Best marketing campaigns of 2017 — India

In 2017, we discussed many new trends that emerged in marketing in India. We debated the need of brands posting regularly on Facebook and also questioned if Indian internet businesses actually need celebrity brand ambassadors in their communication strategy to acquire new users.

We saw a lot of brands jumping on the IPL 10 brandwagon and how “selfie” was the dominant theme for smartphone marketers in 2017.

Like every year, 2017 saw a lot of interesting marketing campaigns. Similar to last year’s list of 10 best marketing campaigns, we have come up yet again with some of the best work in marketing that stood out for us. Goes without saying, that the shortlisted campaigns are not a function of views or media weights behind them. The criteria remains the same as follows,

1. Does it establish a positioning for the brand?
2. Does it integrate the product/service USP seamlessly with the brand message?
3. Does it establish a strong functional/emotional benefit for the end consumer?
4. Does it stand on a strong consumer insight?
5. Does it induce change in buying pattern or consumer behaviour?
6. Does the creative do justice to the overall idea?

Based on above, presenting our top marketing campaigns in 2017, in no particular order.

Mutual Funds Sahi Hai

For ages, a fast forwarded disclaimer tone was the first recall whenever we heard the words “mutual funds”.

Mutual funds are subject to market risk. Please read the offer documents carefully before investing.

While the above phrase still remains the bitter truth about mutual funds, it was important to break the shackles of this apprehension and see mutual funds as a potential investment option for the population with some disposable income. The evident objective of this campaign was to play up the simplicity and benefits of investing in mutual funds without getting into too many details.

The campaign shows people from all income classes engage in a short conversation and a catchy yet apt line “mutual funds sahi hai”.

According to Association of Mutual Funds in India, fund houses added an average of 8.8 lakhs accounts every month with an average size of Rs. 3300 per SIP account.

The objective of this campaign is not just to acquire or educate but also to change the perception. It successfully manages to convey people to start small but regularly thus increasing the ROI for the campaign as the LTV of every account acquired has the potential of years. This ensures that risk is minimized and mutual funds as a whole delivers, for more investors to welcome the same.

Check out the entire series below.

Zomato, Hotstar, Google Maps

.. and their super creative OOH campaigns.

Cracking an interesting, eye-catching, attention grabbing creative for out-of-home media is not an easy prospect. Despite there being multiple examples from the west, we don’t often come to see any majorly innovative work on the billboard front happening in India.

Billboards is not the go-to medium for big brands. It is purely dominated by local players and retail outlets. It’s primarily because of this reason that campaigns by Zomato, Hotstar and Google deserve a mention for trying something out of the box and being successful at it.

Research says that you have exactly 6 seconds of a consumer’s time for an outdoor advertisement. To communicate online food delivery or even benefit of Google Maps in a creative way is a challenge in itself. Not to mention the basics of talking to the right audience at the right location in the right local context.

Zomato

They could have easily given the below controversial ad a skip on the editing board.

A lot of people were miffed with this, terming it as misogynist and regressive. Source

The other creatives from the campaign were catchy enough for it to go viral. Campaigns like these open and set newer benchmarks when it comes to OOH on how a completely offline, push media can create conversations and buzz online.

Bollywood and food mixed with a local context is a win-win combination which is why the campaign clicks among its target audience. It does so without sacrificing on successfully portraying the functional benefits.

Check out below. A special mention to rely completely on text and font on a medium that has been traditionally visual.

Hotstar

Hotstar’s Game of Thrones campaign was right on point. While a show like G.O.T does not need any sort of promotion but the indirect competition that Hotstar was facing from torrents was contributing too much to their losses.

Personally, I am a strong believer of getting the product expectation and delivery sorted out before we go to market. Hotstar did exactly that by ensuring that it airs the episode the morning after the night it is aired worldwide. It also ensured that the experience of streaming it legally meant that there were no scenes cut from the original.

This could have been a run of the mill billboard campaign like a lot of other shows announced, but Hotstar stepped up and came up with a witty and contextual copy which struck a chord.

One thing to notice in both campaigns from Hotstar and Zomato is that it made content the hero and truly the king instead of obsessing over logos and throwing the brand on audience’s faces. The learning is, that your brand will get noticed if the content is on point and no matter how big your logo is on the ad it will still be a blind spot if the creative does not communicate to your target audience.

Other thing to learn from the above hoarding that it does not make an attempt to connect with everyone watching this. Hotstar realizes a huge number of Game of Thrones fans still download torrents and watch the show illegally. Instead of doing a plain outdoor ad it just tries to talk to that specific audience which is lower the funnel for them.

Google Maps

A lot of times on this blog we have stressed on the importance of extending your campaign beyond one medium to resonate with target audience across. This also holds true because the creative format that works on digital to TV to radio to OOH is completely different but the campaign thought needs to remain the same. Making sure, with the difference in creative formats, the audience is able to have the same takeaway is a task in itself.

Google maps does just that with its #LookBeforeYouLeave campaign. In case you are wondering why Google needs to advertise about maps in the first place,

Read here — Why is Google promoting maps in India?

The good part about these campaigns is that they do not apply a one size fits all approach. An easier approach could also have been just simply translating the same copy and creative for the local language. However, these campaigns go a step ahead and hyper local in the approach to truly speak to the audience for that 6 second attention span.

CEAT Tyres | #ItHelps

Honestly, they could have really done with a better line but the campaign scores full marks on a lot of other things. It captures the true observation and minute nuances of the daily traffic struggles of an average commuter and talks to the good samaritan, the one who uses CEAT.

The narrative is extremely simple and takes a border line sarcastic tone which connects. It also breaks the age old shackles of stressing about safety or shouting about complicated technology that has gone in making the tyres.

It understands the emotion called “Indian roads” and presents a solution in itself which is convincing enough. As Santosh Desai correctly and accurately captures in this article,

Indian traffic is not a mere occurrence but a test of some cosmic kind designed by powers higher than us. Several parallel universes descend on a narrow strip of road and conspire somehow not to collide, at least most of the time. For the one thing Indian traffic is guaranteed not to do is make us take anything for granted

Now that we have Mr. Santosh Desai’s beautiful summary on a metaphor called Indian traffic, the below ads will come across as a great creative justice to that particular insight.

Coca-Cola | #LiftTheFeeling

Just when people had warmed up to a unique and desirable positioning of happiness of Coke, it decided to go with a “One Brand” global strategy and change it’s positioning from “Open Happiness” to a more functional “Taste the feeling”.

The product plays the role of an ice-breaker between a die hard fan and a celebrity in an awkward situation lightening up the entire environment.

The Indian film is a localized version of Coke’s international ad featuring David Guetta and to be honest it’s a bit more warm and fun than it’s international counterpart.

The film is fun, goofy and strikes the right chord with Deepika Padukone being an ideal casting for the film. In general, I am a strong believer of using celebrities in ads to play themselves instead of a character. Celebrity association with the brand is heightened when they play themselves, making it easier to influence consumers. The ad gets everything right in terms of music and product placement.

The film was further hyperlocalized featuring North superstar Diljit Dosanjh. The strategy made sense considering that ~30% of Cola consumption in India happens in North India, almost as much as South. Source The campaign was aired in Summer.

Bajaj Platina Comfortec | Jhatka Mana Hai

Platina is an old brand in Bajaj Auto’s motorcycle portfolio overshadowed by it’s other hero brands like Pulsar and CT100. For long, like a lot of other brands in the 100cc segment, it had positioned itself as the best-in-class mileage bike.

However, the brand realized that it was not getting differentiated in a market that associates all 100cc — 125cc bikes as mileage bikes. Sumeet Narang, Bajaj Auto’s, VP, Marketing lays out the strategy clear in his own words in this article. According to him, consumer insights revealed that Bajaj Platina was also known for it’s comfort owing to long seat and light handling. Based on the same, it was decided to change the core brand benefit of Platina from reliability/mileage to comfort. While sharp communication was the need of the hour to establish a connect with the sea of 100cc commuters, they ensured that the product delivers by objectifying the solution with a promise of 20% fewer jerks.

The comfort space was an interesting opportunity to occupy given majority of the demand for 100cc bikes is fueled by small towns and rural markets where the roads can get a bit uncomfortable.

This lead to the relaunch of Bajaj Platina as Platina Comfortec.

To further substantiate the claim, beyond the creative exaggeration of the above ad, Bajaj Platina did an on-road test with a competition bike to measure the jerks first hand by strapping a camera to the rider’s chest. See below.

We feel, that the campaign #JhatkaManaHai certainly establishes a differentiated positioning for the brand keeping the core consumer problem in sight and a strong solution from the end product.

What do we know? What have we learnt?

• Never underestimate the power of simple, clear and crisp communication. At times good communication gets rejected at drawing board because it is not “creative” enough or too direct.
• A non-traditional idea can really give life to a seemingly boring traditional medium. Today, the reach of an idea or creative is not limited to a particular medium. It is the age of engage offline, converse online.
• A differentiated communication can stem by looking inward and understanding what consumers see as a benefit.