Case Study: Asian Paints developing and marketing green products.

 

Case Study:  Asian Paints: Going green

Asian paint is the leading paint manufacturer in the world. It is a household name in India for its durability and services. The company is known for its social responsibility by contributing to education, healthcare and sanitation. Further, Asian paint decided to show environmental sustainability. It identified water replacement, reduction in fresh water usage, use of renewable energy, and reduction of hazardous waste as concern areas and the company would like to invest in eradication of these environmental issues. Further,  the company began self certification for their products taking US green seal GS-11 as standard. As part of this initiative, Asian paints reduced lead in paints below
90 ppm. The company’s carbon emission reduced by 31%. Apart from this Asian Paints reduced volatile organic compounds in manufacturing.

Green Products: Royale and Ezycolour are chosen for green initiative by the company. Royale health shield offers infection free home paints. This is the first in India, a paint recommended by Indian Medical Association (IMA).

Launch and promotion of Ezycolour:

 

Asian paints launched Ezycolour home solution in 2015. This is a green painting service initially targeted for the rich class. However, the company had seen the aspiration of the upper middle class for environmental friendly products and extended it to that category too. To create awareness about the product Asian paints had run two different campaigns. In the first one, the company ran an offline campaign wherein it selected Mumbai city. In the Mumbai city, Shivaji park, HP petrol pump and Hindu mills compounds are taken to paint vandevi using Asian paints. These Natural murals were different ideas all together. The company wanted to show the positive and negative side of vandevi environment issues. However, experts felt that locations selected for murals
were not attractive and had suggested using an art gallery. This will suffice the goal of Asian paint to reach a niche market. On the online campaign side, Asian paint ran storytelling by artists , why they selected the art profession. These stories were marketed on Facebook and YouTube. Contrary to the expectation of Asian paints, the Facebook campaign did not have mass comments. It gathered only 86000 views in a month. In the YouTube channel too the company had less than 2000 views. Both campaigns lacked the sales orientation.

Questions:

1.    What went wrong for Asian paints green products?

2.    Suggest a plan to promote green products for Indian households particularly in Metros.