MxMIndia

Tag: Kartik Iyer

  • Mr Roy or Sid, as he is fondly known, will be responsible for Happy's operations across branches

    Happy gets Siddhartha Roy as COO

    By A Correspondent

     

    With operations kicking off recently in Mumbai, Bangalore-based creative agency Happy has welcomed Siddhartha Roy as their first Chief Operating Officer. In a short span of five years, Happy has grown to a team of over 30, and a newly appointed COO marks the beginning of big things to come from the Idea Shop.

     

    Mr Roy or Sid, as he is fondly known, will be responsible for Happy’s operations across branches. He has over 16 years in the business, of which 10 years were spent with Ogilvy in Mumbai, Bangalore and Sri Lanka.  Besides Ogilvy, he has worked with Ambience and Everest as well as loyalty marketing specialists, DIREM.

     

    He has been associated with a diverse spread of categories and brands such as FMCG (Cadbury, ITC Foods, Nestle, Coke, Ceylon Tobacco Company), Telecom (Hutch/Vodafone, Reliance, Sri Lanka Telecom), Web (Yahoo) and Retail (Madura Garments). His contribution extends to several campaigns that have been awarded for not only marketing effectiveness but creative excellence as well. In Phoenix Ogilvy – Sri Lanka, Sid set up & headed the Strategic Planning cell along with leading Account Management.

     

    “I think there are seismic changes taking place in the business of communications today. Gone are the days of agency imperialism. While marketers are looking for ‘ideas’, large network agencies are increasingly selling ‘processes’. And over the past few years, Happy has been successfully capitalizing on this need-gap. This is the primary reason for me to join the HAPPY family – and I’m extremely excited about it,” said Mr Roy.

     

    “Kartik and Praveen have been doing a fabulous job over the past few years to create and keep conversations alive around Happy with their work. My mandate at Happy is to partner them in augmenting the same while driving business efficiencies,” he added.

     

    On the new appointment, co-founder and CEO, Kartik Iyer commented: “Praveen and myself have done things by ourselves so far. We think it’s time to take a more structured approach to reach our goals. He comes with the right level of experience combined with the hunger to do the unexpected – this is very much the DNA of Happy. Known as the ‘oldmonkster’ among friends, we think he is the perfect fit as our COO. We welcome him and are very confident this addition will take things to a whole new level. In fact, it already has.”

     

    Happy is responsible for the much appreciated Flipkart campaigns featuring little kids which won a silver at the Asia Pacific Adfest in Pattaya this year. They are also well known globally for their ‘Lee – Never Wasted’ shopping bag design, which won them a Cannes nomination. Happy was also the agency behind the highly acclaimed Incredible India tourism commercial titled the ‘post card’.

     

  • Behind every great commercial is super strategy. Every week, MxMIndia will bring you the brief and the strat as given by the client and whatever else that went into creating a winning ad. AdStrat is compiled by Shubhangi Mehta.

    Ad Strat: No kidding with Flipkart

    Kartik Iyer, CEO, Happy Creative Services

     

    Name of the Campaign/Ad:

    No Kidding. No Worries. – Flipkart.com

     

    The Brief :

    To convince people that it was safe and hassle-free to shop at flipkart.com. In short, build trust for the brand.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”200″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ47GDgTWGg[/youtube]

    Research insights

     

    We found that there were two categories of people we needed to speak to:

    a) Those who were already transacting online for tickets on sites like IRCTC and travel sites, but were not shopping for physical goods.

    b) Offline shoppers – people who were sceptical about transacting online itself.

     

    We found the common thread between them to be lack of trust, and both groups had common fears:

    a) Fear of losing their money by having to pay upfront.

    b) Unsure about quality of products and their warranties.

    c) Fear of not having a place to replace / exchange a product in the event of a problem, if any.

     

    Flipkart already had the solutions to the above problems in place, ie multiple payment options (including cash on delivery), easy replacement policy, and the fact that they only dealt in original products that came with original warranties. All we had to do was go out and tell the world that there’s nothing to worry about.

     

    Being the first mover, we were clear that Flipkart needed to battle the demons of e-commerce itself. Basically, grow the category.

     

    The thought process behind the creative:

    We knew we were pretty much talking to everybody. In some way we had to voice the concerns in the minds of the consumers. So we chose a classic question / answer format that allowed people to recognize their own fears in every piece of communication. Since we were there to build trust, the choice to go ahead with children was almost unanimous, as they are the only ones who trust unconditionally. So we had a format and we had kids, all we needed was a little touch to make it clutter-breaking. So we decided to get the kids to behave like adults and gave them adult voices, which took the experience of watching the commercials to another level. After all, we wanted to tell everyone after every piece of communication that there was no need to have any fear when it comes to shopping on Flipkart.com. No kidding. No worries.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”200″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrjHvGerLY[/youtube]

    Media vehicles chosen

    TV, Print, Outdoor, Digital.

     

    Key issues kept in mind while executing the ad:

    Getting the performance right was key. We didn’t want it ending up like a spoof or have the kids ‘trying’ to act like adults. The kids came through like magic. Their performances are there to be seen and appreciated. Full marks to Aiyappa the director and Footcandles the production house for their commitment and efforts. Special mention to Shaun who trained the kids with workshops prior to the shoot, and kept them in great spirits through the entire schedule.

     

    Does the treatment do justice to the brief?

    The campaign definitely did justice to the brief. I am not sure if a treatment is expected to do justice to a brief. If i understand your question right, yes it definitely helped people to watch the communication repeatedly, to the point that they not only recalled everything that Flipkart was trying to communicate but also the dialogues from everyone in the films.

     

    What according to you is the differentiating factor about the ad?

    The kids acting like adults and speaking in adult voices definitely made the campaign stand out. The little touches of subtle humour only added to repeat value in viewership.

     

    Market and client feedback:

    The campaign was appreciated without prejudice by consumers, marketers and industry peers alike.

    The commercials went on to become a viral success, and crossed a million views on YouTube alone within two weeks, streaming on channels that were not owned by Flipkart or the agency.

    People actually started recalling the dialogues from the commercials in normal conversation. “Thats a classic,” has found its way back into common parlance and comments on Facebook.

    The campaign featured among the five most recalled campaigns of the festive season.

    It also featured in the most recalled campaigns of 2011 in polls conducted by Financial Express, Business Line, Afaqs, Campaign India and FHM, among others.

     

    Results:

    1. The website traffic, orders and revenue all doubled post the campaign. In August Flipkart was clocking Rs 30 cr/month. By the end of the campaign they clocked in excess of Rs 60 cr each month.

    2. Website traffic jumped to 100 lakh visits per month and 1000 lakh page views.

    3. Flipkart is now among top 30 sites in the country ahead of eBay (Alexa rankings) and the largest e-commerce (physical goods) player in the country.

    4. Today Flipkart ships close to 30,000 items every day ie 17 items every minute.

    5. The campaign was skewed towards the new electronics categories whose contribution went up from 40 percent to 60 percent in the two months of the campaign.

     

    Campaign Credits:

    Client – flipkart.com

    CEO – Sachin Bansal

    VP Marketing – Ravi Vora

    Agency – Happy Creative Services

    Creative Directors – Kartik Iyer / Praveen Das

    Copywriter – Naren Kaushik

    Art Director – Anuja Singhal

    Acct Management – Ruchika Chaudry / Neelima Kariappa

    Strategy – Ravi Bhat

    Production House – Footcandles

    Director – Aiyappa

    Exec Producer – Anand Menon

    Producer – Amaerjeet Phukan