Ogilvy India partnered with Cadbury Celebrations to create an award winning hyper-localised ad with Shah Rukh Khan titled “Not Just a Cadbury Ad”. Rephrase Ai used machine learning and AI along with 7 hours of Shah Rukh Khan videos to create a 75 second long ad that can be manipulated by local shops for free to create advertisements of individual shops using basic inputs like one of 5 products (footwear, optic-wear, mithai), shop name etc. The success of this campaign sent ripples across the advertising world offering a peek into the future and lessons for advertising that works.
Impact on our understanding of advertising
Larger than life branding creates awe but lacks the personal touch that converts viewers into customers. The same ad has different effects on different people. People trust names, people, and, places they know more than new information.
Technology has allowed reaching people personally at a cost that was hitherto impossible. Brands are therefore focusing on hyper-localisation and personalisation to strike a chord with their customers. Talking to every customer in a vocabulary they are comfortable with gives brands an unbeatable competitive edge that money can’t buy. The success of focused D2C brands solving niche problems and displacing legacy brands that offer one-size-fits all solutions are testament to this fact. In spite of being more expensive, the lack of big marketing budgets and other problems that accompany smaller scale operations of D2C brands (the David in this situation) are hurting Goliath market shares of brands like Lakme.
Relevance of social currency?
Most social media platforms are built around people following each other and keeping track of their activities. The smaller their following, higher is the homogeneity of the following. A college student is primarily followed by fellow college students of similar age, financial background, spending habits and other demographic features. Each user is a loosely curated database itself.
Brands who’ve identified their target audiences well can simply tap into these databases by finding their footing with socially rich individuals of each category. Take a tours and travel guide company specialising in organising treks for college students. Impressing a single group of college friends can generate multiple business opportunities in that college.
Link to ‘Not just a cadbury ad’- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WECsbqAQSk
