and online activities. In each case, we adapted the campaign to appropriately associate with the creative platform: “home of style”.

COMMUNICATION RESULTS

For Evvoli, our marketing campaign delivered an essential and alternative story to our consumers. For the Middle Eastern home appliance consumers, this story also applied. This story would help those that need to establish a certain level of status during the Middle Eastern custom of furnishing a new home for the newly-weds. These consumers, until recently, came to expect and purchase international brands. Those consumers have been priced-out due to runaway inflation and increased cost of business due to sanctions.

Doubling sales through advertising activities in the Middle East

Evvoli successfully over doubled its sales compared to its prior presence in the market without communications. Although one can only infer that the Evvoli launch campaign performed excellently against objectives, the client’s testimonials assist in making this case.

Client testimonial: results via a marketing campaign

“Although the Evvoli brand is a relatively new home appliance brand, we’ve always looked to keep to a core DNA of Italian passion for engineering and design. When we fully decided to enter the Middle East market we looked for a team with a strong understanding of branding as well as advertising. We were immediately convinced of working with Zigma8, by the questions they asked from the outset, but upon first learning about their suggested strategy, we had big concerns. The plan was very unconventional.

We knew that a big opportunity was available in the market, but wasn’t aware of the complex cultural situations. Zigma8 were able to demonstrate on a small scale how the strategy would work, which helped convince us a little. Still to this day the strategy of “non-localising” seems odd to me, but it was very successful. Both this and the story-based approach that the agency took have helped us take a new look at our communications in other markets.

The sales results were beyond our expectations — with a near doubling of sales in the region. This was also achieved before the campaign had ended.

Mr Jahie Seem

Assistant to the CEO