Center Fresh woos youth with ‘Gum Charades’ online

Taking forward the brand idea of ‘Zubaan pe rakhe lagaam’, Perfetti’s gum brand Center Fresh has launched a digital campaign ‘Gum Charades’, inspired by the popular game of dumb charades. The campaign was conceived by media agencyMaxus.

To translate the experience of playing dumb charades on the digital medium, a microsite has been created -www.centerfresh.in/gumcharades. The microsite gives the option of choosing one from three female hosts, who will enact the name of a movie silently for the player to guess. Guessing right quicker wins players more points. The game can also be played on Facebook, and mobile platforms like Rocketalk and Vuclip.

Mandar Keskar, category head - gums, Perfetti Van Melle India, said “Most digital initiatives today are adapted from television campaigns. With the growing relevance of digital as a medium especially amongst youth (our core TG), we realised that it’s important to customise brand content for this medium rather than adapt it. Gum Charades, is one such initiative in this direction. As far as the concept is concerned, it’s rare to find a popular game with a natural brand fit; we have been quite lucky in this aspect.”

“We wanted an idea which was platform agnostic for Center Fresh,” said V Narayanan, general manager, Maxus Delhi. He added, “The concept of Gum Charades resonates seamlessly with the brand proposition, which consumers are willing to share across their social networks for its unique entertainment quotient.”

Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director, Ogilvy & Mather, Center Fresh’s creative agency, said, “Center Fresh is a youth-driven brand and is in the process of establishing itself in the digital sphere. Through Gum Charades, Center Fresh is revamping a popular game and adding a digital twist to it. We hope this game will be a hit among 15 to 24 year-olds.”

To popularise the concept of Gum charades and drive traffic to the microsite, the brand has tied up with TV channels 9XM, Channel V, M Tunes and Zoom for content integration and is also airing radio spots in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. Theinitiative is being promoted on the Center Fresh facebook page (www.facebook.com/centerfreshindia), through the brand’sTwitter handle @centerfreshin, and display advertising on popular websites.

The contest which began on 10 September will run till end-November 2013. According to Unny Radhakrishnan, head of digital, South Asia, Maxus, about 5,00,000 game plays had happened at the time of filing this story (2 October).