Tag: India

India – OPPO in India has launched a new television commercial (TVC) for its F19 Pro Series, showcasing the new ‘AI Highlight Portrait Video’ feature, done in collaboration with dentsu international’s creative agency Taproot Dentsu India.

The new F19 Pro Series aims to capitalize on the rising trend of creating video content among Generation Zs, which pushed OPPO to create a new feature for shooting quality videos in the dark, empowering content creators to film videos in challenging light conditions. 

Taproot Dentsu Agency was tasked to build on the popularity of OPPO’s F-series and highlight the key features of the F19 Pro series that would find a meaningful interpretation for ‘Flaunt’ which connects to video content creation.

The film focused on nightfall, reiterating bad lighting a common barrier for content creators. The spot demonstrates the OPPO F19 Pro series’ stellar solution to the said age-old problem. To build on the night-time atmosphere, the film made use of a remix track of an old cult classic Bollywood song. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZASsldLPqc

Damyant Singh Khanoria, the chief marketing officer of OPPO Mobiles India, said, “As a leading technology brand, we take pride in creating products which delight consumers. ‘Flaunt Your Night’ spotlights the joy of capturing magical moments on the OPPO F19 Pro series even in low light conditions. We loved Taproot Dentsu’s approach of weaving the story of friends creating unforgettable memories with the iconic ‘So gaya ye jahan’ track. The film is the perfect embodiment of the F-Series product series.”

Meanwhile, Abhinav Kaushik, the executive vice president and account management of Taproot Dentsu Gurgaon, also said, “OPPO’s F19 Pro Series is a game-changer in its segment of the mobile handset industry. With its innovative features that empower content creators to break the low-light obstacles in their path, the brand is poised to drive real, tangible value to millions of aspiring creators across the country. The creative interpretation of the brief helped to isolate and effectively communicate these features and demonstrate that OPPO’s F19 Pro Series is here to push the envelope further.” 

New Delhi, India – One of the largest smartphone brands in India, POCO, has unveiled its new brand identity through a series of ‘quirky and fun’ campaigns, created in partnership with advertising agency DDB Mudra.

The campaign revolves around its new brand identity ‘Made of Mad’ wherein the brand story is told with unconventional and edgy visuals. The campaign goes beyond just being a showcase of the specifications of the phone but rather highlights the brand ideology.

The ‘Made of Mad’ campaign sees five advertising spots rolled out, with the primary campaign titled as ‘Legend of Mad’. The main campaign narrates the story of POCO’s mascot ‘Mad’ who aids famous people like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein solve in a fictional setting the problems they are known to solve, like the theory of gravity or theory of relativity.

Other campaigns are an allude to internet culture, like using ‘when life gives you Madness’ which is derived from the Internet meme ‘when life gives you lemons’, and ‘Unboxing Madness’ which is an allude to the internet phenomenon of unboxing videos online.

As part of its greater appeal to the Gen Z’s and millennials, POCO used unconventional visuals and storytelling devices that could leave a lasting impact, which is a direct opposite of conventional brand storytelling through celebrity endorsements and a focus on product features.

For Raghav Chitra, marketing lead at POCO India, the ‘Made of Mad’ brand identity is a creative rendition of what POCO fans and consumers can expect from a brand that exudes a unique, compelling philosophy behind its products.

POCO-India-DDB-Mudra-Representatives
(Left) Raghav Chitra, Marketing Lead, POCO India; (Right) Vishnu Srivastav, Creative Director, DDB Mudra Group

“It is also a representation of our consumers who are driven by the spirit of ‘mad’: independent, ambitious, eccentric, and irreverent in their pursuit of perfection. Through this initiative, we want to build a belief system that enhances the overall POCO experience that our users find relevant,” Chitra stated.

Meanwhile, Vishnu Srivastav, creative director at DDB Mudra Group said, “The effort was to differentiate POCO clearly in the minds of the youth. Somewhere along the way we heard from consumers that POCO must be ‘mad’ to give such features at such a price. So, we wanted to celebrate this mad spirit in our own way with work that’s both eccentric and entertaining.”

The ‘Made of Mad’ campaign has been rolled out across POCO’s social media channels.

Customers are now finding the call of the ordinary as most trustworthy and genuine as opposed to celebrities who attracted brand limelight of the era gone by.

Imagine you go to a shop to try a new coffee variant recently launched by a fairly well-known brand. You come home, try it and are overjoyed with its taste and aroma. What is the next thing you do? Make another brew or share your joy with your family? Perhaps both.

For most consumer brands, the simple act of sharing your experience about a product for its quality, sales service, or price point makes case for a massive marketing opportunity. It is not new to realize that people do business with people and buy products from brands they trust. So when you give a high-five to a brand, the noise moves across the room, making others tempted to trust your first-hand feedback and buy the same product on their next visit to the supermarket. The distinct way to grow any business is to make your customers chatter about your product.

Voice of the common man

Think gossip is negative. Well, indeed it is not. It is as crucial as our voice on things that matter. In the seeds of gossiping lie humanity’s power to bond with others socially, influence decisions, foster life-long friendships and create powerful communications. This was unique to homo sapiens that allowed the species to cooperate with strangers and helped them gain an edge on the animal kingdom.

Gossip is one of the unheralded foundations of our species and its survival, concludes Yuval Noah Harari in his best-seller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Consumers were always leaders of opinions, sometimes in whispers and at other times aloud.

The times we are going through provides a very fertile ground for consumers to use opinion to manoeuvre market trends. The numerous social media platforms give consumers access to share their gossip with the world at large, influencing purchase decisions and changing the purchase funnel from linear to circular.

An active customer is uniquely positioned to give brands social proof on their superior product or service, getting more interested customers and benefiting the brands with good returns. These customers or brand advocates are in no way forced to speak highly of any brand and this gives them true power to speak what is best in a brand.

The strength of such brand advocates lies in their authentic enthusiasm to endorse a brand and it is because of these truths that people trust their reviews and pay close attention to words. Eight in ten customers (83%) believe that trust is the first emotional metric that influences brand loyalty, according to the 2019 Deloitte study ‘Exploring the value of emotions-driven engagements’. Just as the world’s strongest brands are built upon a few core sets of truth, the same thing can be said about powerful brand advocates.

Times of trusted advisors

Traditionally, brand advocates have always been popular superstars with a mass appeal. But changing consumer sentiments showed a shift towards user-generated authoritarian content that has appeal to a targeted audience, making way for the rise of internet celebrities–they are none other than you and me with expert knowledge of industry product types and ability to spin a convincing tale of her own experience with the brand.

The power of storytelling in marketing cannot be emphasized any further. New-age influencers are compelling storytellers pushing the brands they endorse by the sheer force of their belief and the fan followers they possess. They are not just loyal to brands but actively champion their products to influence the buying habits of others. And that is why influencers are the most valuable customers that a company can have.

These are the same people who got an opportunity to broadcast their water cooler conversations on their social media handles. Not all of them have a follower count in millions but what they lack in reach, they make up with their intimate personalization of the brand. When these netizens recommend a product on Instagram, their words seem as genuine as those from a friend.

Call for meaningful conversations

These digital natives have emerged in interesting times. They are nudging brands to take a step back and focus on quality and service of products to drive conversations rather than mindlessly putting their money in large-scale paid marketing campaigns.

Brands are forging strategic partnerships with influencers to change buying habits of whole communities. But once brands orchestrate the social talks, it shakes the very foundation of trust and authenticity that had actually made these netizens’ murmur effective.

To have customers become cheerleaders, brand managers are tasked with finding innovative ways to delight buyers and nudge them to become advocates. It is only when advocates create buzz out of a genuine desire to underline a brand’s product or service can they be called truly trustworthy.

Asif Upadhye director at SPRD
This article is written by Asif Upadhye, director at SPRD.

Stories.PR.Digital is a public relations firm in India that provides brands reputation management, thought leadership, and corporate communications, as well as content, media tracking & digital influence.

New Delhi, India – As summer is approaching, the Indian arm of food and beverage company PepsiCo has launched its first-ever local campaign for the beverage ‘Mountain Dew Ice’, starring Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan.

The ‘Made for India’ Mountain Dew Ice has been developed to suit the Indian palate and is a significant milestone in PepsiCo India’s journey of innovation in the beverage category. In line with this, the first-ever Mountain Dew Ice campaign is building a very aspiring extension to the Dew philosophy.

The campaign focuses on Roshan contemplating on performing a bike stunt across a fire obstacle, and with ‘Mountain Dew Ice’, he takes the challenge head-on successfully. By its message, the campaign embodies the ideology of ‘Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai’ or overcoming one’s fears to achieve great success. This is best seen by Roshi’s ending words “Har chunauti hogi paar, bas chahiye jeetne ki aag aur thanda dimaag”, or loving every challenge while maintaining a ‘cool’ mindset.

“This campaign for Mountain Dew Ice is as refreshing as its name suggests! In time for summer, the TVC introduces the consumers to a ‘chilling’ experience. What is interesting is that it adds to the brand tagline – ‘Darr ke aage jeet Hai’ with emphasis of being responsibly fearless. Mountain Dew Ice propositions ‘Jeetne Ki Aag aur Thanda Dimaag’, is a valuable slogan. It is a perfect mix of the product attributes along with a message in public interest,” Roshi said, regarding his experience as part of the campaign.

According to Vineet Sharma, category director for Mountain Dew & Sting at PepsiCo India, the campaign aims to inspire the youth that they can overcome any obstacles in their way if they just keep a cool mind along with the fire to win while facing their fears head-on.

“We are very excited to unveil the first-ever brand campaign for Mountain Dew Ice. The launch of Mountain Dew Ice has been a significant milestone for us in our beverage category innovation journey. With the new campaign, we are taking the Mountain Dew core brand’s philosophy of ‘Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai’ and giving it an ‘Ice’ twist,” Sharma said.

He added, “We are confident that consumers will relate to the new campaign strongly and shower Mountain Dew Ice with the same love that our other campaigns for Mountain Dew have received over the years.”

The campaign will be amplified across TV, digital, outdoor, and PepsiCo India’s social media channels.

India – In celebration of International Women’s Day, Paytm, India’s e-commerce payment and fintech, has partnered with creative agency Dentsu Impact India to launch an impactful social experiment that centers around financial literacy and gender disparity in Indian society.

A total of 30 participants of different genders and ages were invited to join the social experiment. In a short film released by Paytm, individuals were made to stand in line and were asked questions that may seem simple at first but further, became more probing. At the end of the experiment, there emerges the wide gap of financial literacy between men and women.

The campaign’s aim is to bring to light that until now, the significance of financial knowledge among women lacks further discourse. 

“While modern Indian women do not lack ambition or ability when it comes to financial conversations, many are still surprisingly uncertain and not confident. It is primarily believed and followed that men handle financial matters better and are the ones who should be in control,” said Dentsu Impact in a press release. 

The campaign, spearheaded by director Ruchi Narain, was created to make viewers realize that financial independence and literacy among women in India is a major step in practicing gender equality. The campaign seeks to encourage the viewers to separate gender from finance.

Delhi, India – The Indian arm of dentsu’s media agency Carat has appointed Ashish Singh to take charge as Carat India’s new vice president for planning.

Singh will be leading the agency’s digital mandate for North and East. Through his new role, he will be responsible for developing and leading client relationships for Carat in addition to helping the agency deliver enhanced digital solutions to clients.

Prior to his new position, Singh was with Mindshare India where he held the position of Partner for Digital. During his seven-year-stint with Mindshare, Ashish was responsible for driving revenue growth for the network agency. He has been instrumental in leading several client relationships at Mindshare and has actively lead pitches for businesses.

With more than 15 years of experience, Ashish has liaised with numerous clients across multiple categories to build the roadmap to numerous path-breaking digital strategies.

Commenting on his appointment, Singh said, “With continuous change in the media ecosystem, digital is the battleground for all types of businesses where consumers are accustomed to connectedness. Carat is known for its integrated communication planning backed by some of the cutting-edge analytical tools in the industry.” 

He added, “I am delighted to join Carat – the first specialist agency in the country and the world’s first media agency – to contribute my experience to create a meaningful connection for brands in the digital ecosystem for business outcomes. I look forward to this journey where together we focus on growth, expansion, and nurture talent.”

He will report to Anita Kotwani, CEO of Carat India.  

“I have had the pleasure of working with many digital professionals and Ashish Singh clearly stands out as one amongst the best. Ashish will add immense value as part of my core team and help shape the Carat Digital offering. He comes in with the mandate to drive the larger North and East offices for Carat India and help drive value for our key global clients like Microsoft, Mastercard, Phillips and local clients like Havells, DS group, and others,” Kotwani stated.

She added, “With his domain expertise across the changing digital ecosystem and his love for being a lifelong learner, I am confident that our clients will see the best of data, creative and technology amalgamation under his leadership to help drive their business outcomes.”

Singapore – Media company Verizon Media has announced the promotion of former director of content Simon Wheeler as the company’s senior director of content, therefore ramping up the company’s remit in Southeast Asia and India following the success of its Australian-based media brands.

Through his new role, Wheeler will be responsible for editorial strategy in English-language regions including Australia, India, and Southeast Asia. Editorial teams in India and across Southeast Asia will now report to Wheeler under the new structure. 

Prior to his new role, Wheeler has led the editorial strategy in Australia, managing teams to deliver quality content, diversify audiences, and achieve substantial growth. 

According to the company, Australian monthly active users across its editorial brands Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo News and Yahoo Sport grew by 8% last year, and logged-in users increasing by 7%.

Commenting on his promotion, Wheeler said, “This is a really exciting time for Verizon Media as we band together with international teams to deliver quality content for our audiences across the wider APAC region. 2020 presented difficult and unexpected challenges for all but we overcame and adapted to interact with our audiences in new ways. I’m excited to be taking on this new role and working closer with our regional counterparts.”

Meanwhile, Marie-Hélène Savard, vice president and head of international consumer at Verizon Media, commented, “We’re thrilled to announce Simon’s promotion to this new role. Having proven success in diversifying and growing audiences over the past few years in Australia, we’re excited to see his expertise in play across the wider region. This new structure will better align our editorial strategy across wider APAC and enable our editorial teams to continue to deliver fantastic content and results for our audiences.” 

Mumbai, India – JL Stream, a proudly India-made social live streaming app, has announced its official launch, enabling users to stream their talent, get discovered, chat, and earn.

The live streaming app carries a unique feature called ‘Keep It Simple Streamer’ or K.I.S.S., which gives the users the option to share a short video of their talent along with their introduction and to connect with an audience. 

The ‘earn’ feature of the app refers to streamers’ ability to be paid by viewers, where those using the app to watch talents can purchase coins in-app and pay streamers via virtual gifts during the live sessions. Streamers can withdraw their earnings instantly via multiple digital payment options.

The app currently has 100,000 downloads. Its CEO Raj Kundra has noted that in the last five years, India has seen a substantial amount of growth in the way locals consume data and watch content.

“Jaldi Live is a major part of the new internet culture giving every person with any talent a platform to become a star. We have crossed 1 Lakh installs already. I am proud to say that the app is made in India and will be available worldwide,” Kundra said.

Mumbai, India – As February concludes in a non-leap year, McDonald’s India has taken the liberty to celebrate the so-called ‘leapling’ birthdays, and give them the celebration they deserve through its new marketing campaign.

The Indian arm of the popular fast-food chain has initially released a short film, conceptualized by advertising agency DDB Mudra Group. The film depicts quirky highlights on what do people jest about celebrating the birthday on February 29. From their ‘actual age’ jokes to calling their birthday a holiday, the film concludes with a curated meal for these birthday celebrants to enjoy.

“Everyone loves their birthday. It’s the day the world makes you feel special. But for some, this happy day appears on the calendar only once in 4 years. And as a brand that believes that happiness is for everyone, we thought McDonald’s could make it special for these leaplings,” said Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group.

The promo meal called ‘Surprise Leap Meal’, offers leapling birthday celebrants an exclusive meal which includes vegetarian and non-vegetarian burgers, as well as desserts and shakes.

DDB-Mudras-Group-McDonald's-India
(Left) Rahul Mathew, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Mudra Group; (Right) Arvind RP, director – marketing and communications, McDonald’s India (West and South)

“McDonald’s has always aimed to create special moments for one and all. Unlike all others, the leaplings have to wait for 3 long years to celebrate their actual birthday. With this campaign, we hope to add some extra cheer to our leapling customers’ birthday week and make them feel special,” according to Arvind RP, director for marketing and communications at McDonald’s India, in West and South.

The ‘Surprise Leap Meal’ was initially rolled out last February 27, and will run until March 7, 2021. The exclusive meal is also only open to customers at select McDonald’s outlets in West and South.

Bangalore, India – The Indian arm of e-commerce giant Amazon is once again hosting for the second time its ‘Amazon Smbhav’ summit on April 15 to 18, 2021, aimed at leveraging digital strategies and innovations to Indian customers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses.

‘Smbhav 2021’ aims to bring together important industry and thought leaders for invigorating discussions on the way ahead towards creating an ‘AatmaNirbharBharat’, the vision by the Indian government to be self-sufficient, by unlocking possibilities for businesses and entrepreneurs through partnership with Amazon.

Centered around the theme ‘Unlocking Infinite Possibilities for India’, the four-day summit will tackle various industries, ranging from manufacturing, retail, logistics, IT/ITeS, content creators, start-ups, brands, and entrepreneurs across India. Over 30,000 participants are expected to participate at Amazon Smbhav, learning about best practices and industry trends from over 70 speakers.

For Manish Tiwary, vice president for Amazon India, ‘Smbhav 2021’ showcases Amazon India’s commitment to “being a strong partner in making the 21st century the Indian century.”

“As we continue to work with a gamut of Indian businesses and entrepreneurs, we are committed to bringing to them tools, technology, and innovation that empower the Indian economy, help create jobs at scale, and unleash entrepreneurial agility in companies of all kinds and sizes. Smbhav 2021 will therefore be a unique platform offering opportunities to unlock these possibilities towards an ‘AatmaNirbharBharat’,” Tiwary said.

During the last Smbhav 2020, Amazon pledged to invest an additional US$1B to digitize 10 million MSMEs, to generate US$10B in cumulated exports from India, and create an additional 1 million jobs in India by 2025.

The summit will primarily focus on four key pillars – Innovation, Skilling & Job Creation, Digitization, Exports & Startup Enablement. The summit will bring together diverse perspectives from eminent business leaders, policymakers, solution providers, and Amazon leadership on areas that are most relevant for India’s growth. 

Other summit events that will be included are ‘Amazon Smbhav Awards’ that recognizes businesses, innovators, and individuals that have contributed to the concept of ‘self-reliant India’, and the ‘Amazon Smbhav Startup Pitch Competition’, where participants must pitch feasible startup pitches and get a chance to win Amazon-related cash prizes and mentorships. 

The event will also be conducting an ‘Amazon Smbhav Hackathon’ that will provide an opportunity for individuals and startups to present breakthrough ideas that have the potential to solve real-world problems in the areas of business innovation, sustainability & healthcare.