India – Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce company, has partnered with advertising agency The New Things (TNT) in a new Father’s Day campaign that turns thumbs-up emojis from dads into currency and gifts.
Titled ‘Thumbs Appa Campaign’, Flipkart and TNT’s new campaign is based on the comedic reality that dad’s never fail to reply to every text with a thumbs up emoji. For this campaign, TNT aimed to turn the most underwhelming response from Appa into the most sought-after one this Father’s Day.
With the catchy call-to-action ‘Impress your Appa with his own Thumbs Appa! ’, the campaign kicked off with a hilarious film featuring a dad proudly owning every thumbs up he’s ever sent. In the film, he humorously claims to have always known that Flipkart would eventually launch a campaign where these thumbs up could be exchanged for big-ticket Father’s Day gifts.
Some of the big-ticket prizes for this campaign include a smartphone, a smart TV, and a luxury watch.
Pratik Shetty, senior director of marketing and media at Flipkart, said, “At Flipkart, we believe that every occasion is an important opportunity to connect and celebrate with our customers. This Father’s Day, we took something as simple as a thumbs up emoji, which is a father’s unique way of expressing love and support, and turned it into a fun and engaging contest, the Flipkart Thumbs Appa! We’re thrilled to see how many thumbs-up our customers sent us and made this Father’s Day extra special for all the Appas everywhere by winning exciting gifts.”
Viren Noronha, co-founder of The New Thing, added, “After extensive research, i.e., going through our own chats with our dads, the insight made the pain painfully obvious. 7 out of 10 dads’ default reply to your every text will always be the thumbs up emoji. ‘Happy Father’s Day! ’ thumbs up emoji. ‘I got a promotion’ thumbs up emoji. ‘I made an ad about you!’ thumbs up emoji. We just asked a simple question: how do you turn the most underwhelming response into something amazing for dad’s themselves? Voila. Thumbs Appa! ”
