“We should not always run after a trend, we should first know what the customers are really looking for.

Campaigns and ads should be planned after understanding the customers as well as the overall market.”

– Nishit Nanda, CEO Consumer Business , Khimji Jewels

Khimji Jewels launched a campaign with 3 video ads. The theme is to reconnect with family members and BFFs through jewellery. 

We talked to Nishit and learned their thought process and the story behind the campaign. Read on to know more.

1. What is Khimji Jewels’ internal process of coming up with an ad campaign?

Our focus has always been on consumer experience. And every time we’re conceptualising an ad campaign, we try to explore stories that have human insight and can connect with our customers at a personal level. 

If they relate to our campaign, we have already gone a step ahead in reaching them. 

The objective of our ad campaigns is to focus on the happiness of our customers.

2. So, what was your thought process when you decided to create “Precious Moments Made More Beautiful.”? 

In these three films, we wanted to show real relationships; stories of family, love and the nuanced dynamics of interpersonal emotions in our everyday lives. 

This campaign aims to position the brand on the platform of authentic closeness and deep partnership with the consumer. 

Hence, it was built on the brand’s promise of making precious moments beautiful, reminding us that our lives are filled with precious moments and we only need to be aware of them to make them unforgettably beautiful.

The first film shows us the redefined relationship with the elders in our joint families and how we always look at them in a fixed way until another lens is presented to us. 

The second film explores the love and kinship between best friends for decades and reminds us that friendship is always the first. 

The third film brings us a glimpse of the love and proximity between a husband and wife and tells us how the glory in everyday living needs to be nothing more heroic than never forgetting to love one another every single day.  

3. How did you launch and measure your campaigns? Is there any internal checklist you follow?

We go all out with all our campaign launches, ensuring streamlined communication across online and offline platforms. 

To measure success, we check on the number of inquiries we get on our social media platforms. 

Then, of course, sales and demand of a particular collection measure the success of the campaign.

 If we run digital ads, we track metrics like impressions, CTC, CTR, and naturally, the conversion rate.

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4. What mistakes should marketers avoid when it comes to planning jewellery marketing ad campaigns?

One thing that marketers should always keep their eye on, is competitors. It’s not spying. 

By doing this, you can understand the market and might get inspired as well. 

Another thing that marketers should do is to know their customers, their tastes, and their wants in order to connect with them. 

We should not always run after a trend, we should first know what the customers are really looking for. Campaigns and ads should be planned after understanding the customers as well as the overall market. 

Visually aesthetic digital and social presence plays a very important role. Now and going forward, your presence must have a powerful digital impact. 

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5. Please name the team behind this (share the team pic, if possible) and your latest company’s logo.

Brand: Khimji Jewels

Brand Leads: Nishit, Nishant and Sameer Nanda

Made by: Digital Dogs Content and Media

Idea and Creative Direction: Anjali Rawat (Digital Dogs)

Strategy: Ambarish Ray (Digital Dogs)

Project Lead: Ridhima Srivastava (Digital Dogs)

Produced by: PressPlay Collective (India)

Directed by: Yogesh Pandi

Music: Mukund Ambarish

Audio Production and Language Localisation: Potbelly Audio

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About Nishit (in his own words)

I joined the family business in 2013 after completing my graduation in Computer Science. 

I strive to create a confluence between the two worlds of logic and emotions in order to bring an experience that is both holistic as well as largely unparalleled in the jewellery sector. 

I believe that with focus, ethics, and transparency, one can meet, tackle and achieve milestones. I’m an absolute technophile. 

In my free time, I tinker with codes and listen to the latest keynotes of global tech titans.

About VidSaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “One thing that marketers should always keep their eye on, is competitors. It’s not spying. ”- Nishit Nanda appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“The brand BlueDart enjoys very high familiarity with the audience, so it is always a creative challenge that we take up to create communication that is better than before and ensure it does justice to the image we have built.”

– Ketan Kulkarni, CMO & Head, Business Development, Blue Dart. 

Blue Dart has always tried to come up with interesting campaigns in the past. Creativity and quality of service have always been their key focus. 

Recently they came up with the campaign – “We Move So Your World Can Move”. We talked to Ketan and learned the story behind this campaign. Read on to know more.

1. What is Blue Dart’s internal process of coming up with an ad campaign?

Blue Dart is one of the best brands in the logistics space and one of the most preferred brands when it comes to moving critical shipments. 

However, the express logistics category is such that you only understand the importance of a reliable partner when there is an urgent need felt by you or your organization. The rest of the time the category remains in the background. 

So, the task that we set for any ad campaign is its ability to stand out and also make a point succinctly. 

We always want the messaging to be single-minded to register with the audiences.

2. “We Move So Your World Can Move” is an interesting concept. How did you conceptualise the campaign? Please share the story behind making it.

India, like the world, was unfortunately struck by the pandemic. People could not move from their homes and everyone was learning how to live in this new normal. 

Being the Trade Facilitator of the nation, Blue Dart has always had a ‘First In, Last Out’ approach and we have always supported our country to ensure the continuity of the mission critical supply chain. 

Apart from the regular shipments, these also included pandemic-related medical equipment – PPE kits, Masks, gloves, blood samples, and medical equipment to name some. 

Given this scenario, we are proud to say that all through the pandemic we continued our services – with our six Boeing 757 aircraft flying across the country and our Blue Darters ensuring that the shipments reached their desired destinations. 

We wanted this ad campaign to highlight the critical role that we play in people’s lives and how we ensure timely service each time, every time. 

With this in mind, we re-engaged with our agency, Network. They had been our partners for many years albeit a gap of a few years. They know us and our business inside-out. 

In the course of our discussions with them, our Managing Director, Balfour Manuel, told them about the small and big instances of how we have performed our role as the Trade Facilitator during the pandemic. 

The network was sharp enough to get to the root of these discussions, and they quickly cracked the creative proposition ‘We move, so your world can move’. 

This was a beautiful articulation of the role that we play in everyone’s life. This thought was then expressed through three different situations in our ad films. 

Also, Network decided to seed a larger thought of converting Blue Dart into a ‘verb’ over a while with the caption #BlueDartIt. Our plans, going forward, are to keep building on this.

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3. How do you plan the launch and media for the campaign?

Our business is largely B2B, so the media plan was drawn up to reach these audiences. We used a mix of TV and Digital to reach our audiences in a focused manner. 

Also, from a creative standpoint, we used the ad films along with Static creatives to add multiple messages that make strong points about Blue Dart – these could be facts not generally in the limelight but imagery which needed to be put across to our audiences.

4. According to you, how can one get the messaging right for a Video Ad campaign?

As an internal brand custodian, there are many salient points and value propositions that one may want to highlight. 

However, the danger of saying too many things is we end up confusing our audience. 

We believe in weeding out the things that add complexity and take away from the simplicity of Blue Dart. 

That way one arrives at a single-minded proposition which makes the communication sharper and helps register the USP better.

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5. Name the team behind this

Agency: Network Advertising

Chief Operating Officer: D B Murli

Chief Creative Officer: Shayondeep Pal

Creative Team: Pervin Bhesania, Komal Ranjan

Account Management: GVK Samson, Arunashish Chaudhary

Production House: Karman Line Films

Director: Viveck Daaschaudhary

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About Ketan

I am a Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development at Blue Dart, South Asia’s premier express air and integrated transportation distribution and logistics company and part of the Deutsche Post DHL group.
I have a rich and varied experience of over 26 years across industries as diverse as FMCG,
Advertising, Alcoholic Beverages and Travel Goods.
I joined Blue Dart in December 2006, and am currently responsible for new business development, product innovations, process improvement, customer activation and loyalty, market research, strategic intelligence, public relations, corporate communications and sustainability.
I have been on an advisory council of the CMO Asia Council and have received numerous awards across forums in the areas of Marketing, Branding and Corporate Social Responsibility.
I also hold a jury position at the BSE – Corporate Responsibility Awards, the SIFE Enactus Panel and the Asia HR Congress.

About VidSaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Our approach to communication has always been to get the audience to sit up and take notice.” Ketan Kulkarni appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“The campaign ‘Badalti Soch’ is a representation of transformation and progressive thoughts today’s consumers have and what the brand stands for – changing the way things were done.”

 – Tulika Shukla, AVP, Brand Strategy & Communication, RentoMojo

Rentomojo has launched a new campaign targeting young professionals. The idea is to encourage renting furniture in this tough time. 

We talked to Tulika and learned how this idea emerged and how she and her team conceptualised the ad campaign.

Read on to know the story behind the campaign.

1. What was your thought process when you were creating the Ad campaign?

In a country where buying furniture is considered a primary way, renting had many stigmas attached to it of not being able to own the products, less awareness towards recycling and reuse and low environmental consciousness. 

Renting furniture and appliances was never a mainstream choice when it came to furnishing homes, 5 years from today. 

Moreover, it was an unorganised market involving hassles of visiting second-hand markets or dealing with strangers, lack of surety in quality, and additional stress in pickup/delivery. 

RentoMojo revolutionised the way people furnish their homes by renting furniture and appliances without moving a muscle. 

Today the customer does not want to get into the whole process of furnishing. The initial years went into educating customers and creating a shift in consumer mindset. 

Today, renting is the primary choice to furnish a home, for anyone looking to do it with convenience and ease. 

There has been a big change in the thoughts of consumers too and they understand the benefits of renting. 

Today they are making choices that matter to the environment, giving voice to brands who have a voice for themselves and embracing change. 

Our purpose is to create a brand that stands for this transformation and resonates with our customers. 

The idea is to share the big and small transformations in society and create a purpose-driven brand with powerful and relatable storytelling. 

2.  “Badalti Soch” is a nice concept – how did this idea come and how did you execute the idea?

The campaign ‘Badalti Soch’ is a representation of transformation and progressive thoughts today’s consumers have and what the brand stands for – changing the way things are done. 

The rental subscription category is rapidly growing but lacks an emotional connection and this campaign was created to increase brand affinity and appreciate the consumers who are breaking barriers and are everyday changemakers. 

Several people lost their jobs during this pandemic but it was encouraging to see people not giving up and carving a path on their own. 

There were many who took the plunge to start on their own and during these difficult times, create jobs for themselves and many others. 

Our ad was inspired by these young professionals who transformed the traditional ways of doing things. 

During this time, WFH as a category also saw huge organic demand and we decided to create a narrative that positions renting as a progressive, transformed way of lifestyle. 

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3.  What best practices do you follow when it comes to executing video ads?  Is there any internal checklist before you launch a campaign?   

Creating stories and stories that relate requires a lot of process, planning and rigour, right from ideation to launch. 

What has worked before may not work now and hence, adding relevance, to the content is very important. 

We have developed some best practices and also borrowed learnings from the most loved campaigns in India and the world. 

The foremost step is to validate if the idea/story is relatable and shareworthy. 

Research in small groups within the organisation and outside on the concept, identifying and finalising the right set of metrics to chase and accordingly finalising the media. 

Spend a lot of time on the brief and make sure the understanding is similar to everyone contributing to the video. 

Ensure team members, internal and external, have a lot of freedom while going through the creative process. 

Ensuring timely and structured feedback is very important. 

Since we are a digital-first brand, we have a few checks for videos:

• Clear CTA and brand appearance in the video
• If the video is in Hindi, use English subtitles so it can be understood by non-Hindi speaking audience too
• SEO optimised title, description and CTAs linked with the video on each platform where the video is published
• Creating 5-second promo for remarketing (works well on YouTube)
• Visually appealing thumbnail and cover image on the video

4. What mistakes our community members should avoid when it comes to planning ad campaigns?

Every team and individual may have their own way of approaching a campaign. 

Some of the things that have worked in our favour are complete clarity of what output to expect right from when the brief is structured and not leaving anything to chance. 

As much as you trust in the creative process and a good content piece, you must plan for its distribution too. 

Another important aspect is to trust every team member to deliver. 

Invest the experience only in reducing the effort for doing known things and taking risks to explore new territories. 

If you are hiring an agency/individual, ensure the output comes through collaboration and not micromanagement of the output.

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5. Please name the team behind this campaign.

The entire campaign was ideated and planned inhouse.
Production House: Veda Media House, Mumbai
Director: Jay Bhansali

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About Tulika ( in her own words)

I hail from a small town, Bhilai and like many I became a Marketing Professional by pure serendipity. 

My interest grew more when I started reading case studies in the B-school, understanding consumer behaviour etc. 

My first job allowed me to understand Semiotics – a study of signs and symbols that gave me a very structured approach to thinking and applying insights in problem-solving.

I have 8 years of experience and I aim to learn every day and get better than my previous self. 

RentoMojo has been the biggest learning ground and is also a brand that I have scaled from scratch and it gives me immense pleasure to see the brand being recognised by people.

When I started working, I was surrounded by strong women leaders, who managed life and work so well that it looked effortless. 

I believe there is a need for more women leaders and role models who can inspire and set an example for the coming generation of the workforce and my aim is to work and be one myself so more small-town girls like me know and believe that they can achieve anything.

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About VidSaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Spend a lot of time on the brief and make sure the understanding is similar to everyone contributing to the video. ” – Tulika Shukla appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

Audiences don’t want to watch your ad. They want to watch a story, a touching moment, a gag, anything which will engage and entertain them”

– Falgun Bhatt, Head Marketing, Shree Renuka Sugars

Madhur Sugar launched a campaign on Karwa Chauth and roped in celebrities – Karanvir Bohar and Teejay Sidhu. 

In spite of being a big festival, not many brands have used Karwa Chauth for marketing purposes. So, this is definitely an interesting move from the Madhur Sugar marketing team.

We talked to Falgun – the brain behind the campaign and learned the story of how they conceptualised and executed the ad film.

Read on..

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1. What is Madhur Sugar’s internal process of coming up with a campaign?

 Madhur Sugar’s internal process for coming up with a campaign started a year back when we met up with a lot of consumers through a structured process called consumer immersion. 

We spent hours talking to each of our TG members – consumers and non-consumers of Madhur Sugar. 

There were data points we needed responses on, but it was also a very freewheeling chat, which allowed us to understand the relationship with and expectations from Madhur Sugar. 

We dug into her apprehensions, fears, ambitions, joys, responsibilities, and defined the role we wanted to play in her life – to help her and her family enjoy guilt free indulgence. 

All sugar applications, barring beverages are indulgences – be it for western desserts or Indian sweets. Given the role we wanted to play in her life, we thought of how best to celebrate the guilt free indulgence, and out came the campaign!

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2. Please share the story behind the campaign – Karwa Chauth with Karanvir Bohra and Teejay Sidhu.

The thought process here was very simple – Karva Chauth with Karanvir Bohra & Teejay Sidhu film is a part of the much larger ‘Indulgence’ campaign. 

Every film, including this one, was about how our face lights up on seeing our favourite sweet/dessert and how when we relish the first bite of it, it is like tasting heaven itself. Specifically, this film marked the occasion of Karva Chauth. 

We at Madhur love Karva Chauth, just as we love all festivals and traditions, not the least because each tradition and custom has food very inseparably linked to it. 

Here too, after fasting all day long for your partner’s health, breaking your fast is as much sensory as it is emotional. 

The film celebrates the love, which is often the foundation to the celebration of these festivals – where this year Karanvir has instead fasted for Teejay, and is unfortunately stuck at work due to which he is unable to break the fast on time. 

Teejay uses some ‘magic’ to feed him his first bite of his favourite sweet and helps him break the fast. 

I loved the film a lot, as it had copious amounts of emotion, fun, light playful teasing, but most of all, there was the sweet!

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3. How marketers should approach celebrity hiring/ endorsement?  

I prefer approaching celebs hiring/endorsing with a bit of heart and a bit of mind. Mind tells you what celeb is the perfect fit – someone who influences a large portion of your TG without wasting him/herself on the wrong audiences. 

For e.g. Madhur Sugar has benefited immensely by having Anita Hassanandani, Surbhi Jyoti, Karanvir Bohra, Karishma Tanna, etc. talking about its benefits. 

Being TV stars, they are not only immensely popular and loved, but the male audiences aren’t as high as, for e.g. in case of cricketers and film stars. 

Nothing against male audiences, it’s just that Madhur Sugar’s TG is Women aged 25-45 yrs old! However, this is as far as the mind will take you. 

More important is the heart’s role which starts from here. It is important to feel the film, and see if it touches you, in the way it is designed to. Whether the brand has a role to play, whether it is as indispensable in the film as the celeb him/herself. 

Whether the attributes and benefits are coming out strongly. But most importantly, is the integration and story looking seamless or forced. If forced, then go back to the drawing board. 

Audiences don’t want to watch your ad. They want to watch a story, a touching moment, a gag, anything which will engage and entertain. 

If in the process, the brand gets highlighted, great. But they dont sign up to watch the ad. Ever.

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4. What mistakes Marketers should avoid when it comes to planning festival marketing campaigns?

Celebrate. Don’t preach.

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About Falgun (in his own words)

My childhood has been the most joyful. I was born and raised in Gujarat, where the people and even savouries are sweet. 

I was always passionate about food, just like everyone else in my family. It is perhaps karma then, that I forever ended up serving and nurturing food brands all my life! 

On a lighter note, however, I observed very early in life that food was the one joy that remained consistent from the youngest to the oldest of ages. 

There are various other passions that one cultivates at different ages, but relatively speaking, they are transient. It is playing sports at some age, romance at another age, and passion for work and material riches at the older age. 

However, something everyone equally remains passionate about is food. Further, it is the sweet taste, amongst all other taste, that remains a continual love interest. 

It is perhaps the first taste you relish as a baby and the craving for something sweet at the end of the meal is something you retain through your life! 

Of course being a Gujarati, I love the sweet taste so much I don’t even wait till the end of my meal – I need it in my veggies and dals!

Another strong influence growing up has been watching my father who served Amul almost all his life and retired as the head of QA and R&D. 

Contrary to popular beliefs, we never got free samples which was an immense learning for me in personal integrity. 

However what shaped my attitude towards an honest disposition was that he spent a lot of his income buying Amul products, and occasionally even gifting them to friends and relatives. 

Such was his immense belief in the quality and excellence of his company’s products. It has always been my endeavour to not only serve with such belief, but also use all influence at my command to ensure only the very best of products hit the market shelves. 

Luckily, all the brands that I have served until now have been ethical on this aspect, but it’s a lesson for life.

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About VidSaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “It is important to feel the film, and see if it touches your audience” – Falgun Bhatt appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“The reason to buy a car has changed drastically. Earlier, maybe it was still an aspiration product but it’s on its way to becoming a functional product that keeps you in a trusted and safe environment. ” – Gaurav Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer at GirnarSoft (Cardekho, Gaadi.com, Zigwheels)

Cardekho’s latest “The Everyday Hero” video marketing campaign is inspired by a real life incident.

This slice-of-life ad is based on inspiring retired doctors, who are over 60 years old and still want to serve their doctor’s duties during the pandemic.

We talked to Gaurav who told us the story behind conceptualizing and executing the campaign.

Read on to know how they have changed their marketing communication, what impact Covid19 had on media distribution and more.

1. How exactly do you plan any ad campaign at Cardekho?

Automobiles are a high involvement purchase decision, so before putting some media weight behind an ad, it’s more about explaining to people why this product is good for them. 

Buying a car or a bike is good for them, and it’s mostly related to what’s going on in their life in their immediate environment. 

I think that educational relatability or awareness becomes very very important when it comes to high involvement purchase decisions like a car or two-wheeler 

Then we try and see what the cultural insights are, and what societal insights might be inspiring for us to tell the story. 

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2. How did you conceptualize the  “Everyday Heroes” campaign?

 “Everyday Heroes” – After the pandemic obviously people were more open to owning a car or a two-wheeler because of trust and safety issues. 

And we saw that our traffic is at its all time highest right now with minimal marketing investments. So we understand that people are looking for this information, but a lot of those users are new to the internet. 

They might not know how to navigate and make the best use of the options that are out there, which is why I think we understand whom we are talking to. And then we also understood that life has changed in the last six to seven months, how you used to buy a car. 

The reason to buy a car has changed drastically. Earlier, maybe it was still an aspiration product but it’s on its way to becoming a functional product that keeps you in a trusted and safe environment. 

So it’s not a luxury anymore, mobility is becoming a necessity, be that a two wheeler or a four wheeler. With that in mind, we understood that we couldn’t continue with, similar ways of marketing that we used to do earlier, 

Now this idea came when Rajdeepak Das of Leo Burnett, narrated his father’s story, who is a retired doctor back in Orissa, and recently he said I’m going to go back and provide my services to people who need those, and obviously Raj, was a bit sceptical about it because his dad is over 60.

And his dad said I’m going and he did go. Dr Das is actually active now with his doctor’s duties, but it is up to Raj to actually make sure that he reaches the hospital or the clinic in a trusted manner, in a safe manner, which is the genesis of the story. 

And if you look at the whole ad “Everyday Heroes”, that’s pretty much the entire story of a retired doctor rushing to go back.

We created a parallel campaign for Bikedekho as well., Two wheeler demand came back stronger because of rural India getting less impacted, government money was reaching rural India, good monsoon, etc. 

So the rural economy kicks back faster than the urban economy, much earlier in July, August, and which is why we also launched our first campaign for Bikedekho.

 And if you look at it, the storytelling format is a bit different but the insights are the same, every day the fear has given way to hope and the fact that we know how to fight it. We need to get on with our lives. 

 But the question was, how to do it in the safest and the most trusted manner possible. 

3. As you said it was inspired by a real-life incident. Any other insights you had while planning the campaign? 

So I think the fundamentals have not changed. We know that people want to trust it moreover to transportation. Like the Bikedekho campaign, I spoke to you. 

There are a lot of similarities between Bikedekho and Cardekho. People are going to do their work but in their car or bike. 

So if you look at both the campaign they’re having the same insight. The earlier car campaign was also based on the same insight, so insights have not changed, the narrative changed. 

Once, when Raj narrated the story, and which is why insight is the same, and the narration is different.

This was the representation of the reality that we saw, either in Dr. Das’s life or in the other professionals and people who have been helping the country get back on its feet. 

We just took inspiration from that and it’s very true, which is why it’s so relatable. 

A viewer can’t say that it’s exaggerated. I think that’s because you stayed very close to reality. And that’s why this campaign has done so well for us.

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4. So, once you are done with any campaign, how do you launch it? Is there any checklist you follow?

I think before the script goes to production, there is research that happens on the script. What do people like, what are people understanding, and what people do not grasp that we want them to grasp? And this process helps us iron out all the potential flaws in the script.

And that’s the first part, what are people responding to, Do they like the humour or the thing that is not relatable? 

And all these kinds of fixes are done in what we call the research stage. 

A media buying ethos has always been driven by our own custom models that we make in tandem with TAM ratings, RAM ratings and the other ratings that any media planner has access to. 

But we have our own custom econometric models to tell us what works for us and what doesn’t, and then we invest accordingly. 

After merging both the voices of truth, we pick up the media. 

Then the third piece is the seasonality or the timing of the campaign. We launched this campaign on 18 September, which is the end of Shraadhs. And that obviously kicks off the whole consumer purchase festive season, leading them to Dhanteras. 

So we knew that the timing was also right, so these 2-3 things, getting the product right, and getting the customer support right, keep on happening in the background. from the time we start thinking about the campaign.

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5. Has anything changed when it comes to distribution after the pandemic?

So, in the offline media, certain genres went up while many went down drastically.

For example:

Sports went down because there were no live sports so and so forth. Radio consumption went down because of cars not being on the road. The print went down because circulation was not happening.

A lot of people were disallowing newspapers. The impact of the outdoors went down because people were not on the road. 

At the same time, certain genres have picked up a lot like infotainment picked up quite a bit, and the whole online OTT space boomed because people were consuming that a lot so that boomed a lot.

Social media consumption went to an all-time high. Gaming as a sector went out to an all-time high, so from a media placement perspective, picked up a lot. I think these are some of the changes that happened during the pandemic.

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6. What advice would you like to give to marketers on designing, conceptualizing, and strategizing ad film?

The first and foremost thing is, to think from a consumer’s perspective, what problem are you solving for that person. 

As marketers, we just think that if we launch a new feature, a new product,  it’s the best thing ever. And we just talk about it. 

We spend a lot of marketing money behind it, without really doing the due diligence, whether it solves a real life problem for consumers or if that problem is big enough or not. 

So I think the first thing is to think, about what you’re building, what you’re producing as a service or a product, and whether is it solving a real life problem for your consumer. 

It can be big, it can be small. But then it’s a real life problem that you’re solving. If you start from there, then marketing is a pretty easy thing to do. 

If you are asking the right questions, then a marketing campaign’s success probability is always higher. 

Marketers also need to be curious, what worked earlier might not work today. And the same is the case with consumer behaviour, what worked earlier is not working today. 

Like we had a campaign all ready to go in the month of March. But then, that’s not the campaign that we saw in September, because we knew that what we were going to talk about in March is not going to be relevant anymore. That’s not the problem we are solving. And then, which is why we went back to the drawing board and then we launched this campaign which is 180 degrees away from the March campaign. 

The second thing is I think, to be process driven, creativity is subjective. What I like you might hate and vice versa. So it’s not like what he or she likes is the best thing ever. 

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7. How are you making yourself redundant in the whole process, and making the process the champion? 

As marketers, you’re responsible for a lot of money. And if you’re going to be investing through your gut or bias then a lot of  failures are bound to happen, 

Your gut or bias will be very very important because the experience is supercritical. But that’s not the only thing.

Another piece of advice I can give to marketers, be consumer-oriented rather than designation oriented.

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About Gaurav (in his own words)

I am the Chief Marketing and Content Officer for Cardekho Group, which includes Bikedekho as well. 

I have been working for almost 18 and a half years. Past twelve and a half years I have been in digital businesses. 

In 2008, I joined Yahoo, I was there for four and a half years and the stint taught me a lot. In 2013 Jan, I joined OLX, I was the Chief Marketing Officer of South Asia, OLX, I was there for four years, and helped create and establish their whole C2C industry. 

And for the past almost four years I have been at Cardekho.. I’ve been an entrepreneur in the past and had my own branding and marketing consulting firm called Brand DNA. That is, way back in the past for three and a half years. 

So these are the more notable milestones in the past 18 and a half years and I stay in Gurgaon.

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About Vidsaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Be process driven, creativity is subjective. What I like you might hate and vice versa” – Gaurav Mehta appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“Each campaign should only have one clear-cut objective. Macro division of objective can be a Branding campaign versus Performance campaign. 

Don’t try to achieve both with the same campaign. Believe me, you may end up achieving none.”

Anand Rathi’s “Plan for you” campaign seems to be an interesting approach to reaching out to prospects and celebrating their 25+ year journey. 

The campaign has 8 short ads with each ad targeting a different micro-segment. In terms of creativity, ads are simple yet effective.

We talked to Devang to learn the story behind making these video ads. Read on.

1. What is Anand Rathi’s internal process of creating an ad campaign?

At Anand Rathi, we have built a CMT (Central Marketing Team) and BMT (Business Marketing Team) system. 

The CMT has a marketing executive as well as designers and video editors and this team functions like an in-house Marketing consultant cum Creative agency to all our business verticals including Investment Services, Wealth Management, Insurance Broking, Investment Banking, Institutional Equities, NBFC, OFA, and Women-centric Investment arm – LXME.

We follow a simple yet streamlined process regarding new campaign creation. 

Step 1: Understanding the business requirement, where we talk to the business, understand the exact requirement, make a problem statement, and then turn it into an internal brief of what needs to be made.

Step 2: It’s the step where the Marketing Executive brainstorms various ideas within CMT, surfs the internet and gets reference images/videos, creates a draft framework of the campaign in ppt, and presents it to the business with costs (if any for images/stock videos, etc).

Step 3: Finalizing the media and platforms where the campaign should be published.

Step 4 : Creation of the actual campaign & various assets and execution of the campaign as per the pre-decided marketing calendar.

Step 5 : Monitoring, optimizing, and reports stage, where we optimize the campaign and try to get the best results and share the reports with businesses. 

2. What was your thought process when you were planning the campaign – “Plan for you”? 

When it comes to Anand Rathi, ‘Plan for you’ is a very special campaign. It is made to celebrate our 25+ years milestone in the Financial Industry. 

We felt the best way to celebrate the milestone was to come up with an integrated video campaign that could bring out our core speciality as a group, which is financial planning. 

‘Plan for you’ campaign is a series of thumb-stopping, quirky, topical, and crisp 15 second videos that deliver our core message in a fun manner. 

Our campaign brings out various types of cricket fans/types of Investors. Cricket fans in a way depict various types of Investors and the common attributes that fans and Investors have like being hopeful, aggressive, Tip believer and so on. 

It also delivers our core message that no matter which type of fan/investor you are, we have a plan for you. 

The campaign has been strategically created and placed to capitalize on the cricket fever across India due to IPL. Right from the scripts, ambience, characters, as well as their attire, have been thoughtfully crafted to depict cricket. 

Even the release of most of the ads is timed with the actual team playing cricket on a particular day.

Check out – Top 25 Global Video Marketing Disruptors

3. How did you conceptualize the campaign?

For conceptualizing the campaign, we joined hands with Communications startup Wondrlab. 

We wanted an agile team that could build our equity and weave in our brand’s values, but at the same time, create a campaign that would go viral. Wondrlab managed this balance perfectly. 

Our brief to them was very simple – We have completed 25 years in financial solutions and have the expertise to create tailored plans for every type of Investor out there and we want this essence to come out through the campaign. 

They came up with multiple campaign ideas (a few very courageous and dramatic) and after multiple rounds of evaluations with all internal stakeholders, we went ahead with the ‘Plan for you’ campaign.

‘Plan for you’ is a digital-first campaign that has been created for Digital and has been extended to TV instead of the other way around which is generally done by major brands. 

The media plan and release were well coordinated with cricket matches happening on any particular day and the ads were disseminated through OTT platforms, Social media, financial websites, and TV. 

4.  What best practices do you follow when it comes to executing video ads?  

 Video ads are one of the best mediums available today, through which a Brand can convey a story and embed their product and service in it. 

However the digital behaviour of users is changing dramatically, the attention span of users is the lowest ever, and also there is a war between brands to get space in the user’s minds. 

With this kind of dynamic digital environment, your ads need to be like street performers. They have to occupy a crowded space and try to catch attention as soon as possible. The video ads have to be short and too good to ignore or scroll.

We follow a few basic principles to make sure our ads get the attention they deserve.

a) Keep it short and try to grab attention early: With the user’s attention span being as low as 5-6 seconds, we prefer short and crisp ads that not only grab attention but also make the viewer stay right till the end of the ad.

b) Throughout Branding: With shorter ads, comes shorter Brand visibility. When the ads are short and crisp, revealing the brand logo at the end should not be an option. In our ads, our brand logo stays throughout the ad on the left top giving us 100% Brand visibility.

c) Have Subtitles: Today, nearly 85% of videos on FB are played in mute mode. Most other social platforms also autoplay videos when you scroll but in mute mode. This makes subtitles insanely important. Either your ad should be complete and understandable without sound or should have subtitles. 

d) Mobile First: When producing the ads, make sure all your camera angles, cuts, frames, etc are designed keeping mobile viewing in mind. Fast or too many cuts, too many elements in each frame, minor nuances, small fonts, etc is a strict no-no when creating something for Mobile viewing.

e) Have a clear CTA: Clear CTA means less junk in your LMS. If your ads do not have a clear CTA, people tend to click on them for no reason and eventually, you end up having unwanted leads.  

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5. What mistakes Marketers and Businesses should avoid when it comes to planning ad campaigns?

Every Marketer has a different set of mistakes that they have learned from. 

Here are the mistakes that I have learned from and should be avoided while planning and or executing any campaign.

1.Having multiple objectives: Many brands make the mistake of having multiple objectives while planning campaigns. 

Each campaign should only have one clear-cut objective. The Macro division of objective can be a Branding campaign versus a Performance campaign. 

You should understand that leads would be a by-product of a Branding Campaign and vice versa. 

Don’t try to achieve both with the same campaign. Believe me, you may end up achieving none.

2. Copying / Ignoring Competition: Another major mistake many brands do is to either copy what the competition is doing or ignore what their competition is up to. 

As a marketer, you must track what your competition is doing not with the sense of copying them but to be informed and learn from their success and failures.

3. Trying to create one campaign that appeals to everyone: It is very important to know your target audience. 

Their age, their location, their life stage, their tech usage, and their behavioural traits. 

If you know your customers, you will know that each one of them is different. You can club people with similar attributes in common segments but still, you may end up with multiple segments. 

This makes it clear that it is difficult to have one campaign that would have the right message and would appeal to every segment. 

Always create audience-specific campaigns and run them digitally with respective targeting for the best results.

Check out these interesting Video Marketing Campaign Stories

6. Please name the team behind this campaign.

The Plan for You campaign was spearheaded by a core team that includes 

Priti Rathi Gupta (MD, Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers Ltd and Founder of LXME), 

Amit Rathi (MD, Anand Rathi Wealth Management), 

Myself, Devang Mehta (Head of Marketing for Anand Rathi Group), 

Ashley Almeida (Associate Director, Anand Rathi Wealth Management). 

For execution, the core team was well assisted by other members of the Marketing team including Kapil Sharma, Kartik Waghela, Lilly Geddam, Umesh Choudhary, and Prashant Kasbe.

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About Devang (in his own words)

Born and brought up in a Gujarati middle-class family in a (then) remote place called Bhayander on the outskirts of Mumbai. 

I finished my schooling at Holy Cross High School. Being born into a middle-class family with limited resources had its benefits. 

The value of money was instilled in me and my brother right from our childhood days. In my childhood, I would finish school and would go to my father’s printing press to help him learn. 

A freelance designer used to visit the office every day and I used to sit behind and see the magic he would create on the computer. 

He would start with a blank white file and would convert it into fascinating brochures, catalogue fliers, etc. I could see the whole work right from scratch to the final printed collateral. 

This is what laid the seed of creativity in me. I was so fascinated by computers and graphic software, that I would wait for the freelance designer to leave so that I could try what I saw. 

With trial and error, I learned almost every software needed for designing right during my childhood.

As I said, I was born into a financially tight Gujarati family, we (me and my brother) had to support our own pocket money at times. 

To no surprise, I have worked part-time after school for a few years on an ISD Telephone Booth as a telephone operator during my school days to earn Rs 400 per month. 

During college, I worked part-time as a sales field executive and sold varied products right from Petro cards by Bharat Petroleum, to Nightingale books in Archie’s to Quality Walls ice-creams and so on. 

I even did freelance designing and helped my father in his business while I completed my Bachelor in Commerce. 

I did my MBA in Marketing from ICFAI. There is a separate story behind why I did an MBA (despite me not being very studious), but let’s skip that in the best interest of our readers here. 

My first full-time job was with a company called Dawnay Day AV which was later called Destimoney. Post-Destimoney, I ventured into entrepreneurship and founded ‘Pencil to Pixel’ – A creative agency offering Marketing, Branding, and Media buying services to National and a few International clients. 

After spending nearly 5 years at Pencil to Pixel, I forayed back to corporates and joined Fast Track Housing Finance. 

After a small stint of 6 months at Fasttrack, I moved on to Motilal Oswal Financial Service, and today I am with Anand Rathi Group, heading their Marketing & Branding function.

About VidSaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “A major mistake brands do is to either copy or ignore what their competition is doing.” – Devang Mehta appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“I do take decisions based on gut feeling sometimes. However, when it comes to designing brand campaigns that can connect with a set of target audience and drive high impact, I believe that doing consumer research is the right approach.”

BharatPe has come up with an interesting campaign where they tried to bypass the traditional approach of getting the logo on players’ jerseys and yet associate cricketers to drive the message.

We talked to the Head of Marketing – Abhishek. He trained in seven countries for Marketing, skied in the Swiss Alps, scuba-dived in the Strait of Malacca, road-tripped across Europe, and climbed up an active volcano in Spain.

Read on to learn more about him and the exact story behind the campaign.

1.  What was your thought process when you were planning this campaign?

Cricket is an ‘unrivalled’ communication platform in reach, engagement, and therefore, impact.

We have always connected with small merchants through authentic, credible communication by keeping it light and fun like in last year’s campaign with Bollywood superstar, Salman Khan. 

The objective of the new campaign is to build demand for our products and services and to humanize the brand. The campaign will serve as a quirky reminder to team up with BharatPe to grow your business.

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2. Please tell us the story behind this campaign.

The idea came up in an internal discussion. The brainstorming session was around how we can disrupt the cluttered marketing in IPL and create a high impact. 

We have seen that to associate with IPL, multiple brands try to pick up logo placements in different team jerseys in the IPL. The costs tend to be high, the ROI may not be in line, and it is already done to death. 

The discussion was to do something that is unheard of, so we can stand out and make a big impact. Cricket was a good bet as it is a great unifier and connects across our diverse cultures.”

The campaign was devised around the concept of #TeamBharatPe which supports small shop owners in growing their businesses. 

We decided to go ahead with a team of 11 cricketers as we wanted to bring home the message that our team of financial products can help SMEs scale their businesses and make more profits.

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3. What is your distribution methodology? How do you measure the success of the campaign?

Our media mix consisted of news across Hindi and regional channels as our objective is to drive reach in the most cost-effective way. TV as a medium has worked in moving both business & brand equity metrics for us.

For us, success is moving both brand equity & business metrics in an incremental way. We have our market research programs running all across the year on the ground to measure the brand equity metrics and monitor the daily movement in the business metrics to beef up the campaign as and when required. 

4. According to you, how important is creativity in advertising, and how to make sure it delivers results as well?

I believe in using Creativity as a competitive advantage. 

Creative practices such as design thinking and human centered design put a strong emphasis on problem solving through innovative ideas, generating a memorable customer journey and developing products and services that solve a specific problem and create real meaning and value for the customer.

I do take decisions based on gut feeling sometimes. However, when it comes to designing brand campaigns that can connect with a set of target audiences and drive high impact, I believe that doing consumer research is the right approach. 

This is because it helps you better understand the customer sentiment, design your campaign based on what works well with your audience base and hence, increase the possibility of success. 

Data and in-depth analysis enable intelligent and informed decision making.

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5. Please name the team behind this campaign.

Brand Head – Abhishek Shah,

Director – Puneet Malhotra (who directed Student of the Year 2),

Director of Production- Kiran Deohans,

Producer- Tejinder Singh with the Agency – ArtE Media Pvt. Ltd.

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About Abhishek (in his own words)

My passion lies in crafting strategies & communication that cut through the clutter to deliver exceptional business outcomes.

Being an IIFT MBA graduate, I have an extensive marketing career spanning- Brand, Media, Marketing Research, Analytics, and Digital Acquisition Marketing.

I am the man behind building one of the strongest FinTech brands in the country today. Before BharatPe I worked with IPL, IKEA, ShopClues, and the TATA group companies. 

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About Vidsaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Success is moving both brand equity & business metrics in an incremental way” – Abhishek Shah appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“The single line brief given to the agency was to bring out the most important aspect of Aegon Life Insurance i.e. to help our customers secure their families financial needs in case of any uncertainty and thus ensuring tension-free life.” – Ashish Sharma

Occasion/ Festival based campaigns are not new and most of the time they are forced. There should be a natural alignment of marketing communication with the theme of the “day”. This makes these campaigns tricky.

Aegon Life came up with a campaign on Independence Day – “Tension Se Azaadi”. We talked to Ashish who built this campaign with his team.

Let’s learn the story and thought process behind the campaign.

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1. How do you approach a video ad campaign at Aegon Life?

For any video ad campaign that we do at Aegon Life, first, we define clear objectives for the campaign and set measurable goals against it. 

Goals that focus on increasing leads/inquiries are defined by clear campaign objectives of driving sales while certain campaigns only focus on branding aspects with an objective to get higher brand recall and recognition, higher customer engagement, video views, etc. 

In addition to setting clear objectives and goals for our campaigns, we make sure the messaging and execution-style for all our video ad campaigns is developed keeping in mind our audience persona & profile and is delivered in a way that is most natural to them. 

2.  What insights did you have when you planned the “Tension Se Azaadi” campaign?

We looked at varied aspects of freedom embraced by people in today’s time. Independence in current times has a whole different meaning than what it was years ago, and it keeps evolving and changing with time.  

What has remained constant as one of the most important parameters of freedom is living a life free of Stress / Tension which is often related to financial freedom and security for your loved ones. 

While there are many ways to achieve and experience freedom, the current unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic has urged people to sit back and think about security for themselves and their loved ones. 

Protection through life insurance is one way of securing family finances and ensuring a tension-free life, thus obtaining #TensionSeAzaadi”.

Check out – Top 25 Global Video Marketing Disruptors

3. How did the idea come and evolve? Who wrote the lyrics? How did you design the visuals?

The campaign was developed by Brandmovers India.  The Senior Account Management team at Brandmovers led by Mr. Sidharth Nandakumar and Mr. Aejaz Zerdi, along with the copy lead Mr. Purab Saxena played an important role in shaping this campaign. 

The single-line brief given to the agency was to bring out the most important aspect of Aegon Life Insurance i.e. to help our customers secure their families’ financial needs in case of any uncertainty and thus ensure a tension-free life.

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4. What advice would you like to give to our community members when it comes to occasion based video marketing campaigns? 

Keep it short, messaging should have a natural connection to the occasion and visual appeal.

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5. Please name the complete team behind this campaign.

I would especially like to mention Gerald Dsouza (AVP Marketing at Aegon Life), Harish Kurudi ( Head & VP Product Development and Marketing ), and the entire Brandmovers India led by Mr. Suvajyoti Ghosh, (Founder and Chief Creative Officer)  for driving the entire concept of #TensionSeAzaadi.

About Ashish in his own words

I was born and raised in Delhi and now live in Mumbai. I started working in the year 2011 and spent around 8 years working for different advertising agencies.

Post work, I help my friend manage his café which is hugely popular with the backpackers and work on some ideas to set up a guest house/hostel for travellers. 

Learning graphic designing and organic farming are on my 2020 to-do list.

About Vidsaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Keep it short, messaging should have a natural connect to the occasion and visual appeal.” – Ashish Sharma appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

 “At Crompton we have been working to keep strengthening our understanding of the consumer and uncover the little things that make a difference.”

Crompton has a history of creating some very interesting campaigns. This time, they have created their new campaign, “Silence bhi Savings,” for their no-noise fans range. 

So, we decided to talk to Rohit and learn what goes behind their campaign strategy. 

Read on to know the story.

1. What is Crompton’s internal process for creating an ad campaign?

Our process for coming up with an ad campaign is pretty much standard. 

However, a couple of things that we focus on to ensure we get things right are :

• Identify the winning innovations at our end after testing them well.
• Write a sharp and clear brief

We make it a point to get input from everyone on the team during the creative presentations and incorporate relevant suggestions. 

So far, we have worked with Bhavesh (Cutawayy Films) on the films. He, too, has a solid understanding of the Crompton personality, and his contributions are critical to the output.

2.  Please tell us the story behind this campaign – “#SilenceBhiSavingsBhi”?   What was the overall thought process?

At the heart of it is the product insight that we had, which all of us unknowingly compensate for various things in our lives that make some sound. 

For example, you tend to speak louder on the phone when the TV is on or increase the volume of the TV when the fan is on at full speed etc. 

As we worked on this, we realised that consumers felt they would immensely benefit if they had a silent fan. So we didn’t stop there and asked ourselves what other benefit could be bundled into this. 

As it turns out with the current pandemic savings and financial security also came up as concerns. 

Hence, the product proposition for SilentPro is one that not only promises you silence but offers energy savings as you use the product as well.

In our campaigns, we have portrayed a young couple representative of our TG – theirs is a relationship of equals and looked to incorporate a friendly, realistic banter that would exist between the two. 

In fact, we always refer to them as Akash and Anjali in our discussions with BBDO. 

Akash is a little loud and Anjali draws a comparison between the old noisy fan and Akash, pulling his leg and saying “purana fan tumse bhi jyaada awaaz karta hai”. 

This banter continues when they have a bet that Anjali wins and gets one of the most prized items, the TV remote! 

Our consumer insights have shown that increasingly women are taking on a more significant role in managing the household even for categories like electrical products which previously would be the domain of the male. 

The ad is true to our brand persona as well as the tonality w.r.t. showcasing a progressive young couple who enjoy a playful relationship for whom home and its décor are an important part of their lives.

3. How do you measure the results of your ad campaigns?

As a brand we have focussed on increasing awareness of Crompton and tracking those scores will be the primary metric. Apart from this, we will also look at the impact on sales and our market shares.

We will also understand the performance of the creative across the TG and markets to understand how well it is working.

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4. What advice would you like to give to budding marketers when it comes to executing ad campaigns?

The sharper the message to be delivered the better the outcomes. Media clutter coupled with a decline in attention spans leaves brands with a tough path to tread.

Check out – Top 25 Global Video Marketing Disruptors

5. Please name the team behind this campaign.

The team that together made this campaign a reality is Jigar Shah, Malhar Vadke, Priyanka Pardeshi & Sanjay Prabhu worked on this campaign closely with BBDO & Cutawayy Films.

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About Rohit and his journey so far in Crompton (in his own words)

Crompton has been an unforgettable part of my life right from childhood. Not just in the form of ceiling fans that kept us cool in the Bombay weather but because my father would not allow any other brand of ceiling fans! 

He had a PhD in electrical motors from Bristol, UK, so in such areas close to his heart we took his word for it and knew that there was something special about Crompton Greaves Fans. 

Sure enough, while growing up, the Crompton fans in our home worked tirelessly without any breakdowns thus slowly, steadily making its way into the minds of everyone in the family. 

This home truth that well-designed + engineered products will be appreciated by consumers has been borne out in my experience over the years and is something that I truly believe in.

At Crompton, we have been working to keep strengthening our understanding of the consumer and uncover the little things that make a difference. 

Since our existence as an independent company, we have worked hard on our portfolio of products. 

We have launched some innovative products that fulfil multiple unmet needs of our consumers. 

Not all of them have succeeded but have in the process strengthened our understanding of the consumer.

Two of the pillars we identified for winning in the future are steeped in what we do as a marketing unit. 

One of them is Brand excellence – which is all about how we build brand Crompton across the key categories we play in.

The other is Product excellence which focuses on innovation and new products that are clearly differentiated and required by the consumer of today.

About Vidsaga

Vidsaga is a global marketplace for Organisations to create Videos. Consider it as “Upwork/ Fiverr for videos” with Creative script writing and professional project management.

The post “Media clutter coupled with decline in attention spans are leaving brands with a tough path to tread” – Rohit Malkani appeared first on Vidsaga.com.

“The campaign is based on an interesting insight – which is, every time a senior citizen in your life sends you a meaningless forward like “Good Morning” or a motivational quote, etc, they are actually vying for your attention.”

– Piali Dasgupta, Senior VP Marketing, Columbia Pacific Communities

Creating a campaign around senior citizen’s loneliness is always tricky. but Columbia Pacific Pulled off aesthetically with a simple yet relatable video. 

We talked to Piali  to know their thought process behind  and the story of creating this latest campaign – “#ReplyDontReject”

Read on to know the story behind  their latest campaign

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1. What is Columbia Pacific Communities’ internal process of coming up with a marketing campaign?

At Columbia Pacific Communities, we plan between two and three brand campaigns a year, to take the brand philosophy of positive ageing forward. 

One of them is planned on World Senior Citizens Day (August 21), which, for us, is one of the most important days in the calendar year. 

For us, a brand campaign has to be conceived in a manner that says something extremely relevant or takes a step to make the lives of seniors better or unearths a powerful insight about them. 

A lot of what we do here is insight-based marketing because the demographic and the category that we serve have several interesting consumer insights that are waiting to be unearthed. 

Also, our attempt with each campaign is to change age-old perceptions about age and ageing in this country. 

When we sit down to brainstorm about campaign ideas as a team, the fundamental question that we ask ourselves is will this campaign help shatter age-related stereotypes/change ageist attitudes and how will it make the lives of seniors in our country better?

So, in that sense, it’s a simple enough process. For our performance marketing campaigns, however, it is more to do with our product offering and communicating the salient features of our product in an interesting manner to drive bottom-funnel objectives. 

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2.  What was your thought process when you were conceptualising the campaign – #ReplyDontReject. Please share the story behind.

The campaign is based on an interesting insight – which is, every time a senior citizen in your life sends you a meaningless forward like “Good Morning” or a motivational quote, etc, they are actually vying for your attention. 

And it is their way of telling you that they miss you, and they wished you would talk to them, send them a message, or call them to check on them. 

The campaign has been conceptualised by our integrated agency Famous Innovations. 

And the brief to them was: how do we sensitize more and more people towards the single biggest issue plaguing senior citizens today- loneliness?

This is more an initiative than a campaign. 

Recent data shows that 64.1% of India’s seniors suffer from loneliness. Loneliness is the single biggest cause of death for senior citizens. 

And as a senior care brand, we felt that it was about time we drew everyone’s attention to this global issue. 

With this campaign, we want to reach out to the brand’s secondary audience segment (the 25-40 age group) and encourage them to help seniors feel less lonely by connecting with them more often and not ignore their messages and attempts to reach out.  

This World Senior Citizens Day, through this campaign, we hope to sensitize the youth on the acute loneliness seniors live with, and why the gift of time is sometimes the best you can give seniors. 

From an execution point of view, we wanted people to take a pledge to reply to messages sent by seniors no matter how busy they are in their daily lives. 

So, we created a microsite (www.columbiacommunities.in/toseniorswithlove) within our website which would go live on August 21 (World Senior Citizens Day), where people can pledge to #ReplyDontReject. 

The microsite will also have other initiatives planned for World Senior Citizens Day, including the launch of a unique product – Cards Against Uncertainty (a pack of 52 cards to help beat feelings of despair, stress, and fear) and also The Positive Ageing Report – India’s first report on the changing attitudes on age and ageing, available to download for free for everyone.

Check out – What Media is writing about Vidsaga

3. Why did you decide to rope in Boman Irani and how it has helped the campaign?

Boman Irani embodies our brand philosophy of positive ageing. 

At 61, he is living his best life – acting, scriptwriting, enjoying being a grandfather, and being as productive as he possibly can. 

He is a true positive ager, looking at age as just a number and not letting it come in the way of his aspirations and dreams. 

He is enjoying the golden years of his life to the fullest and inspiring millions to begin life at 60. He is a true symbol of our “positive ageing” philosophy which believes that you are only as old as you feel.

Boman also has a huge connect with the brand’s secondary audience – people in the age bracket of 25 to 40, who we are trying to appeal to through this campaign. 

So, Boman was a natural choice for us.  

Check out – Top 25 Global Video Marketing Disruptors

4. What mistakes marketers should avoid when it comes to creating video campaigns or getting the communication right?

Whether it is a video campaign or otherwise, the first mistake marketers should avoid is to forget about the personality and the identity of the brand in a bid to hijack a trend. 

This particularly happens in moment marketing videos/content pieces. 

Being authentic and staying true to your brand’s target audience, personality, positioning, voice, and purpose is of utmost importance because today’s consumers can see through anything that is not real and authentic. 

We are living in an age of attention economy. 

The average human attention span is about 8 seconds today and is believed to be shorter than that of goldfish. 

Hence in a video campaign, telling a story and delivering an evocative message, sometimes within as little time as 15 seconds, and in most cases, in less than a minute, becomes imperative.

And that’s never an easy task, but one that has to be considered by all video marketers today. 

And finally, there is just too much clutter around us. All the time. There is never really a break from this clutter if you look at it from the consumer’s point of view. 

So, marketers need to think of effective ways of cutting through this noise and constant chatter and saying something only when there is something important enough to say. 

According to me, a 3-point checklist that ticks the following boxes should be considered by all marketers. 

– Is this a piece of content that will further your brand proposition/purpose/narrative and strengthen your positioning?

• Does it say something important/funny/witty/emotional enough to stand out in the clutter?
• Will it achieve at least one or more of your brand or business KPIs?

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About Piali (in her own words)

I was your typical introverted child who was not really popular in school, was surrounded by more books than friends and hated Math and Science with equal passion. 

I learnt classical dance like most Bengali kids, and also painting. 

I grew up in Calcutta, and left home and moved to Bangalore when I was 18. After college and university where I earned my Master’s degree in Communication, I started my career in journalism. 

I was a fashion journalist for a little over five years, spending a major part of that time with The Times of India. 

Given my Degree in Communication where you get exposed to various aspects of communication including Advertising, PR, Brand Communication and Marketing, Corporate Communication, and New Media, I wanted to explore other facets of Communication as well. 

Hence, I decided to switch over to the brand side, joining Myntra as their Fashion Editor to head their Content team. 

At Myntra, I drove YouTube and blog content, building content as a strong component of the customer lifecycle and driving commerce through content. 

Post Myntra, I moved to Amazon to set up social media for Amazon Fashion in India. I was also part of the core team at Amazon that worked on the Amazon India Fashion Week. 

SapientRazorfish (Publicis Groupe) was my next stop where I headed their Bangalore team and was also their Creative Director, handling digital practices for brands such as Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Peter England, People and Planet Fashion.

By then, I had spent a considerable amount of time in fashion and wanted to do something markedly different from it. 

When the opportunity from Columbia Pacific Communities came my way, what excited me the most about it was a chance to build a brand and a category from scratch. 

And in the past three years at Columbia Pacific Communities, while I have travelled a long distance, there is a long way to go in making the brand the region’s most favoured senior living community operator. 

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