 "OLX: From the seller to the buyer")
Following a recent campaign featuring actor Kapil Sharma rooting for the brand with the exhortation Bech de, OLX is back to featuring common people in its new campaign. The message this time: Don't dither over purchase decisions.
This is the first buyer-focused campaign from OLX, an online marketplace for used goods. The campaign has two television commercials (TVCs), Start up nahi, start ab and Friends ke saath life set kar. The first TVC features an young entrepreneurial duo calculating the initial investment required to set up their business. One of them is disheartened thinking that it would be near impossible for them to organise a huge amount that would be needed to put together all the things they need to start the business. However, his friend cheers him up by saying that they can start off their business with limited resources if they bought used goods at affordable prices from OLX. The TVC concludes with the punchline, Kal kare so aaj kar, OLX pe khareed kar, aage badh.
A second TVC titled, Friends ke saath life set kar shows how a newly married couple is supported by friends who step in to furnish their home. When the couple expresses concern regarding the cost of the things needed in the new home, their friends reassure them that they have bought those off OLX without running a huge bill.
In its earlier campaigns, OLX's focus was on getting people to list their goods to be sold on the platform; so campaigns such as Pati Parmeshwar Not and Sushil Bachcha featured the prospective buyer as the protagonist. But all these campaigns had a seller-centric communication. Pati Parmeshwar Not and Sushil Bachcha ended with a seller-focussed message Aise bahot se log intezar kar rahe hain aapki cheezon ka…Ab toh OLX pe Bech De.
Talking about OLX's focus shifting from seller to buyer in the new campaign, Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO, OLX India, says, "As a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform, OLX believes in bringing people together for win-win exchanges, and improving their lives. In the last three to four years we have focused more on the sell-side communication as OLX was creating the market, and fulfilling the latent demand for a C2C marketplace in the country." He adds, "We have made significant inroads in a short period of time, making Bech De a household term. While we have solved the sellers' problems, helping them declutter and liquidate the value hidden in their used goods, we have also realised that the Indians are very aspirational, and OLX has the power to fulfill their dreams."
The idea behind the new campaign is to get non-users to buy from OLX for the first time. Batra is confident that the campaign will help improve the already high levels of engagement among buyers on the platform. At present, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, furniture, white goods are some of the highest selling categories on OLX. Batra claims that the online marketplace for used goods registered 2.5 billion page-views on an average per month (till September 2015). The responses to ads by potential buyers have increased by approximately 400 per cent year-on-year, demonstrating the potential of the platform.
Conceptualised by Mullen Lowe Lintas, the campaign is pegged at ~20-25 crore. Talking about the challenge before the agency, Shayondeep Pal, executive creative director, Lowe Lintas, says, "Being OLX's first buyer focused campaign the task was to remove the stigma around buying second-hand goods without being preachy about it." He adds, "The campaign's proposition (Kal kare so aaj kar) stands for the smartness of today's youth when it comes to making life choices. Whether it is going ahead with an unconventional wedding or starting their own business, we used this 'practicality' aspect to blend in the brand message that buying on OLX can help young pupil follow their pursuits."
How is OLX standing up to the competition? "We are the most liquid platform in the country for buyers. We have 70 per cent unique content on OLX implying that 70 per cent of the products listed on our platform will be found only on OLX, and no other platform. In addition to this, 100 per cent of the ad content on OLX is user-generated, and 90 per cent of the users coming to OLX are posting in (C2C) categories, ensuring superior quality of listings. Together all these factors make OLX the most valuable marketplace for a buyer making it appropriate for us to introduce OLX's first-ever buyer-focused communication at this point of time," contends Batra.
