For Snapdeal, a rebirth and a renewed attack in the ecommerce war

Snapdeal’s new TV commercial.

Snapdeal is back in our lives with an emotional ad campaign, playing repeatedly on every TV channel. It has pumped in about US$30 million for brand overhaul, double the amount it spent last year on its Dil ki Deal campaign with movie star Aamir Khan. This is the first rebranding effort for the six-year-old ecommerce company.

The ad campaign has made Snapdeal a topic of conversation, but will that help in storming past its big rivals in India? Snapdeal now has a solid red background color, and logo elements are rendered in white. The blue from the previous logo has been discarded. The Delhi-based ecommerce company rebranded itself with a new campaign targeting the rush around Diwali, and a fresh logo in a desperate bid to regain its lost market share.

Industry experts and analysts say that Snapdeal rebranding may help the company gain more sales on the back of Diwali rush, but “the company will have to do much more to improve its customer facing interface to race past the competitors,” says Sanchit Gogia, chief analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research. “The effort may just be too late,” he adds.

Snapdeal’s all new red delivery boxes with the new logo

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Even though Snapdeal spent heavily in the last two years on branding, it wasn’t enough to pull past competitors Flipkart and Amazon. The first major marketing campaign was launched by the company in September 2014. It positioned the brand on the back of discounts and cheap deals. The next came in 2015 when it roped in Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, desperately trying to win back trust after a slew of fake order complaints surfaced. However, the move backfired after Aamir Khan got embroiled in an “intolerance” controversy.

We faced a lot of challenges in delivery. We had issues in logistics. It took us time to put everything in the right place, and to fill up the loopholes.

With this new campaign Unbox Zindagi – meaning ‘unbox life’ – Snapdeal is pulling out all stops to advertise the brand with a fresh edge. But when it is pitched against Amazon’s witty Apni Dukan (‘our own shop’ in Hindi) festive ad campaign and Flipkart’s concept with kid-adults, Snapdeal may have a hard time convincing users to choose them over Amazon or Flipkart.

“The last few months have been challenging for Snapdeal with Amazon increasing their marketing spend and gaining market share, and Flipkart trying very hard to retain the leading market share position. This new campaign is part of creating a buzz before the crucial holiday sales season starts in India so that they can retain the market share which is essential for them to raise the next round of funding,” says Satish Meena, analyst at Forrester Research.

Screengrab from Snapdeal TV ad.

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