Quirky takes

Social networking site ibibo.com tries to entice the youth with a bold, on-your-face campaign.

Two girls are deep in discussion, while a third is overhearing their conversation intently.

Girl 1: Last night Rajat came to my farm and stole...
Girl 2: What, your heart?
Girl 1: No, my melons.
Hearing this, Girl 3 gets up, all riled, and says: “You impressed Rajat with your melons? I will also do so.”
Then Girl 1 giggles and points to her laptop, saying: “Why play akele (alone)? Play with us on ibibo farms.”

The next ad features a young man on the pot with a magazine pretending to drive a car. As he’s deep in the act, another man jumps up with a placard that reads: Why play akele? A voiceover intones: Presenting social gaming on ibibo.com. There’s a third ad as well, which is even more on-your-face.

 

This is perhaps the boldest campaign ever to have broken on Indian television screens. Aware of that, ibibo’s Chief Executive Officer Ashish Kashyap says: “Our target audience is young; they understand quirky and edgy, and they don’t like straight talk, which is why we decided to speak their language.” To ensure that he gets it right, Kashyap spoke to his online users first and then arrived at the brief for its creative agency, Bates 141, which was simply to speak the language of the Indian youth. “In effect, that meant it could not be vernacular; it had to be very English,” adds Kashyap.

In the game
Young men and women are the largest consumers of digital social networking. This shows in the growing popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Sites like Facebook even have the options of social games which are gaining in popularity. Clearly, ibibo wants to join the bandwagon as quickly as possible. Communication experts say that a language which borders on the audacious helps a youthful brand connect better with its audience. This explains the treatment of the latest ibibo campaign.

However, brand experts are reluctant with praise. Harish Bijoor of Harish Bijoor Consults feels that the ad uses down-market innuendo. “But I must admit it will create the awareness the company is looking for,” he says. On innuendo-based communication, he believes that ibibo might want to take a cue from Virgin Mobile.

ibibo (short for “i build. i bond”) was launched in 2007. At that time, it had come out with a high-decibel campaign “Don’t be a balti (bucket)”. The current one is its second campaign, which coincides with its new position in the market place. Earlier, the company was an entertainment-based social network; but now it wants to position itself as a social gaming destination. For his part, Kashyap maintains that the theme changes from campaign to campaign. “With the launch of our new games like Parking Wars and Teen Patti, this line became relevant,” he adds.

The campaign tries to highlight the USP of ibibo. “Where other gaming sites such as Yahoo!, Zapak and so on are single player sites, we are a multiple player site in which people can play against several friends,” Kashyap explains. He does not disclose the money set aside for the current campaign or the previous one.

Creating a pull
In the last two years, ibibo has promoted itself through a host of below-the-line offline activities. For starters, it partnered with Sony BMG to push Michael Jackson songs. Here, a group would upload the singer’s tracks on the website and users voted for the best songs which eventually came out in a CD. It also tied up with production houses like Yash Raj Films where people were urged to showcase their talent on the site. The reward was that the winners get to meet Shah Rukh Khan. More recently, ibibo tied up with the makers of Teen Patti and created the game by the same name, which featured a video of actor Amitabh Bachchan propositioning the users.

Soon thereafter, the social-gaming site came out with iVideostar to promote dancing, where participants upload their dance videos on the site and professional choreographers choose a winner. Auditions are held offline. The initiative was targeted at customers in Tier-II cities. Similarly, it started iFresh Face along with Elite Modelling Agency where young boys and girls uploaded their photos and the winner ends up with a modelling contract with the agency. It even had something for aspiring photographers called the iFashion Photographer Contest. “With all this we really drew in the crowds, that’s why I’m a strong believer of organic growth; but now that we’re entering other genres of gaming, we needed to break the clutter,” says Kashyap.

The move, it seems, has worked. After the campaign broke on February 6, the website got six million unique active visitors in February. That’s 1.5 million above the previous month. Meanwhile, the number of registered users has gone up to eight million. What is more, according to Kashyap, the average user has also begun to spend more time on the portal. But it still has a long distance to cover. Facebook, for instance, has 400 million active users.

As a part of the marketing campaign, ibibo will work with television and radio channels allowing their video jockeys and radio jockeys to use the system to build their own following. “We want to give them certain benefits,” says Kashyap. The ad will particularly be showcased on youth channels like MTV, Channel V, UTV Bindaas and on certain shows on Star One and Sony. The three-series campaign will be on air until April. ibibo is an offshoot of ibibo web (p) Ltd, an internet and mobile product company. The company is jointly owned by South Africa’s Naspers and China’s Tencent.