Lowe Lintas wins Saint-Gobain's Gyproc business

The agency has won the strategy and creative duties for the brand.

Gyproc India, part of the Saint-Gobain Group that has interests in the light weight interior construction space, has closed its creative pitch. The business has been awarded to Lowe Lintas & Partners.

The agency's Mumbai branch will handle the duties. The team will work on both, the creative mandate as well as strategy mandate for the brand.

Lowe Lintas already handles the creative duties of Saint-Gobain Glass India (glass and mirrors account), another brand from the same company. The agency has handled this account for several years.

The pitch for Gyproc was initiated around October, 2012 and was held in Mumbai. Several agencies, networked and home-grown, participated in the pitch.

Saint-Gobain established its presence in India by acquiring a majority stake in Grindwell Norton in 1996. In India, the company currently operates in two business sectors, namely, innovative materials and construction products.

Within these two sectors, a variety of products are manufactured by eight different companies. These are Saint-Gobain Glass India (float glass and mirrors), Saint-Gobain Sekurit India (automotive glass products), Grindwell Norton (abrasives, silicon carbide, refractories and performance plastics), Saint-Gobain Crystals & Detectors India (radiation detection and measurement products), SEPR Refractories India (electrofused refractories), Saint-Gobain Gyproc India (construction products), Saint-Gobain Weber India (facade and tiling solutions and technical mortars) and Saint-Gobain SEVA Engineering India (top rolls, tempering furnaces and toolings for the automotive sector, moulds for containers and building hardware products).

The first five names on the list fall under innovative products, while the last three concern manufacture of construction products.

Of these, Gyproc India has interests in construction products such as gypsum plasterboards, ceiling tiles, mineral fibre tiles, metal framing systems, jointing and finishing products, gypsum plasters for partitions, wall panels, ceilings and internal wall/drywall partition linings.

Lowe Lintas has created some memorable work for brand Saint-Gobain in the past. The ads include those for its transparent glass (the 'Ha!' ad in which a waiter carrying a tray tries to find the door with the help of the moisture in his breath, and the one featuring a lady who throws cleaning water on the glass outside a restaurant, only to have the men inside flinch as she does so). The ads for its mirrors showcased the product's clarity of reflection (the ad in which a small boy enters a men's toilet and urinates on the reflection of the urinal).

Released a few years back, Saint-Gobain's ads for the product Sun Ban, a solar control glass, also created buzz at the time. The films conveyed the product benefit (it not only reduces the amount of sunlight that enters homes through the windows, but also cuts down on the heat transmitted in the process) in a humorous yet convincing manner. The product was targeted at SEC AB, males, 25+ working in the building/construction area as well as direct consumers.

It will be interesting to see how the agency positions brand Gyproc in the market.