Xiaomi India's marketing manager stars in an ad for its running shoes

Sometimes, our stories' headlines write themselves. Xiaomi’s latest ad campaign starts off on a very dramatic note. Sandeep Sarma, senior marketing manager at Xiaomi, falls from the sky and makes a superhero landing on the floor. He introduces himself and goes straight to the point of the ad… which is about Xiaomi’s newest product – running shoes.

Sarma is a former journalist, who recently joined Xiaomi. He is not the first employee to star in the company's ads for its products. Last year, during the middle of the COVID-induced lockdown, the company's employees starred in an ad for Mi Beard Trimmer 1C.

The execution of the four-minute-plus launch video is what caught our eye. The video featured three Xiaomi employees, who are part of the 'Mi Beard Gang'. They also featured in the 2019 launch video of the Mi Beard Trimmer.

It works in Xiaomi's favour, considering how social media-friendly Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi India MD, is; he too appeared in the 2019 video.

Jain also starred in this Diwali campaign from 2019, alongside stand-up comedian Danish Sait.

Jain has also featured in ads alongside celebrities, such as Baba Sehgal. In a LinkedIn post, Jain mentioned that, apart from the basic KRAs (key result areas) of his role as a Xiaomi leader, he also needs to sing and dance. The rap and dance routine by the Manu-Baba duo also says much about Xiaomi’s style of marketing – leveraging social media to the fullest even if the top boss has to crack a quirky rap number and dance it out.