OLX gets chef Sanjeev Kapoor to influence behaviour

The word 'unboxing' has a sense of excitement. 'Unboxing my new iPhone!' See! But would the word be equally exciting if this was a used phone - bought second-hand? OLX, a platform for buying and selling 'used' goods such as electronics, fashion items, furniture, household goods, cars and bikes, has its latest campaign built around this concept.

For the first film of the campaign, the brand has roped in chef Sanjeev Kapoor. Shot in the kitchen space, the 75 second film is a step by step guide on how to 'box' a product on the platform.

Conceptualised by McCann, the campaign aims to talk predominantly to millennials who constitute a key chunk of India’s internet user base. Apart from Kapoor, the brand, which was established in 2006, has roped in Bollywood stars Aparshakti Khurana and Varun Sharma, YouTuber Faisal Khan of Motorbeam, technology influencers Sharmaji Technical, Technical Satire, Technical Boss, Technical Ruhez and lifestyle influencer Saloni Sehra, for the campaign.

Says Sapna Arora, chief marketing officer, OLX India, “Having been in India for over 10 years, we gleaned upon this consumer insight that Indian consumers tend to hold on to their pre-owned/unused items rather than part with it/reuse it. The items lie around their homes gathering dust. This also extends to other household items including smartphones, cameras, bikes,furniture and more. Hence, this campaign covers a wide gamut of unused items in the household."

"This key consumer insight also led us to focus on the kitchen as the first video in the campaign and rope in a familiar name like Sanjeev Kapoor for the campaign,” she adds.

Speaking of the ideation, she tells us, "We have noticed that listings on OLX do well if they are well represented in the form of high-quality genuine pictures. These listings attract more buyers for a product and sellers are then able to sell their items quickly thereby increasing the liquidity on the platform. Also, we wanted to showcase the ease with which users can list their unused pre-owned items within seconds."

When we asked her about the use of conventional e-comm words -'Boxing' and 'Unboxing', she mentions that these words are no longer used in conventional e-commerce parlance but have garnered the mainstream attention of consumer tech on digital platforms. "We noticed that millennials are increasingly gravitating towards unboxing videos content on digital platforms. This genre is extremely popular in India, especially for smartphones and other consumer electronics and thereby generates billions of views on digital media platforms."

She goes on to point out 'Boxing' and 'Unboxing' have taken the content platforms by storm since it taps into the consumer psychology to want something new and more importantly formulate an educated opinion prior to purchasing a product. "Therefore we decided to adopt a language/content format that millennials are familiar with. Given this is a digital-only campaign hence we coined the hashtag #BoxUnbox to leverage the campaign on across the digital platforms."

Kaushik Sachdev, associate - creative director, Magnon\TBWA , opines that as influencer activations flood the internet, we start questioning the brands’ choice of ambassador. “This one by OLX seems to be a well thought out partnership. With a platform like OLX, one can cut across genres and sometimes, the product/service can get lost in execution.”

He feels the team has done a good job in maintaining relevance and connecting back to the brand. It is Sanjeev Kapoor’s indirect relevance to the brand that makes the content a winner here. “The chef’s simplification of the brand’s process is fluid and is explained very well across the film. The contextual dialogue also fits in well and the scriptwriting helps merge Sanjeev Kapoor’s world well within OLX’s ecosystem,” he says.

Campaign Credits

Agency Name: McCann, New Delhi

Creative Team: Anand Bhushan, Ashish Nath, Sameer Kumar, Musfar Khan, Kailash Chandra, Parul Aden

Creative Heads: Souvik Datta and Rohit Devgun

Digital Creative Team: Pooja Verma, Neha Verma and Palash Pandey

Client Servicing Team: Jyoti Sharma, Yaman Gogia, Pranav Singh Tanwar and Meenakshi Bhattacharya

Strategy Team: Abhishek Chaturvedi and Tushar Handa