Independence Day online marketing campaigns by brands in 2015

9 Independence Day online marketing campaigns by Indian brands. Featuring Olx, OlaCabs, FoodPanda, Uber and a few others.

Time and again, on this blog, we have written about how brands come together to cash in on important days/holidays and festivals in India. Brands often time their marketing campaigns in alignment with the theme and mood of their consumers on those important days. If you look at it from a marketer’s point of view it makes complete sense to cater to the pulse of the audience during these special days.

Read: Festival Marketing campaigns

Independence day becomes one such important day every year where brands go all out with their wishes, freedom discounts, offers, emotional messages, independence dhamaka and a lot more.

Below is a list of Independence Day marketing campaigns by brands in 2015

The video is going viral on social media. It is being received positively by audience but I dont know how much of a brand connect is Oyo Rooms making with this video. The brand plug according to me looks terribly forced. Although, the message is in the right direction about respecting the fact that you’re free and not to take it for granted, it has absolutely nothing to do with Oyo Rooms, booking hotels. It is just an emotionally charged video with 2 much celebrated actors and a very well shot video. The plot as well looks extremely far fetched and high on histrionics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhUApcBAbZA

Source

Uber nails it yet again with being contextual, relevant and addressing the problem at hand related to their brand. Uber is still struggling a lot with getting the trust of their customer’s back after repeated incidents questioning the safety of Uber riders.

With #uberFauji, Uber is trying to do exactly that. A few ex-servicemen who used to serve the country are now partnered with Uber and serving Uber riders. Showcasing their story on Independence day and how partnering with Uber has empowered them is amazing way to portray that Uber is working for the greater good for the society.

OLX has been spot on with almost all their campaigns till now. They have strategically moved from being tactical to funny to emotional. They made #BechDe synonymous with Olx. It has been a very thought out vision from the Olx marketing team to understand the emotion behind buying and selling second hand goods. From being absolutely blatant and urging them to #BechDe, moving towards  urging housewives to “Cell ko banao Sell Phone” (Make your cell phone, a sell phone). Kapil Sharma came in at his peak popularity with his slapstick humor as a second hand #usedless good in the house. Finally when people started relating with the brand, Olx moved from a pure play humor appeal to out and out emotional appeal with “Keemat Bhi, Kuch Keemti bhi” (The right price for something priceless).

The #TimelessStories is a campaign in the similar tone. Although the campaign is similar to the Google’s Reunion campaign where an Indian protagonist is trying to find something that has been lost and left behind in Pakistan. The campaign still touches cords, plugs in the product well, makes you emotional by using the plight of partition and price of Independence as a theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYfO_daHcHQ

BabyOye over here just got confused whether to celebrate Mother’s Day or Independence Day. In the video below they have a female voice over trying to teach the national anthem to small kids. The video although extremely cute which is always the case with kids in ads does nothing to the brand. Maybe their distribution should be really targeted at women. I am just biased towards campaigns that have the brand seamlessly integrated with the overall messaging and not coming in as a byline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVIR4tT_0Ug

In similar vein as BabyOye, instead of kids, a bunch of people from different nationalities are made to sing the Indian National Anthem as a tribute to India. Extremely banal and cliche campaign with absolutely no product connect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxUTkKXZuHY

MakeMyTrip created an interactive blog post on the entire journey of India’s freedom struggle. The various incidents that happened at different parts of the country were mentioned with a short snippet as well as a link out to plan a stay in those cities.

Dominos went on twitter with their campaign #MyFlagMyPride. The campaign again was the most obvious campaign you could come across where the brand asks users to upload their selfies with a hashtag to win vouchers. It is extremely easy to trend on twitter when you are giving out free vouchers and specially for a brand like Dominos it becomes easier.

It asked users to share their selfies and then become a part of a unique rendition of the Indian flag. 68 users will be chosen to be a part of this activity.

The result was something like this

However, as expected none of the users were barely excited about this and were only waiting for their vouchers to arrive.

@dominos_india thankuu n wat abt s voucher?

— Adiba Shaikh (@adibashaikh20) August 15, 2015

@dominos_india Where are our vouchers whose pics are there? Are you forgetting or what team?

— Sumit (@devilplaying) August 15, 2015

Hence proven that Independence themed campaigns like these does absolutely nothing for the brand more than bumping up their sales by giving them a few free vouchers. This campaign could have been done on any other day using the same theme.

Just how Uber is struggling with getting the rider’s trust, especially women to consider them as safe and secure. The same problem is being faced at Ola’s end. While Uber came up with a campaign where they are saying how they are empowering drivers and changing lives, Ola does something similar by getting customer testimonials by women customers in saying how riding with Ola has made their life much easier.

They are making a statement which says that over 1,00,000 women take an Ola everyday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M83XwZ3XFWw

Strategically, the message is in the right direction. However, if you watch the video there is nothing unique about what Ola is doing to help this. The video description says Celebrating India’s 69th Independence Day with women who’ve helped write this success story. How is Ola making a difference in their life? By making them independent the way they commute. How is this not happening with other cab companies or modes of transport. I just feel, they could have dug a little deeper before taking this out. Again, my bias towards seamless product integration as a mark of a good timely campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejT_13kBNCM

The video has been executed perfectly fine. It also addresses the fact how food unites people from different religions irrespective of where they belong. The video could have been better if it could have captured how FoodPanda is enabling this by bringing food from different corners of your country right in your mobile app with a tap away. The hashtag also could have been better. However, works fine.

Many questions arise

What are the Independence Day campaigns you have come across?

Do you think it makes sense for a brand to fight for share of voice of consumer in so much noise during these important days?

If yes, how much time, resources and money should a brand invest and how should it measure the success of such campaigns.

Should it be just done as a hygiene factor because everyone else is doing it?