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Hang us if we fail you, says MakeMyTrip.com
With ‘Humne toda vaada, to pay only aadha’ as its slogan, in its new TVC, MMT promises travellers that they need pay only half the cost of their holiday if it does not meet with their expectations
With summer at our doorstep, the travel industry is gearing up for the vacation season. Since good vacations are often marred by unreliable travel agents, that’s what online travel site MakeMyTrip.com (MMT) promises will not happen in its new TV commercial. The premise of the TVC is that the traveller can put a noose around MMT if its promises go undelivered.
With ‘Humne toda vaada, to pay only aadha’ as its slogan, MMT promises travellers that they need pay only half the cost of their holiday if it does not meet with their expectations. The campaign conveys MMT’s promise of a hassle free holiday experience on its new Holiday Plus offering for package tours to the US, Australia and Europe. The company claims that the holiday starts right at your doorstep when you leave and ends back there when you return, with no hidden costs.
A shot from the TVC |
Next, an MMT representative is shown boldly singing the song with the rope tied in a noose around his neck. He declares that if you find anything missing on your holiday trip, you pay only half the cost. The last shot shows the husband sneezing, and the noose pulling tight around the MMT representative’s neck, shaking him off his chair. (Submit your opinion on this ad.)
Mani Jayaram, vice-president, creative, Euro RSCG, says, “The ad conveys that the customer is the king here and, like the Domino’s concept, it is totally the customer’s call to decide whether he is satisfied with the MMT holiday or not. When the script was written, we thought we needed a track for it. So, for every sequence, we have the Latka deejo... track.”
Sachin Bhatia |
Bhatia adds that the Holiday Plus package targets people in the SEC A+, A and B segments.
MakeMyTrip has spent Rs 4 crore on the campaign. Bhatia adds that about Rs 30 crore has been spent on advertising for the financial year 2007-08, of which 50 per cent has been allotted to the online medium.
However going forward, MMT's emphasis will be more on offline media as the plan is to build the brand, informs Bhatia. This is evident in the current campaign as well, where apart from the MMT site, no other online advertising is being done. “We already get 1.2 lakh visitors on the website every day, so we thought of not advertising on the Internet, apart from promotions on the MMT network,” says Bhatia.
Apart from the TVC playing on news channels, movie channels and general entertainment channels since the first week of February, the campaign also includes radio spots, print ads and outdoor ads. Cut-outs and hoardings have been placed in the 19 MakeMyTrip retail outlets across India.
The campaign will continue till April. The second phase of the campaign will be rolled out at the end of this month with radio spots, soon after which 10 second and five second TVC bursts will follow. The second phase of the campaign is aimed at driving transactions on the site.
MMT has plans to move into a higher service offering space and expects a larger share of business to come to it from international holiday packages. “We expect the revenue chunk coming from international holiday packages to go up to 30 per cent from the present 12 per cent. We want to move into high involvement product services (international holidays),” says Bhatia.