Challenge Was to Create an Idea that Was Neither an Advertising Ploy nor a Typical Promo: Sumit Ghildiyal

To celebrate the World Cup fever, Royal Stag released the ‘Be India’s Largest Fan to go to the World Cup’ campaign. Here’s our chat with Sumit Ghildiyal, Creative Director at River Advertising, sharing some insights of the campaign.

Royal Stag recently signed up a 5-year partnership with International Cricket Council, ICC. Given the scale of the association and to give its fans experience money can’t buy, the brand is sending over 100 fans to England to watch the World Cup. All one has to do is give a missed call.

Speaking about the campaign, Sumit Ghildiyal, Creative Director at River Advertising says, “The biggest challenge was to create an idea which people do not see as an advertising ploy or a typical promo. And while the mechanics of dialing a number is simple, we wanted to make it fun and memorable. That was the genesis of turning this film into an interactive video which we had a lot of fun creating. It was a big task but we realized the potential of what it could be and worked with some of the best coders to make it happen.”

We, at Agency Reporter, spoke to Sumit about how the agency conceptualized the ‘Be India’s Largest Fan to go to the World Cup’ campaign, the challenges and their rationale behind choosing an interactive video format.

Agency Reporter: What was the brief of the campaign?

SG: The brief required us to ingrain this missed callnumber in people’s minds while ensuring maximum participation for the contest.

AR: What was the rationale behind the idea?

SG: Multiple brands across categories are offering the same giveaway and in this clutter, the biggest task is to be differentiated. Therefore, it was important to think of an idea that not only broke the clutter because of its novelty, but also made people remember the phone number.

Hence, we used the technique of an interactive video, not only to engage people but also to focus on what they were doing. In digital, interactivity is key. We combined that with storytelling that allowed the consumer to take our protagonist (representative of India’s Largest Fan) from his sofa to the World Cup stadium at England by pressing digits of the missed call number.

AR: Since this is a digital-only ad, how are you capturing the audiences on other mediums?

SG: The World Cup promotional campaign ‘Be India’s Largest Fan to go to the World Cup’ is also happening across mediums including outdoor, retail and Television.

AR: Why do you think an interactive ad was the best idea of communication?

SG: People on social media spend time on things that are interactive because it makes them an active part of the whole experience. We took a very simple brief of promoting a number for participation and converted that into a gamified experience to ensure people took note and focused harder on the message. Instead of watching yet another promo video, users were made to realize how easy it can be for them also to go to England to watch the World Cup and become India’s Largest Cricket Fan. 

AR: What were the challenges while producing the campaign?

SG: Given it’s an interactive video, we had to ensure that the video was seamless and optimized across platforms despite being a browser-based APP. That meant, creating an interface which worked at the same speed whether on Android or iPhones. 

The other thing we had to factor in was to create 3 scenariosfor each click so while shooting the film, each prompt was shot in 3 differentways which meant 18 scenarios shot for the 6 key clicks. That required a lot ofpre-shoot planning and working very closely with the director as well as thecoders. 

AR: Do you think the interactive ad will fetch a better CTR?

SG: The campaign ison-going and will be promoted for another two weeks. So, results will be tracedpost that.

AR: Do you have any message for the viewers?

SG: Give yourself a shotat winning an expense paid trip to the cricket World Cup. It’s never been thiseasy and this much fun.