Friends come in all shapes and sizes. But despite this, all friends are important, says the new Airtel commercial on air at the moment. Drawing on a teenager’s ability to make friends and the importance he or she accords to the exercise, the commercial uses music and lyrics with the theme – Har ek friend zaroori hota hai (you need friends of all types) — to communicate the message.
In the process, Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom services company both by revenue and subscribers, has attempted to do two things - target a population, mostly in the 18-20 age-group, that is increasingly taking to data services faster than any other demographic and telling them that the service provider is the best option they have in doing so.
“This is a thematic campaign, where we are not driving any product proposition per se, but looking to push brand preference,” says Mohit Beotra, head of brand & media, Bharti Airtel.
The campaign also attempts to take Airtel’s positioning - Dil Jo Chahe, Pas Laye (Getting you close to what you love) - to the next level by playing up the friendship angle among youngsters.
“Airtel has always stood for human emotions and relationships. Friendship is one aspect of that,” says Agnello Dias, co-founder and chief creative officer, Taproot India, the agency which created the campaign. “The attempt was to reach out to a younger audience. There could have been no better way to do it than through friendship - something youngsters recognise and understand well,” says Dias.
The insight of all friends being important came after numerous conversations with youngsters, Dias says. “We found that most people have different types of friends. And quite a few enjoy their varied lot. We thought why don’t we play this up in the campaign?.”
In the TV commercial, director Ram Madhvani of Equinox Films uses a series of visuals to show the different types of friends that young people have - an all-weather friend, a casual friend, a friend you are comfortable with, a friend you are not. It is this slice of life in the advertising that has endeared itself to many, point out industry experts.
According to Santosh Padhi, also co-founder and chief creative officer, Taproot, the response to the campaign has been good. “It has only been a few days since the launch, but the response has been good,” he says. “There are different legs to the campaign. Apart from the TV commercial, the digital and outdoor campaigns have also been launched,” he says.
Like last year, when Bharti used Youtube to launch its Rs 300-crore makeover exercise particularly the TV commercial prior to its television debut, the telecom major has used the same ploy this time round too - launching the advert with sub-titles on the video-sharing website - something the on-air TVC doesn’t have.
The digital campaign, on the other hand, invites people to create different friend types and tag their companions appropriately. The person who tags the most number of friends stands to win a trip to Las Vegas in the US with his or her bunch of acolytes.
For Taproot - which is working on its first Airtel campaign - its success couldn’t have come at a better time. The agency was awarded the “project” recently even as bigger rival JWT continues to be the agency of record on the account - a business it snagged from another rival Rediffusion last year.
Both Dias and Padhi refuse to be drawn into a discussion whether more Airtel campaigns will come their way. Beotra also declines to comment on the issue.
At the moment, the creative duo is busy working on more ads for the campaign. According to persons in the know, the campaign will continue to run for the next few months - attempting to break through the clutter of telecom advertising which is likely to pick up during the festive season.
Incidentally, the theme of friendship is not new to telecom advertising. Arch rival Vodafone, for instance, did a successful ‘Happy to Help’ campaign last year playing up the theme of friendship between two school girls. The ad accompanied by some lilting English music drove home the point effectively making many a viewer reminisce about his or her childhood days and the “best friends” they had at that point in time.
Of course, Airtel has a different take on friendship - one that is peppy and trendy - in keeping with the tastes of urban youth.
