Case Study: How Xiaomi sold 2 million Mi TVs in India over 15 months

Mi TV’s Say it, See it campaign is creative and yet a simple story showcasing Mi TV, and a family’s usual day-to-day interaction around it, thus highlighting how the Mi TV is very much an integral part of families and consumers’ lives in India. As part of this campaign, Xiaomi has released a TV commercial film, highlighting some innovative features of its Mi TV, specifically the voice command capability powered by Google Assistant. It showcases how Mi TV enables users to perform a plethora of smart functions such as play the music of their choice, set important reminders, gain weather updates and much more, with just a simple Google Assistant powered voice command feature, making life easy.

The film captures hilarious instances of a married couple, played by the iconic Indian television pair - Sumeet Raghavan (husband) and Rupali Ganguly (wife), popularly known as Sahil and Monisha from Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai, one of the most popular Indian comedy TV series. The couple’s incredible on-screen presence and interactions along with the star child actor, Aryan Randhawa, focus on how the Mi TV is the most ideal Smart TV to have at your home and how it's deeply integrated in their daily lives.

The Big Idea

The Say it See it campaign primarily focuses on showcasing how a Mi TV offers more than just entertainment. It focuses on the biggest KSP of being smart, and marries the idea with how buying a TV is a family decision. The story is set on the narrative that even if no one in the family is listening to you, Mi TV always listens to you.

The new campaign offers a highly relatable family setting, and takes a humorous approach on narrating the story of a family, indulging in everyday banter, between the husband, wife and their child. The famous star couple from TV, Sahil and Monisha have been loved and adored by the Indian audience, and have appeared together for a major brand TVC for the first time. Their on-screen chemistry and comical timing are appreciated by millions of viewers across India. The ad leverages their popularity and charisma to build a strong and powerful connection with Indian families.

It further emphasizes that while the Mi TV is already powered with all the necessary features to offer consumers with an immersive TV viewing experience. At the same time, it allows them to do a lot more with their Smart TV.

Objective

Xiaomi India witnessed incredible growth since its inception in 2014, and has become the number one smartphone player for seven consecutive quarters in a row (IDC Quarterly report). As the brand progressed further in India, Xiaomi also brought its muchanticipated Mi TV to India in February 2018. Xiaomi successfully grew to become the number one player in Smart TV category for four consecutive quarters in a row ( IDC Worldwide Quarterly Smart Home Device Tracker, Q1, 2019).

In less than 15 months from its first sale, Xiaomi sold over 2 million smart TVs in India. It majorly transformed the Indian smart television market by providing consumers with a product that perfectly combines innovative features and the highest quality while offering these at truly honest prices to consumers.

The recent Mi TV portfolio includes Mi LED TV 4A Pro (32”, 43”, 49”), Mi LED TV 4C Pro (32”), Mi LED TV 4 Pro ( 55”), and Mi LED TV 4X Pro (55”). All of these Mi LED TVs are equipped with voice command feature powered by Google Assistant, as well as an extraordinary PatchWall interface specially designed for India, bringing together more than 14 different content partners, both local and global, resulting in over 700,000 hours of content, across one of the largest libraries of Video-On-Demand providers. Mi TVs offer seamless experience across all TV variants to consumers, emphasizing on the brand’s core philosophy - Innovation for all.

The concept of smart TV’s or internet-enabled televisions is still burgeoning in India. With this new marketing campaign based on Mi TVs, Say it See it campaign aims to educate customers and build greater awareness about Mi LED TV’s and its smart features for a growing smart TV market like India. Xiaomi’s first non smartphone, TV focused campaign, the Say it See it campaign primarily outlines the voice command feature of Mi TVs powered by Google Assistant, and a variety of other smart functions that can be performed with a Mi TV. Refreshing our memories, the new campaign further takes us back to the popular and funny sitcom days with Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai's famed on-screen couple Sahil (Sumeet Raghavan) and Monisha (Rupali Ganguly) who are brought together as the main protagonists.

Target Audience

In a country like India, buying a television is often found to be a family decision as it's a long term purchase. Hence, the new Mi TV Say it See it campaign is set in a typical Indian family social set-up, where each family member is seen enjoying the television, signifying that Mi TV is for everyone and its features are designed keeping in mind consumers of all age-groups.

This campaign is targeted towards potential users of Mi LED TVs, including first time buyers as well as consumers who are looking forward to upgrading their televisions. Xiaomi has now expanded its portfolio and offers products across various categories, moving beyond just smartphones. As a result, it is now becoming a household name among majority of Indian consumers.

Media Plan

The Mi TV, Say it See it campaign will run across the following channels:

  • Television (TVC)
  • In cinema advertisements
  • Digital – You Tube, Social Media
  • Out of House (OOH)

Time Duration

The campaign would run for nearly four weeks starting June 20th, 2019, and might be followed by a sequel in the near future.

Execution Team

The Mi TV Say it See it campaign is a collaborative effort between brand marketing team of Xiaomi India led by Karan Shroff, and MWG-TAG Bangalore.

Campaign Highlights

The campaign lays emphasis on the fact that a Mi TV, unlike a regular TV, allows its users to perform multiple smart functions than just watching films and listening to music. It showcases how a consumer can seamlessly connect other IoT enabled devices/appliances such as Mi Air Purifier 2, Smart lights, Google Home, Alexa etc at home with the Mi TV and operate them via the TV with just a single voice command.

Humorous in nature, the film is extremely interactive, entertaining and based on potential real life scenarios. It starts with Sahil (husband) entering the house joyfully after his day at work. As soon as he enters, the child is seen using Mi TV’s special voice command feature to play the famous Bollywood Breakup song and goes on to check for weather updates using the same simple feature of Mi TV. Mi TV indicates that there is a thunderstorm expected outside, signifying that Monisha (wife) is extremely furious as Sahil (husband) has forgotten their wedding anniversary, which was beautifully tied in with the thunderstorm update.

Monisha further uses Google Assistant via Mi TV to check on their anniversary date, which tactfully implied Sahil’s innocent mistake. Another key highlight was Sahil’s hilariously futile attempt to pacify her, and his naughty kid’s comical attempt to use Mi TV’s voice command which unintentionally plays another Bollywood song Suno Na, suggesting that his wife may not listen to him, but Mi TV always listens with its voice command feature.

 

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