Rohit Nautiyal
OOH

PepsiCo urges breaking the Ramzan fast with Nimbooz

The six month old brand has used outdoor consistently and innovatively to capture its TG's attention

Nimbooz is back with another outdoor innovation, just months after its launch six months ago, and this time, it is focussed around Ramadan (Ramzan).

During Ramadan, the month-long Islamic religious observance, members of the community refrain from eating and drinking from dawn till sunset and break their fast at a stipulated time. Nimbooz thus conceptualised the idea and installed a giant Nimbooz branded billboard with a programmable digital clock that displays the daily, city specific Iftar (opening of a fast) time, along with a message that reads: 'Jab ghadi Iftar ka waqt dikhaye, ekdum refreshing Nimbooz ho jaye!'

The specific Iftar time for each day is adjusted every morning and is displayed throughout the day.

Iftar or the opening of the fast takes place in a group with other members of the community, with people gathering right after Maghrib or sunset time. The billboard thus urges the audience to commence Iftar with Nimbooz and has been strategically executed in the Jama Masjid area of Old Delhi.

PepsiCo urges breaking the Ramzan fast with Nimbooz
The campaign will continue till the festival of Eid, to be celebrated on September 21.

The campaign has been conceptualised by BBDO India and executed by Platinum Outdoor, the OOH (out of home) division of Madison Media.

Outdoor has appeared significantly in PepsiCo's media plan for Nimbooz, right from the day of its launch in March this year. The launch campaign, planned in a phased manner, kicked off in Mumbai and later spread to markets in the north, including Delhi and NCR, Chandigarh and Amritsar. The company created multiple innovations, including a motorised 2D lime squeezer on a hoarding, a teaser and a revealer using a sack stuffed with lemons and other innovations on bus shelters.

Nimbooz' Ramadan campaign comes on the heels of last month's Independence Day celebrations that saw the brand celebrate the day with the distribution of more than two lakh Nimbooz branded kites to underprivileged children in Delhi.

With an aim to make Nimbooz a 'national drink', PepsiCo plans to market the brand on every platform centred on Indian festivals or rituals. The company plans to initiate many more activities in the coming months, using various touch points to celebrate 'Indian-ness' in the country.

Alpana Titus, executive vice-president, flavours, PepsiCo India, shares that "the consistent use of OOH is crucial because it works as a platform to build the product sampling initiatives. We are gearing up for aggressive sampling in southern and eastern markets across the country. The 'Asli Indian' proposition of the brand can be conveniently leveraged during the festival period and we plan to do so in the future as well."

Manoj Deb, executive creative director, BBDO holds a similar view on Nimbooz' Ekdum Asli Indian positioning that allows the agency to explore various nuances of the Indian culture. "Innovating on print can be very expensive. OOH is much more cost effective and we will continue to use it to promote the brand. Also, we plan to come up with a new TVC, but when has not been decided yet," he says.

Recently, in association with Portland Outdoor, Nimbooz broke its outdoor campaign in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Salem, Trirunelveli, Puducherry and Erode, using Tamil creatives; and Bengaluru, Mangalore and Mysore using Kannada creatives.

Titus says that the size of the largely unorganised nimbu paani market in India is about one billion cases, which is double the size of the carbonated soft drink industry in India. In March, Parle Agro, too, launched its lemon drink, LMN.

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