Flipkart launched a massive campaign for its recent Big Billion Days Sale, for which it roped in a diverse mix of celebrities. Vikas Gupta, Vice President and Head of Marketing at Flipkart, shares insights about the campaign and its execution
Q] The campaign for ‘Big Billion Days’ featured a diverse mix of celebrities in a different avatar. How did you go about the ideation and execution?
Since its inception, Big Billion Days has evolved into becoming an experience that consumers look forward to every year. As a home-grown entity, we understand the pulse of India’s diverse consumers and aim to engage with them at every touch-point, thereby building an ecosystem. This year, we continued to venture beyond our platform to partner with an array of the top regional and local celebrities across India’s core passions: entertainment and sports, besides celebrated influencers across a cross-section of consumer interests from beauty to technology.
The diverse mix of celebrities, in a relatable, never-before-seen avatar, connected well with our consumers across the country, as we brought Bharat and India closer this festive season. Donning the hats of a policeman, journalist, politician and the like, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Dulquer Salman, Mahesh Babu and Puneeth Rajkumar were seen in engaging avatars that our consumers completely related to.
Q] How else did you leverage these actors for your platform?
Over and above the unparalleled reach in traditional media and mass personalisation over millions of digital assets, the campaign with the celebrities ran under the hashtag next #BigBillionStar on TikTok, underpinning user-generated content, with the winners bagging Realme phones. By the end of the Big Billion Days, the challenge had 10 billion impressions overall and served over a million videos of user-generated content. A WhatsApp chatbot, dubbed the “Big B” (Big Billion), with chats in Hindi and English, leveraged the celebrities to engage consumers. We also had innovative media channels like Google WiFi stations that were ‘gamified’ for deal discovery. A pop-up on the Flipkart app, which senses the location of the users when they are at the station, helped them navigate to games, which then paved the way for customers to access deals and offers.
Q] How many people were engaged through the campaign and what was the media you used to reach your target audience?
Across platforms, the Big Billion Days campaign reached out to over 400 million consumers in over 100 cities through 100+ television commercials, 3 million digital assets and strategic collaborations with various digital platforms through tech-focussed innovations. We also facilitated deep integrations within leading shows on Zee TV and with the Kapil Sharma Show on Sony to reach out to our audience. We’ve adopted a 360-degree, integrated approach so that our consumers are engaged in a holistic manner, keeping in mind that different means and methods help us reach out to diverse and distinct groups.
Q] What were the other marketing innovations used for Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale?
Music, food, fashion and travel are the top buzzwords around festivities. This in mind, we were present for our customers at every opportunity. From the ground to the air - we engaged Bharat and truly externalised the Big Billion Days this year. We engaged close to 7 million consumers through a strategic partnership with SpiceJet for a ‘marketing in the air’ campaign. In a first, we partnered with one of India’s favourite brands, ‘Burger King’, and launched the Special Big Billion Whopper burger. There was also a special integration on our platform where consumers had an opportunity to explore additional promotions at over 220 Burger King outlets across India. Our idea was to be where our consumers are - and they are not just accessible through mainstream media channels anymore.
We also launched our festive anthem with India’s much-loved rapper, Badshah. The video generated over 50 million views in seven days. To that end, one of the key drivers this year was externalization and our partner brands.
Through Big Billion Days Specials, we worked closely with our partner brands to create curated offerings that meets the aspirations of customers across the country. To make the experience more special and personalized for consumers, we partnered with more than 40 brands to bring special collections across categories, co-created products with leading brands, including limited edition products and collectibles, which were available only during the six days of TBBD. Additionally, we also introduced engagement through tie-ups with other apps including Ola, Oyo, Urban Clap, PhonePe and Zomato. Overall, an entire ecosystem celebrated The Big Billion Days with Bharat this year and we couldn’t be more proud.
