“We’re living in the golden age of television”: Jaskaran Singh Kapany, Xiaomi

Xiaomi is India’s Number 1 smart TV brand since Q2, 2018. We’re proud to have played a key role in driving smart TV adoption in India. Since our inception, we’ve sold over seven million devices in the country, with over a lakh being sold in just the first three days of the festive sale. We’ve seen a 53x jump in demand for 4K TVs during this festive season (versus pre-festive period).

We’ve always maintained a balanced approach between the two channels. Offline, for us, is significantly large and has been steadily picking up. We’re also seeing a healthy online traction. Our own Mi.com platform continues to perform well.

Within the first three days of Mi sale, we sold over a lakh (each of) smart TVs and streaming devices, and registered a 53X jump in the 4K segment (versus pre-festive period).

While it’s true that offline plays an important role in allowing the customer to ‘experience’ the product in person, there’s an equally strong trend of the consumers who’re buying such products online. In fact, our research shows that the consumers go through 6-7 touch-points, including online reviews, comparisons, friend/family referrals, visits to offline stores, etc., before they buy the product.

We’re living in the golden age of television. Today, TV is about choice and, for most viewers, there are more choices than they can explore.

While people still look for hardware specifications, the change in the patterns of content consumption on the back of digital penetration, exponential OTT growth, etc., have also given a new facet to consumer demand. With the changing viewing behaviour, the users are now looking for better software and content experience or platforms that offer easier content discovery, apart from good hardware specifications.

The smart TV category has virtually exploded in India. From 15 per cent in 2018, it’s now at a whopping 80 per cent today. But while the category is called ‘smart’, it’s ironic that most brands say or do very little to demonstrate why they are ‘smart’. Most differentiation is done largely on the basis of ‘hardware’.

The brief was simple:

1. Show India who the ‘smartest’ TV really is, and why - Through this communication, we want to encourage the consumers to check if their so-called smart TV is really ‘smart’. And also show how PatchWall helps with its unparalleled host of software features.

2. Be different in the ‘sea of sameness’ - We were also clear that the communication needs to be executed in a refreshing manner (from a format perspective), given the barrage of advertising during this period. It needs to be a multi-format campaign, not just one, to do justice to the sheer width of offering.

While brainstorming, we arrived at the current narrative, which highlights the ‘misses’ of other smart TVs.

It’s interesting to note that while the Diwali season accounts for 25-30 per cent of annual sales, the actual purchase decision journey for TVs begins 4-6 weeks before the actual purchase. So, the ‘timing’ of the campaign and its execution area very important. The latter because of the sheer volume of advertising during this period.