BlaBlaCar launches its first TV ad campaign in South India

The world’s largest city-to-city ridesharing service, BlaBlaCar will be launching its first TV campaign in India – “The Travelling Blobs” on August 19. The campaign features BlaBlaCar’s animated characters which are used across countries – emphasizing the global brand image of the company and the universal appeal of the service.

The first leg of this campaign is planned for the southern states of the country – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. The TV campaign has been created by BlaBlaCar internationally and adapted for India by Elephant Delhi; with Starcom MediaVest Group conceptualizing the media plan.

Speaking on the adaptation of the TVC for the Indian audience Anjan Roy, Director, Elephant Delhi, said, “Despite the existence of well-established public transport networks across the globe, BlaBlaCar is the world’s largest ridesharing platform, which attests to BlaBlaCar’s rising popularity. As an innovative and young brand – Elephant Delhi captured this spirit in the content and tone of the campaign for BlaBlaCar. Over time, we aim to deepen our association to make BlaBlaCar a vibrant, loveable and popular brand here in India as well.”

The ads are filmed using animated blobs with a universal appeal across the 19 countries that BlaBlaCar is present in. The colours of the blobs (Green and Blue) are in line with BlaBlaCar’s colour scheme. The name of the Blobs (Bla and BlaBla) are consistent with their chattiness index – the reason behind BlaBlaCar’s name.

The ad begins with the Green Blob – BlaBla waiting for his train ticket to be confirmed for a trip from Bangalore to Chennai. As he waits, we see the Blue Blob – Bla refuelling his car for the same journey and worrying about the high cost. The Blue Blob then posts his trip on BlaBlaCar through the mobile app. The Green Blob decides to buy a seat for the same journey and both are seen leaving together, happily and conveniently. The co-traveller, Green blob has a wider mouth, is younger; while the car-owner, Blue Blob, is older and has a smaller mouth indicating lesser talkativeness. Also, their age is in line with the actual demographics of BlaBlaCar’s usage i.e. car owners tend to be a bit older than co-travellers.

Talking about the TV campaign, Raghav Gupta, Country Manager, BlaBlaCar, said, “The insight behind this campaign was that with public transport being always full, last minute travel options in India are limited. BlaBlaCar offers an affordable, friendly, and efficient alternative to public transport. This TVC focusses on both sides of the market-place (car-owners: expensive fuel, co-travellers: lack of travel options) and talks about the value proposition. It also explains how to use BlaBlaCar. We chose to launch our TV campaign in South India as these states are key for us.”

The campaign will run across Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and English channels of the Gemini TV Group, ETV Group, Udaya Group, Sun TV Group and many more.
Speaking about their partnership with BlaBlaCar, Mallikarjundas CR, CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group said – “BlaBlaCar is an awesome win for us. What makes working on BlaBlaCar exciting is that we are working together to drive attribution and accountability at the most granular level – a single TV / Radio spot. In doing so, we move the principles of media planning on traditional media one step closer towards digital.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IU0ylTv_wM&feature=youtu.be