What went behind Happydent's #32HazaarBattissis campaign

Happydent, Perfetti Van Melle’s chewing gum brand, has been making people smile for a long time now, with its proposition of ‘Dikha Battissi Kar Baat Achhi Si’. Last year, on World Smile Day (October 7), the brand extended the philosophy, with a campaign titled #32HazaarBattissis.

The campaign entails consumers to upload their ‘battissi’ selfies, using the Happydent AR filter, on the brand’s social media platforms.

The campaign, conceptualised by Perfetti Van Melle along with creative agency Schbang, media agency Wavemaker India and PR Pundit, scored 8.8 and struck gold at Digies 2023 in the best use of AR/VR category.

afaqs! spoke to Chirag Shah, associate vice president, Schbang, to understand the brief, design, execution and outcome of the campaign.

“We wanted to keep the campaign simple. So, we identified a goal of getting 32,000 people to come together and smile on World Smile Day. We started with a pre-launch post to create excitement and went with a one-week -long campaign,” shares Shah.

“We wanted to focus on the smiling aspect. The idea was, how can a simple idea lead to large real life social impact? We wanted to craft a campaign where people smiled and shared the pictures. For every selfie shared, Happydent contributed Rs 20 towards the education of kids at Child Help Foundation,” he adds.

The brand also organised an event at DLF CyberHub, Gurugram and got influencers to talk about the campaign on different social media platforms.

“Our target was 32,000 ‘battissi’ selfies, but we overachieved, with 35,000-plus pictures. We reached 100 million impressions on social media platforms and received a lakh-plus engagement on different activities on digital platforms. Overall, the campaign drove brand equity as well.”

According to Akshay Gurnani, co-founder and chief executive officer, a key agenda for Schbang was to make the legacy brand relevant for today’s youth.