Telcos in the country are giving in to the demand. The growth of mobile internet users in India has led to attractive data plans to woo the youth. And cool ad films to promote them too. The recent one by Vodafone India, as part of its ‘Made for…” campaign to promote its internet services, speaks the language of the youth too. The ad takes inspiration from a regular youth’s life – someone who is connected 24×7 with her friends through social networks and isn’t wary of sharing her life’s secrets, all through her internet enabled mobile phone.
Conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather, the film starts with the Facebook updates of Aditi who has just broken up. She is seen posting ‘It’s over’ and changing her status from being ‘In a relationship’ to ‘Single’. The viewer gets a peek of her post-breakup life through her various updates on Facebook. She thanks her best friends, asks for a hug and then goes ahead with finding happiness. She takes a break, gets a new hairstyle, buys new clothes, sings at a club, and all the while her visual updates change from sorrow to joy.
Finally, she posts ‘Life is good’! Interestingly, the ad film is accompanied by a number that begins with ‘I guess my life’s an open book..anyone can take a look’ and ends with ‘This is me now..But I could change…anytime!’ Here’s the ad:
Impact on social
The 47-second video uploaded on the 13th of November has garnered more than 462K views till date, which is way more than the other ads in the ‘Made for…’ campaign. The video, however, has picked up from the 20th of November to see a steep rise in views, as can be seen in this graph by social media monitoring tool, Unmetric. There seems to be a push through social media, but it is likely that the ad provides an instant connect with the social savvy generation of today.
Interestingly, the Vodafone India YouTube channel has gained 484 new subscribers in the same period and has shown a higher growth rate (2.9%) than the average Telecom Services YouTube channel (1.8%), as per Unmetric.
Facebook & Twitter buzz
The ad has been shared on Vodafone India’s Facebook page which has more than 778K fans, and also being promoted on its Twitter page. Also, #MadeFor is being used to create conversations on Twitter. A 10-day contest ‘#madefor sharing’ contest is asking users to share photos based on a given theme for each of the 10 days, for a chance to win a Sony Experia Z Ultra.
The #MadeFor Sharing contest is here. It’s simple – share 10 pics on 10 themes in 10 days & stand to WIN a Sony Xperia Z Ultra phone!
— Vodafone India (@VodafoneIN) November 22, 2013
Here’s the frequency of hashtags on Vodafone India’s Twitter page in the last week. We can see that the conversations have been ruled by #MadeFor, with a majority of tweets being made by Twitter users.
Positioning itself as ‘the network for 24×7 Internet’ and stating that it is ‘#MadeFor sharing the moments of life’, the Vodafone ad film not only compliments the message, but has also found a connect with the young and social savvy masses. If one were to go by the comments below the video, there seems to be a strong connect with the song, and viewers have been asking where they can download it.
Though this is the story of Aditi, she could be any of the new generation today. Ad films taking inspiration from Facebook updates is not unique, although quite refreshing everytime someone comes up with the same concept. It finds an instant connect with the social savvy mobile generation of today.