Reliance Entertainment learns language of the youth

The web seems to have caught the fancy of executives at Reliance Entertainment. The company first ventured into the digital space by launching gaming portal Zapak.com. The launch was accompanied by a large-scale, multi-media campaign, with a few of its ads even running into controversy (postmen, anyone?).

According to Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment, the rationale behind Bigadda is simple: India is a young market with more than 54 per cent of its population below the age of 25. Further, broadband penetration is set to increase over the next five years, leading to a consequential rise in online ad spends; currently, online advertising is a less than US$ 100 million industry in India, with 30 million people using the Internet.

“Keeping the Web 2.0 popularity in mind, we have launched Bigadda.com for the youth,” says Sawhney. In his own words, “Bigadda is a quite a remix of Orkut, MySpace and YouTube, but with a difference – it is riding on an Indian flavour to add that edge.” The language, interface and content will primarily make use of fine Indian nuances.

‘Adda’ quite literally means a hangout joint, or a community forum for voicing opinions. Therefore, the site hopes to attract Indians all over the world, getting them to understand friendship, while sharing music and videos the YouTube way.

To support the launch, a multi-media advertising campaign has been launched, with a budget of US$ 1 million (Rs 4 crore). To begin with, Bigadda.com has been positioned on the thought, ‘Let’s catch up’, keeping the friendship premise in mind. A TVC has been released, which shows people from different walks of life ‘losing’ things (an attractive woman plucks off a white hair from her scalp, as the super reads, ‘Youth goes’). Similarly, other situations are shown: ‘Money Goes’, ‘Fame Goes’, ‘Children Go’, ‘Love Goes’, and so on. The last shot is that of a group of young people hanging out together, with the super reading, ‘Friends …Stay. Bigadda.com. Let’s catch up’.

The ad has been created by Ideas At Work, a startup creative shop set up by Prashant Godbole and Zarvan Patel, the ex-Rediffusion duo. The radio ads feature commonly used lingo and abbreviations of the youth (the ‘SMS’ generation, so to speak), the connection being that at Bigadda.com, the TG will find ways of expressing themselves in a language they have created. “In a sense, we have created a Bigadda lexicon on radio,” observes Sawhney.

Outdoor and Internet campaigns on the same idea have been released in major towns and metros. Ambient media will soon be leveraged across places frequented by the young such as multiplexes, colleges, schools and malls, apart from on-ground and other BTL activities in these areas.

“We’re hoping intense word-of-mouth will drive Bigadda.com,” concludes Sawhney.