Here is how Cleartrip onboarded Flipkart’s ‘Kidults’ to plug festive travel bookings

Cleartrip, the online travel agency owned by Flipkart, introduced a new campaign featuring Flipkart’s signature Kidults for the now concluded Big Billion Days sale. The campaign, titled Socho Mat, Book Karo, is aimed at travellers who go the extra mile before making their bookings.

Flipkart acquired the online travel agency in April 2023. With the new campaign, the brand has creatively pulled in Flipkart’s Kidults trope, notably recognised from Flipkart’s old signature campaigns featuring kids donning adult roles, essentially positioning e-commerce as child’s play. With the characters now representing Cleartrip, the plan, seemingly, is to cater to consumers who seek the same trifecta of ease, comfort, and convenience in their travel escapades.

The rallying cry, Ab desh sochega nahi, seedha book karega!, orbits around a singular concept: crafting travel bookings as effortless and spontaneous as seizing a cherished last-minute treasure from a beloved emporium.

The brand intent

The campaign was primarily crafted to coincide with Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale, reflected in heavy discounts on the travel platform. But the campaign is a prelude to a larger brand proposition, one of easy travels and minimal hassles.

Kunal Dubey, who is the CMO of Cleartrip, opines that for any market, the festive season is the opportunity when everybody is online, and so are the brands. “When people are online with the intent of shopping everybody in the space becomes competitive. We wanted to take up the marketing responsibility of creating something that can shape behaviour for the long run,” he says.

While the campaign banks heavily on Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale, the core premise of the campaign extends over to what Cleartrip intends to instil moving forward in all its comms. Dubey explains, “Travel is a serious, thought-through category. The number of days that you take to plan travel is far higher than the days you actually travel. However, the number of conversations that happen around travelling is far more than other categories. At any party or get-together, travelling is always the most talked about. But the actual decision-making isn’t impulsive. So, we thought, as a brand right now, can we take a shot and start a journey where travel can actually become an impulse category?”

Festive season serves as the ground zero for the genesis of this communication shift that the brand is aiming to spark. With people already intent on spending more than usual, the platform is luring in customers with attractive offers. Given that the plans for travel are almost always future-ended, the advanced bookings can raise a few concerns. So, how do you eliminate the precautionary practice of travellers of not shelling out money on travel plans that are scheduled to happen sometime in future?

Dubey explains, “Imagine, in the festive period of time, if I just take care of all your uncertainties about travelling plans for New Year's Eve, you might not get the same discounted price when you want to make the decision last minute. So, being too hesitant isn’t productive here. Especially, if Cleartrip is taking care of all your procrastination, while also offering flexible cancellation policies.”

The brand has employed print and digital as its core media channels for this campaign.

Consumer behaviour

In a country where festivals and family time are deeply intertwined, the festive season beckons a significant surge in travel, particularly among non-locals residing in metros.

Beyond this, how does the festive season call for travel in a country where festivals and family time go hand in hand?

Dubey answers, “We are seeing that Metro to non-Metro travel is picking up, especially right now. That means people want to go back home and spend time with family. Also, we are seeing a trend of more than two people within a family going to a leisure destination. One more important trend that we're seeing right now is that more than 60% of international travellers seem to be first-time travellers. Beyond this, right now the number of short trips is increasing crazily.”

Consumers from tier 2 and beyond appear to hold almost just as big a piece in the travel industry as tier 1. “The number of leisure trips taken by customers in tier 2 and 3 is just around 20% less than tier 1. That means that the propensity to book for leisure travel is going up.”

The travel biz

In terms of business footprint, Cleartrip is seeing a lot of action in cities that are largely connected to airports. “I think our share on the metro and the tier 1, especially the 10, 20 cities broadly get us the most business. But slowly and steadily, especially in the last couple of months, we're seeing a lot of generation in the tier 2 cities. It's not substantial at the moment, but we can see it coming up fairly well.”