How colour ‘Red’ powered Eveready’s 100+ year journey in India

In the Indian battery and lighting segment, Eveready is a brand that has established a monopoly for the past several decades. The brand started its operation in the country way back in 1905, and more than 100 years later, Eveready has unveiled a new logo and a tagline. The new tagline for the brand now reads, ‘Give me Power. Give me Red’.

With the new look and tagline, the brand hopes to connect with the digitally savvy younger audience, which might not connect with the older version of the brand well. 

Eveready’s Sr. VP & SBU head (Batteries & Flashlights), Anirban Banerjee told Social Samosa, “Through its legacy standing, the brand has built a cultish reputation for itself. This rebranding was done to understand if the brand also holds the ‘cult’ status 20 years later.” 

The new logo takes some aspects of the old logo; its signature ‘Cat O-9’, which is a depiction of a cat's nine lives and is paired with an infinity loop – is retained.

Banerjee said, “The new logo is a mix of the brand’s past self, which is being tied together with the present to build a more futuristic experience for the audience.”

By combining elements of the past, the brand aims to retain the connection with the older audience and build a new one with the younger audience. Through research, the brand concluded that its advertising and legacy have built a cult following within the older generation but the younger demographic still struggles to connect with the brand. 

Thus, to bridge this gap, Eveready decided to tweak its communication and don a fresh identity. The new identity will be plastered on Eveready’s old as well as new products. Banerjee mentioned that the new logo will appear wherever it is justified. 

Eveready’s iconic cat logo has been around since 1930, and the red color has become synonymous with the brand in the batteries category. 

As the brand takes a step towards change, Social Samosa dives into the brand’s advertising history. 

Eveready’s kickstart 

In the mid-70s, the newly set up agency Rediffusion bagged the communication mandate for Eveready. 

To stand out from the clutter, the agency and brand together tried to capture the essence of the products and focused on the ‘red batteries’ and coined the tagline – ‘The chosen one. For your transistor.’

Eveready often turned to print in those golden days of advertising and focused on the functional aspects of the batteries in Hindi and English. 

Following a series of print ads, the brand rolled out a series of animated ads as well. The ads had talking transistors complaining about leaky batteries and limited powers and on the other hand, there were Eveready batteries. In order to appeal to the audience better, the brand mimicked the voices of famous Bollywood actors like Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, and Amitabh Bachchan as the transistors.

These ads were made for cinema halls and thus resonated well with the audience, which resulted in a jump in sales and built an affinity for the brand. 

Continuing to collaborate with Bollywood stars, the brand also boasted a line of celebrity endorsements. Yesteryear actors like Shashi Kapoor, Hema Malini and more were seen as the face of the brand. 

Becoming synonymous with Red

After some ups and downs and almost a decade of staying clear of advertising, the brand made a comeback in 1993. The 90s was the time when brands were actively trying to catch up with the youth. Loud and vibrant ads were the go-to choice for most brands. 

‘Give Me Red’ was born to build this connection. The communication was for the younger generation – edgy and over the top, not something expected from a battery ad. 

The ads had sci-fi elements, bikers, and women playing guitars and drums, and the color red stood out between black and white palettes. Soon, after many ads followed and TVCs that captured the vibe of the youth and established Red as its color, Eveready started becoming synonymous with Red in the Indian battery and flashlight industry. 

The preppy, grunge and youthful look of the ads was a reflection of the consumer pattern at that time. In the mid-90s, with the surge in the use of TVs, walkmans and cameras, the want for portable power within urban Indians escalated. Eveready took notice of this and tried building on that. 

Moving forward, the brand re-tapped on celebrity endorsements and in the 2000s, Amitabh Bachchan starred in an ad that recreated the original ‘Red’ bar.

Post that, in 2011, Akshay Kumar was roped in as the brand ambassador for the brand. In this era, the brand continued the ‘Give me Red’ communication, this time with every passing campaign the connection with the youth became the focal point.

Post the celebrity era, the brand still continues to communicate the 30-year-old Give Me Red campaign. The new campaigns play on the same over-the-top and ‘Red’ themes of the brand communication.

As it begins a new chapter in advertising by revising its identity, Red continues to shine, make a bold statement and anchor its roots to the present. Eveready’s marketing journey is worth learning from, one that was met with many challenges and continued to evolve with changing consumer patterns. 

“For the last three decades, ‘Give me Red’ has become a statement for India. Today, the prominence of Eveready with Indians is so much so that out of 10 batteries sold in the country, five are Eveready,” Banerjee told Social Samosa. 

Apart from many other reasons that have powered Eveready’s journey, consistency and unique storytelling also hold credit behind its 65% market share today.