Venice Festival to showcase Cadbury India mobile campaign

Cadbury’s long-running ‘Pappu Pass Ho Gaya’ campaign on the Reliance World mobile portal has made it to the Venice Festival of Media

Mobile advertising may be still finding its feet in India, but the Cadbury campaign on Reliance is already two years old and still running.

The mobile campaign, which was born as an offshoot of the Amitabh Bachchan TVC, ‘Pappu Pass Ho Gaya’, came into the limelight last year when it received the Cannes Media Lion in the Internet/New Media category.

Now, the mobile campaign will be showcased at the Venice Festival of Media to be held from April 15-18, 2007.

Developed by Madison Media, the Cadbury campaign was featured in the Exam Results page of the Reliance mobile portal, Reliance World, in 2005. So, whenever a visitor checked his results and found that he had passed, there was a message from Cadbury saying ‘Pappu Pass Ho Gaya!’ The campaign has been running on Reliance World for two years now. It has already spanned 66 sets of board exam results.

Venice Festival to showcase Cadbury India mobile campaign

The TVC

According to Karthik Lakshminarayan, COO, Madison Infinity, “The Cadbury campaign of ‘Kuchch Meetha Ho Jaye’ symbolised the fact that one should celebrate every joyous moment with Cadbury Dairy Milk. Through the exam results campaign on Reliance World, they managed to get the message across effectively.” Incidentally, Madison Communications’ president and MD, Sam Balsara, will be speaking at the Venice Festival, where the campaign will be showcased.

Reliance claims that it has received 50 million hits in the exam results section. Mahesh Prasad, president, applications, solutions and content, at Reliance Communications, said in a statement, “Mobile advertising is here to stay. It is highly contextual and combines the power of the Internet and traditional advertising with the added advantages of consumer engagement, interactivity and targeted reach.”

Nokia has recently announced platforms for mobile advertising, as have Google and Yahoo! However, most media companies have not gone beyond the basic ringtone-wallpaper format, and it may be a while before we see more contextual mobile advertising.

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