VIRGIN MOBILE - INDIAN PANGA LEAGUE

What generally happens between you and your friends during an IPL season? You pull each other's legs by mocking the team that the other person supports. You mock everything, from that team's players, owners and city to its uniform, and defend yours. Virgin mobile simply used these regular conversations loaded with insults and abuses to promote itself, and how! 

I have always been a big fan of all Virgin's ad campaigns, not just Virgin India, but all over, as nobody I believe relates to its target audience better than Virgin does. Since its launch in India, all of Virgin's campaigns have been whacky, funny and out-of-the-box, but with the Indian Panga League campaign, Virgin has taken this trend to another level. 

The Indian Panga League is one of India's biggest online campaigns. With the IPL over, this campaign now has almost lived its life, and I'm too late to review it. But I was too late to come across it too, and when I did, I just wanted to have it on ad-vert.

Bates 141 and Curious films are the creative geniuses behind these campaigns. The Indian Panga League is a series of over 100 commercials of 15 seconds each, made solely for the digital space, and not TV. Each commercial shows banters between two friends from different cities supporting their respective teams. The cost of shooting each of these ads, they say, was less than that of radio spots, as the ads were shot using Canon DSLR cameras. The website, www.indianpangaleague.in, is a platform where people can view these commercials, and also take part in the war of words against other teams. Virgin is also giving away Samsung Corby's on the website as prizes.

Within a week of its launch, the company witnessed 39,480 YouTube views, 1,643 Facebook fans, and 50,000 mentions on Twitter. The Indian Panga League website also saw over 1 lac hits within the first week itself.

(The YouTube name of this video said 'banned commericals', but that is not the case. This campaign was solely designed for the internet.)

LOOK: The look of the ad is absolute Virgin, i.e., smart, funny and it immediately relates to its target, the youth.

CONTENT: The content of these ads is hilarious. The brief is simply to showcase two friends in two different cities chaffing each other's teams over the phone. The ads effectively promote Virgin's value proposition of 20p/min STD tariff. Hats off to the creative team in Bates 141 for coming up with such hilarious insults.

CASTING: Curious Films auditioned over 400 people to shortlist 8 candidates from the 8 IPL Team cities. Casting is brilliantly done, with each guy aptly showcasing the attitude and behavior of the guy coming from that city. For example, the Punjab guy is highly abusive, and the Chennai guy keeps saying 'Macha'.

CONNECT: This ad will connect with its target much more than any other ad out there. The youth of each city will easily relate to the guy shown in the ad.

OVERALL RATING: 9.5 / 10

I know, I myself wondered if I'm over-rating this ad. But I'm pretty sure that had Virgin brought this campaign on the TVC medium, it would have been an out-n-out ZooZoo Killer!!

TITAN ZOOP

Robert Brault once said, "In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids." And this very fact has been applied creatively in the latest commercial of the Zoop range of watches from the Titan stable. (Now don't ask me who was Brault. I took his quote because it complimented the ad and gave a nice start to my post)

Titan had its presence in the kids watch market in the late 90s and early 00s under the brand name 'Dash'. I'm sure we all would faintly remember either snobbishly flashing our new Dash watches or crying in a more irritating manner than Anandi of Balika Vadhu to make our Ma-sa's and Bapu-sa's buy us a Dash. 'Be a star!' was the tagline of Dash. But Dash was discontinued by Titan due to various reasons, some of them being fading colors and inability to withstand rough handling.

Before 2008, Titan had its presence in all consumer segments except for children. But with the vision to address the requirements of all consumer segments, Titan revamped its 'Dash' brand and launched 'Zoop' watches, targeted at children in the age group of 6 to 14 years.

Zoop was launched in 2008 in 8 cities, and was promoted through various Below-The-Line activities. However, Titan has recently come up with the first ever TVC of Zoop, and they are planning a 360 degree marketing approach for the brand.

LOOK : The ad looks smart and funny. Children will love to watch it again and again.

CONTENT : Children today are the biggest wannabes ever. At the age of 12, they try to imitate the trends and styles of the youth and young adults. And this commercial brilliantly displays their attention seeking over - smartness. The kid, who's dressing up like a teenager with hair gel and glares and all, notices that all he lacks is a funky watch. He then efficiently outsmarts his elder brother to get his watch.

CASTING : The people in the ad world, I believe, are more flawless in their casting than those in the movie world. In this commercial too, the little kid will very much remind you of a younger brother.

CONNECT : As I mentioned earlier, the ad will strike a chord with all the children, and they would love to watch it repeatedly. The communication of the Brand Proposition of 'Be a Star' has been done in an excellent manner. 

OVERALL RATING: 3.75 / 5

Although this ad is pretty simple, and does not have any factor in it which makes it oustanding, I believe it will be one of those highly effective ads that will stir the kids' curiosity and hence demand, leading to a good turnover for Zoop.