On a new trip

CAMPAIGN LOGIC

Makemytrip.com's new ads go beyond promises of low airfares.

It could be a scene from any of the popular soaps currently running on daytime TV. Clad in the species-defining barely-there blouse and serpentine bindi, the vamp saunters down the grand, curving staircase.

As the family watches, frozen, she sneers at the poor, downtrodden heroine, who weeps helplessly. "Aryaman has thrown you out. What will you do now?" she scorns. "I will lift my hand," thunders the heroine, and everyone starts in surprise. "And I will glide the mouse to the makemytrip site and book my hotel room."

As the heroine continues to list the advantages of the site, the scene changes to show her sitting cross-legged in a hotel room, accepting the room service and looking decidedly more cheerful. "Wish. Click. Go," she concludes.

This is one of four new ads from online travel site makemytrip.com (MMT). Two of the 20-second commercials, created by agency Leo Burnett India, are being aired on all popular cable channels and the other two will be beamed soon "" and each one spoofs popular television shows.

So there's "Rasta" channel and an Acharya Ram Dev look-alike, channel Wee and its Bappi Lahiri clone, and even the home shopping network. Leo Burnett Executive Vice President Ali Imran hastens to add that the idea is not to target particular shows, just poke some harmless, if irreverent fun at the genres. "Our previous campaign, too, was a little tongue in cheek," points out Sachin Bhatia, CEO, MMT.

MMT kicked off as an online travel service more than five years ago. Until recently, though, it catered only to inbound travel to India, targeting the non-resident Indian crowd.

Last year, inspired by the success of the Indian Railways website "" according to Internet reports, the site receives more than 1 million hits everyday "" MMT decided to launch a domestic travel site, too. The entry of several low-cost airlines helped swing the decision "" most people surf the net for affordable travel options. "The market was ready for online travel," says Bhatia.

Perhaps more ready than people anticipated. Against an expected 200-300 ticket bookings daily, the MMT site makes more than 600 ticket reservations, around 75 room nights and 25-30 weekend package bookings every day.

The international, inbound service, in contrast, makes about 100 ticket bookings every day. Of course, there's a huge difference in the value of the transactions: Rs 7,500 on average for domestic travel, against $1,200 (Rs 54,000) for the average international booking.

In the three months since the launch of the India operations, MMT's already made some vital learnings. Typically, says Bhatia, people book online tickets for travel in 30 days' time or even later, or for immediate travel; very few of the bookings are for two or three weeks ahead.

And while the early birds are almost always leisure travellers, those looking for the last-minute deal are a mix of leisure and business travellers. The opportunity to cross-sell, then, is enormous "" hotel rooms, car rentals or even weekend packages. That's the market the new ads are trying to tap.

It won't be easy. Research by Leo Burnett before the campaigns were conceived found that online shopping faced several behavioural hurdles: customers were hesitant to make big-ticket purchases on the Net and travel bookings were typically conducted through a brick-and-mortar agency. "We didn't just have to build a brand. We had to create a habit change," says Imran.

MMT's first campaign, in September, tried to do that by not just emphasising the website's ease of use, but also with a tangible offering that would draw people to the site "" lowest airfares guaranteed. MMT offered to refund the difference if travellers found cheaper tickets for the same flight.

As it turned out, the site didn't have to make good on its promise too many times "" less than 20 redemptions, according to Bhatia "" but it did get lots of enquiries. Since the purpose of that first campaign was to drive traffic to the website, it's not surprising both MMT and Leo Burnett consider it a success. "Recall rates of the ad were good and most people seemed to understand the proposition," explains Imran.

Once the site's relevance was established in the consumer's mind, it was free to move to phase two. That involved the creation of a tagline "" Wish. Click. Go "" as well as communicating MMT's value-added services.

Each of the four new ads promotes a different feature available on the website: airline tickets, hotel reservations, international travel and weekend packages. "The idea is to showcase the site as a full service travel agency, not just a seller of tickets," says Bhatia.

And unlike brick-and-mortar agencies, where the client has to wait for the agent to offer options, the online version allows visitors to the site to plan their trips in as many permutations as they choose. "We are empowering travellers," declares Bhatia.

That includes offline as well as online travellers although, not surprisingly, online customers are the target customers: MMT's core customer group is above 22 years, and net-savvy. So, while the television commercials appeal to all potential customers, MMT is also speaking to the online community in its own language.

Around the same time as the first television ads, the company also launched an Internet-based viral marketing campaign. It commissioned Internet firm webchutney to create three short, animated films that promote its air tickets' offer.

Two of these funny clips were based on the Ramayana, since they were launched around Dussehra and promoted packages to Sri Lanka, while the third emphasises the universality of air travel. The success of pass-alongs is measured by the number of times they are forwarded: the first two clips were forwarded over 5,000 times in the first week of their launch, while the third had been sent to over 8,000 people within 10 days. "The virals got us a lot of word-of-mouth publicity," says Bhatia.

That's probably why the company is planning another three, this time based on the "Wish. Click. Go" theme. The new tagline is also being used on hoardings at the Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore airports and will feature in the next lot of television ads, too "" slotted for the India-Pakistan cricket series that begins later this month.

Television sponsorships will also form a big part of MMT's future marketing activities: the focus will be on high-viewership properties, not necessarily travel-related. "You can't ignore television," points out Imran. That's a trip everyone makes. WHO DID WHAT

Client: makemytrip.com
Agency: Leo Burnett India
Client servicing: Parthasarathi Mandal
Creative: Sainath Saraban