Campaign logic: Casting the net wider

A new campaign of Flipkart sets out to show that those consumers who are believed to be entrenched in tradition and shopping offline are no longer indifferent to trying out e-commerce

Brand: Flipkart
Budget: Rs 10 crore
Agency: Dentsu Webchutney

Given that it leads the market for online retail in India, there can be no doubt about Flipkart's countrywide reach. A new campaign sets out to remove any lingering scepticism we may have about its acceptability among those who are entrenched in tradition and therefore likely to be indifferent to e-commerce or anything virtual.

A digital campaign, #Everyoneon Flipkart, presents a series of ads that end with a surprise element of discovering how a neighbourhood shopkeeper (Rastogiji) has started to sell his ware through Flipkart, a know-it-all aunt advises unsuspecting girls on smartphones, and a Mumbai cop and office watchman order items on the job. The four films would have us believe that all sections of Indian consumers have jumped on to the Flipkart bandwagon.

Shoumyan Biswas, the e-tail firm's vice-president, marketing, says, "Driving market development and accelerating adoption across different consumer segments are our key focus areas. Born from that belief, the #EveryoneOnFlipkart campaign reaches out to the e-commerce non-believers with stories that are inspired by their life and culture. The film uses slice of life moments that reflect how Flipkart has become the common thread connecting the nation and its aspirations."

Asked whether with this campaign, Flipkart specifically tried to woo the supplier community (Rastogiji) or the diehard kirana buyer, Biswas adds, "The film on Rastogiji is not one but two stories entwined, showing how India is transforming and adopting online shopping. It not only depicts how Flipkart is helping fuel the aspirations of thousands of sellers across the country but also enabling them to expand their horizons."

Flipkart, which boasts over 100,000 sellers on its platform, last week launched Spotlist, a cataloguing and listing service targeted at small and medium enterprises, artisans and other businesses across the country. Both Flipkart and its rival Amazon are aggressively aiming to gain more sellers from smaller Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

According to Biswas, Flipkart prides itself on offering increasingly hassle-free and delightful shopping experience to consumers. "There have been several initiatives to this end, be it the first of its kind chat and shop feature Ping!, easing product discovery through path breaking features like image search and bar code search, or on the service delivery side features like one-click returns and instant refunds."

Prashant Gopalakrishnan, general manager, strategic accounts, Dentsu Webchutney, which conceptualised the campaign, says, "The single line brief was to show how everyone is on Flipkart. We wanted to take the real people around us who are least likely to be associated with online shopping, how they have become Flipkart shoppers and how that positively impacted their lives in simple but genuine ways."

The campaign showed how Flipkart has followers not just among the "digital" generation but all across, he adds.

Gopalakrishnan says the agency was keen to showcase multiple stories but at the lowest possible production cost. "The task was to partner someone who believed in these stories as much as we did and would execute it keeping in mind the budget constraints."

The month-long campaign was, however, conceived of as any mainline initiative with a 360-degree approach. For instance, Biswas points out, there were contests around ideas like spotting one's office peon or grandmother who had shopped on Flipkart. The positive response on digital platforms including social media has prompted the company to introduce it in television on select spots before the month ends.

PG Aditya, associate creative director of Dentsu Webchutney, says, "The idea was to create great content that 'happens to be an ad'. The fact that Flipkart has been a brand led by human stories only made that easier. And to think they were produced as a digital-first effort only furthers my belief that this unsaid 'caste system' of platforms in advertising is rapidly breaking."