Online deal site Groupon India has released its first brand campaign. The brand has chosen the high humour route to highlight the ‘craziest deals‘ on offer. TVCs created by Ideas@Work went on air on 27 November and will run for four weeks. Four films are on air currently and three more are yet to be released.
In one of the TVCs, an old woman is shown screaming and running after two men. She chases them through narrow by-lanes. Finally, she catches up with them and then knocks them down with karate chops. The super reads ‘Karate classes for just 149 rupees'. She snatches her handbag from them and continues to whack them with it. The voice over says, "For the craziest deals in town: Groupon.co.in’. The film ends with the two thugs writhing in pain and the super says, “Full body massages for just Rs 249.”
On the creative brief given to the agency, Sachin Kapur, chief marketing officer, Groupon India, said, “The creative brief was simple. Groupon as a company globally has always used humour in all communication. Apart from humour, we wanted to produce clutter-breaking advertising, which is noticed by people. Once it is noticed and people like the brand and are entertained, they start to explore what it is about. The agency came back to us and said that you are about deals so you should showcase a deal in the advertisement. This would be the core, which will bring people to the web site. “
On the objective of the communication, he said, “The objective of the communication was to create brand awareness for Groupon India. We have been in the country for some time now and have been quite successful in what we are doing. We get one new deal on the website everyday, which people like to explore and that helps them discover their cities. The objective when we came into India was to establish the global brand, look for best quality merchants in India to get the best deals from them. We did this for a year and during this time, we did a lot of experiential marketing where people could experience Groupon although we were not called Groupon but Crazeal. This was due to a pending litigation where we could not used Groupon branding in India. So we built our audiences, got high quality merchants for close to one year and when we were confident that a large critical mass are already transacting on our website, we thought this was the time to reach out to a larger audience and let them know about us."
On the ad films, Zarvan Patel, founder, Ideas@Work, said, “Earlier Groupon was known as Crazeal and hence the brief was built from the word ‘Crazeal’. We wanted to highlight the aspect of craziness and deals. The deals offered by Groupon are great quality deals for superb brands and this is a key differentiator for them. We wanted to highlight the proposition of better brands at decent prices and not necessarily earth shattering prices. It is not possible to demonstrate this through just one ad so we went for seven TVC’s. The deals are crazy and even the execution has been likewise.”
The campaign will also straddle social, digital and outdoor media.
Credits
Client: Groupon India
Creative agency: Ideas@Work
Production house: ideas@work films group
Creative directors: Zarvan Patel, Prashant Godbole
Creative team: Dominic Braganza, Manoj Gorde, Mahesh Gorde, Ram Mandale, Shahan Karanjia, Ahana Chaudhuri
Account manager: Richa Jinagouda