A Rs 3-crore ad-blitz only for the current festival season is sufficient ammunition to counter-balance any (unlikely) negative effects of a input cost-forced increase in the prices of the premium Swiss watch brand, Xylys.
Titan, the Indian wrist watch market leader, has had to bear the brunt of adverse currency fluctuations on the Swiss watches it imports and sells in India, making another price rise inevitable after the 8 per cent hike it brought in a few months back.
The company, a part of the Tata Group, spends Rs 9 crore a year on promoting Xylys, which sell for anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 25,000 apiece.
Betting big on ‘Xylys,' Titan is all set to launch its new brand campaign featuring ‘
Titan has appointed Wieden+Kennedy as its creative agency. “However, the new TV commercials will be co-created by Farhan Aktar, “as he is also a creative person, and we would like to take his inputs too,” said Mr Ajoy Chawla, Senior Vice-President, Titan Watches, which is a division of Titan Industries.
New models
Besides, to mark the current festival season, the company also plans to bring in a few more new models to the brand's collection of men's and women's watches. Having positioned it as an “unconventional and new-age watch brand”, the company keeps adding or subtracting models to align with the market demand.
“At any given point in time, we will have over 75 models under the Xylys brand,” says Mr Chawla.
Brand's growth
The brand has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 30 per cent. Titan believes the brand is poised to grow even better as it has “gained good recall” in the market.
Mr Chawla says 58 per cent of target audience can recognise the brand, and riding this wave, “we hope to sell at least 20,000 Xylys watches in the current financial year – which will be roughly 30 per cent of Tissot's India business.” Tissot is the only comparable entry-level Swiss watch brand in India.