Univercell’s aadi campaign pulls customers with celeb couple’s separation story

In the first week of July, Chennai and rest of Tamil Nadu woke up to posters of recently wedded Kollywood couple Sneha and Prasanna getting separated. A closer look at the poster revealed that it was a campaign for Univercell, a mobile retail chain headquartered in Chennai. In a relatively smaller font, the poster said, “To know the reason for their separation, visit Univercell”.

The Tamil month of aadi (July second half to August first half) is considered inauspicious for newly married couples, and there exists a tradition of sending the brides to their parents’ homes for the month. The campaign by JWT Chennai put this and the star couple together to arrive at the Univercell campaign.

"Popular actors Sneha and Prasanna got married recently. They even sold the television rights of the ceremony to a private channel. Therefore, it was a very topical thing. And we thought we will use that and make people talk about it through a teaser campaign,’’ said D Sathish Babu, managing director, Indus Mobile Distribution (Univercell).

The teaser had a television leg as well.

Watch the teaser campaign here:

For all the customers who walked into stores, a 70-second ad played for them revealing the reason for the couple's separation. On the first day of the teaser campaign, Univercell received almost 13,000 SMSs, with many respondents saying the reason their split was aadi.

The mobile retailer printed around 10,000 posters for the teaser. “We wanted to take hoardings as well. But since we already got more than the responses we wanted, we refrained from hoardings,’’ he added. The campaign was driven through other OOH avenues like bus panels and bus shelter. The retailer executed the teaser on radio with an RJ asking listeners for reasons for the separation of the couple. RJs also asked the listeners for suggestions to re-unite them. The company has also created a facebook page asking people to speak about their separation pangs.

“You need to have conflict to create interest. Hollywood guys have done it. And now we are doing it to create a buzz around the aadi sale,’’ explained Babu.

The week ending July 8, when the teaser was launched, witnessed one of the highest numbers of walk-ins across outlets, claims Babu. He expects sales to spike up by 50 per cent over the normal months this aadi - up from a 30 to 35 per cent rise last year.