The campaign
My favourite campaign is the ‘Me and Meri Maggi’, which I did way back in 2009 in Publicis India. Since then, many editions have happened. But for me, the season one of the campaign was very special.
Why it is my best campaign
Circa 2008. We were exploring a new thinking in Publicis. We called it ‘the contagious way’. And it worked on a very simple principle: does a campaign have any social currency?
‘Me and Meri Maggi’ seemed an interesting way of actually putting ‘the contagious way’ to practice. The campaign truly used all mediums in a holistic way. It was more than a regular 360-degree campaign wherein you did a film and tweaked creatives for print and outdoor. This was a campaign in which TV was a cog in the wheel. And so were digital, print and outdoor. They worked in tandem to create the desired effect.
Brief to the agency
Maggi’s 25th anniversary was coming up. The client (represented by Arvind Bhandari and Virat Mehta) was very clear that it didn’t want yet another commercial on Maggi. Neither did it want a maudlin story about it. Maggi has a lion’s share of the marketplace. In fact, the brand name has become synonymous with instant noodles. But now the question was whether the brand could become a thought leader?
Problems & challenges
The brand was 25 years old. What could you possibly say about the brand that hadn’t been said before? More importantly, could you expand the target group from kids to young adults and more? Also, was there a case to take Maggi into a more adult zone?
The route chosen and why
In 1983, two seminal events happened. India won the World Cup and Maggi was introduced to India. The people who were kids then and loved Maggi were now parents themselves. Over time, Maggi had graduated from being merely a food brand to being something bigger. It was associated with memories. So people would remember stories associated with their Maggi. For example, it would be “Honeymoon waali Maggi”. Or “Manali waali Maggi”. The consumer had 25 years worth of stories to tell.
A little more research in the online space yielded us a treasure trove of stories. People were already sharing their stories, unasked, on Orkut (the favourite social platform at that time). In many ways, the campaign pretty much wrote itself.
We began with three ads — ‘Montage’, ‘Lick’ and ‘Mom’, in which we invited entries from people. Simultaneously, radio, print and e-mailers carried different stories and invited people to share their stories.
The repository of all the stories was a website wherein people could see the uploaded stories and upload their own. The best stories would be recognised and made into films.
The outcome
The programme was a stupendous success. Over 40,000 people flooded our mail boxes through SMSes, e-mails, and postcards. There were over 1 lakh plus unique visitors.
People shared some of the most poignant and private moments of their lives. They sent in their recipes. Some made their own viral films. An exacting judging process followed, in which we pored over the entries. Fifty of the best stories were printed on Maggi packs. The three best stories were made into films. While one was a little girl’s story, the other one was a traveller’s story.
It was when we read a story by a tsunami survivor, we knew we had a winner. He had survived on nothing but Maggi when he was cut off from civilisation. We rounded off the campaign with a montage TVC that captured the essence of Maggi in our daily lives.
The result? Growth in volumes. Real consumer ownership of the brand. And a conversation that changed from two minutes to endless moments of joy. Last but not the least, at Goafest (2010), the campaign won a bronze Abby in the Direct category and one of the films ‘Mom’ won a silver Abby.
Will it work today?
India loves stories. We love to tell them, we love to hear them and we love to pass them on. And anyone who has had Maggi has a story to share. So, I’d like to believe that the idea is universal and relevant today.
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight that’s always a great teacher, there would be some things I’d tweak around a bit. But the essence would remain the same. If you ask me honestly, the next leg of the campaign did not, according to me, live up to the vision set at the outset. To some extent, the campaign has lost steam now.
Anindya Banerjee
Executive Creative Director, Scarecrow Communications
