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!!

VIRGIN MOBILE - GSM CAMPAIGN

Being known as the only telecom service provider in the country that is absolutely youth based, it was obvious that Virgin Mobiles would pick up the youngest heart-throbs of the nation to present their brand to their target. And that is precisely what they have done, by roping in Ranbir Kapoor and Genelia Dsouza to popularize their entry into the GSM market.

This latest brand campaign of Virgin Mobile, titled ‘I is powered by We’, makes use of the catchy ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ philosophy to promote the main idea of the power of networking with friends among youngsters.

The campaign, created by Bates 141 agency and Brown Skins production house, features a series of TVCs featuring Ranbir and/or Genelia with their group of friends. The first commercial shows Ranbir’s friends setting up three girls to make his nagging girlfriend leave him. The second ad shows Genelia guiding a friend of hers to woo a girl on a STD call. The third commercial features both Ranbir and Genelia together (a potentially good twosome, but the cold chemistry needs to be worked upon), with a merged group of their friends, helping Ranbir impress and finally ask out a girl in the lift. Following are three of the commercials of the campaign:

LOOK: The overall look of the ad is typical Virgin-ish. One can easily make out that it is a Virgin Mobile commercial, even before the ad climaxes. The ad is young, fresh and colorful, and will definitely make you wait and watch if you come across it while surfing channels.

CONTENT: All the three ads portray a whacky incident and witty-humor, akin to all of Virgin’s commercials since its launch. The communication of the message of the power of networking and connecting with your friends has been shown in a well-crafted manner. But then again, I feel Virgin’s previous ads were funnier and a better watch.

CASTING: The ad mostly contains either fresh or recent faces, who the people have not yet had enough of. Roping in Ranbir and Genelia as Brand Ambassadors was a great idea for Virgin, as they not only are the flavors of the season, but also are an apt fit for the brand. Especially Ranbir, who, after Aamir and Shahrukh, is the third highest paid celebrity endorser in India. And the strength of brand Ranbir is evident from the fact that both Pepsi and Panasonic have renewed their two year contracts with him, and that Pepsi, who had initially signed him for Rs. 2 crores, has offered him a whooping 14 crores this time. Also, Ranbir has been roped in by John Players, where he would be replacing Hrithik Roshan! Albeit Virgin Mobiles as a brand had established itself well in the Indian market by targeting the youth, it was nowhere in the top 5 mobile service providers of the country. I’m pretty sure that this campaign of Virgin will help provide enhanced visibility to the brand, as well as boost its subscriber base.

CONNECT: The ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ campaign of Virgin will easily strike a chord with the viewers due to its youth-centric approach, and the fact that it has Ranbir and Genelia.

OVERALL RATING: 3.5 / 5

When it comes to Brand Ambassadors, Virgin seems to have struck the hot iron in the right place and with the apt tool. But I believe the copy could have still been made more whacky. Also, audience will be seeing Ranbir and Genelia on screen for the first time. So the interaction between the two in the commercial could have been portrayed in a better way.