Decoding GOQii’s campaign strategy; support to Govt's Fit India Movement

GOQii, India’s leading preventive healthcare platform, has been firming up its operations in the recent past. It has received a further boost now, being chosen as one of the partners for the Fit India Movement, which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2019. 

In an official letter to Vishal Gondal, Founder & CEO, GOQii, the Prime Minister wrote, “It is heartening to learn that an initiative has been taken to connect the youth and the people of our country to healthcare and fitness.” He goes on to stress on moving forward collectively to “transform our nation into a ‘Fit and Healthy India’.” 

Meanwhile, GOQii has rolled out its latest campaign featuring brand ambassador, Akshay Kumar, who is a known fitness enthusiast. In a statement issued, GOQii said, “The association of GOQii and Kumar is just perfect as he resonates with GOQii’s philosophy of making a permanent shift to a healthier lifestyle with a focus on preventive health... His passion for health and fitness will help this association with GOQii to create a bigger impact on the health front across India.” 

As part of this association, Akshay Kumar launched one of the biggest health education initiatives, called the ‘India Health Quiz’ on GOQii Play, the exclusive health and fitness live OTT platform. Given his passion for health, Kumar also conducted a live coaching session on GOQii Play. 

For the first time in five years GOQii has decided to go all out with a brand campaign with Akshay Kumar and India Health Quiz. GOQii has joined hands with Makani Creatives to launch a unique campaign, called the India Health Quiz Challenge. The campaign that went live on August 9, 2019 establishes GOQii as the brand that’s pro-health and fitness. With Akshay Kumar, this campaign informs Indians about the hazards of following unverified health tips available on the Internet. 

The India Health Quiz Challenge is live for 100 days, where participants will get an opportunity to watch live GOQii Play videos and participate in hourly quizzes to win points. These points can be redeemed to win prizes such as GOQii Activity Trackers, OnePlus 7, iPhone XR and the top cash prize of Rs 5 lakh. All the questions for this 100-day quiz challenge have been prepared by GOQii’s health coaches and have been verified by its health experts. This initiative is in association with Times Network. 

The idea behind the campaign 

Building on the insight of consumers following unverified health fads on the internet, Makani Creatives and GOQii embarked on a journey to create satirical storytelling, showcasing a young unhealthy person practicing apparently healthy techniques that he has picked up on the Internet to attain a fit body. 

The satire-laced storytelling, cinematography and quirky musical score have been crafted with granularity to add to the memorability of the campaign. The communication gets the audience to rethink about fitness tips available online and encourages them to watch and imbibe good/ correct health info only on GOQii. The films were released on August 9, 2019 on GOQii’s Facebook and YouTube pages.

Commenting on the launch of India Health Quiz, Krishna Kumar, CCO, GOQii Technologies, said, “Through our past campaign, ‘India Steps Challenge’, we were successful in making India walk and get active. With India Health Quiz, our aim is to make India healthy and educate Indians about the importance of fitness. To fulfil this larger mission, we wanted a partner who had the credentials to create engaging communication and the capability to develop this unique concept using a celebrity ambassador. After a series of pitches, we partnered with Makani Creatives. The India Health Quiz campaign featuring Akshay Kumar is an interesting concept, which uses humour to deliver a serious message. This initiative will help in changing the negative impact of fake news and health myths.” 

Sameer Makani, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Makani Creatives, added here, “Building relevance that is simple for the consumer to understand is the essence of good advertising. We have received a very positive response for the campaign as the communication is witty and relatable. We hope to have a major mass impact for GOQii through this campaign.” 

In an interaction with Adgully, Makani explains the creative thought process and choice of Akshay Kumar as brand ambassador.

What was the brief given to Makani Creative by GOQii?

After the huge success of india steps challenge which got indians walking more steps every day, Goqii wanted to leverage the content phenomenon to make 130 crore indians healthy. In order to give people the right information when it came to health and lifestyle, Goqii planned to run a campaign which would be Indias biggest health quiz called India Health Quiz. We were asked to make a campaign which not only tells people about the quiz but also establishes what Goqii stands for.

Why did you’ll choice Akshay Kumar?

Brand endorsement has been around for years but few brands have been able to use it at its best. With GOQii’s promise of making India healthy no one was better than Akshay Kumar to support this mission. Akshay is known as the fitness icon of the country and his initiatives have just supported the same. Goqii and akshay are like a match made in heaven and we are sure that this collaboration will go a long way forward to make India a healthier nation.

Was it a mutual decision to confirm Akshay Kumar as the ambassador for the campaign

Akshay Kumar is the Brand Ambassador of GOQii and his vision matches with the company’s larger mission which aims to make India healthier. India’s Step Challenge was a huge success and India Health Quiz needed a strong personality which audience could believe and relate to. When it comes to fit lifestyle and healthy living, Akshay Kumar is the name that every individual relates to. Hence, choosing him for the campaign which helps people understand the facts instead of believing the myths was a good idea.

Campaign Credits: 

Client: Team GOQii
Creative Agency: Makani Creatives
Managing Director: Sameer Makani
Executive Creative Director: Anant Medepalli
Copy: Anant Medepalli, Guruguhan Iyer, Chrisel Fonseca
Art: Sonali Padave, Rahul Patel 
Strategy: Pavan Punjabi
Account Servicing: Imran Choudhary, Rahul Ajmera
Production House: VAT Films
Executive Producer: Sanjay Rodrigues
Producer: Sagarika Kochrekar
Director: Alok Kulkarni
DOP: Srinivas Reddy
Music: Kim Koshie 

In an interaction with Adgully, Vishal Gondal, Founder & CEO, GOQii, speaks about pledging support for the Fit India Movement, the various fitness initiatives undertaken by GOQii, growing the subscriber base and more. 

How did GOQii get associated with the Fit India Movement?
Fit India is a pioneering movement by our honourable Prime Minister, a powerful advocate of healthy living himself. This initiative will truly benefit the majority of the Indian population. The Government has invited many organisations to support the movement to make India healthy. 

We, at GOQii, are deeply excited to share the same vision as PM Shri Narendra Modi, and extend our complete support in making 130 crore Indians healthy. Finally, as the focus shifts from curative to preventive healthcare, it will open doors for more research and development, and several new initiatives. In order to make Fit India Movement a success, I urge all players – right from start-ups to corporates – to collaborate and embark on this journey, empower themselves and others to be fit and healthy. 

GOQii is focused on providing preventive healthcare solutions, with constant new and innovative engagement activities for users through the various service offerings on the platform. GOQii’s single vision is to make India fit by encouraging 130+ crore Indians to make a permanent shift from a curative to a preventive healthcare approach. We, along with our brand ambassador Akshay Kumar, have pledged our support to the Fit India initiative. 

GOQii has built an advanced ecosystem that consists of a fitness tracker and a care team that includes – personal coach, health expert, doctors and diagnostics. It brings all the user health data on to a single platform from which it can be analysed by the care team. GOQii brings all user health data on to a single platform from where it is analysed by the care team. This allows for the user to receive personalised health advice as per their lifestyle, habits and health issues. 

Since GOQii is a digital product, we can cater to all corners of the country. Hence, we have pledged our support for Fit India Movement and will take part in GOI’s efforts to transform our nation into a fit and healthy India.  

How did the range of celebrities/ doctors/ fitness experts get involved with GOQii?
Our coaches and also our celebrity coaches are aligned with the company’s thought process and have always participated and given their support for all the initiatives that we have launched till date. They will continue to lend their support in taking forward this movement of making India healthy. 

How has GOQii’s subscriber base grown over the years?
We have crossed over 3 million subscribers. 

What is the thought behind tying up with media networks for your campaigns? Earlier, for India Steps Challenge you had tied up with Network18 and now for the India Health Quiz Challenge you have tied up with Times Network?
The India Steps Challenge was aimed at encouraging Indians to walk more. The objective was to get Indians to increase their average step count from 4,297 (as mentioned in a Stanford Study) to 10,000 steps every day. 

The objective of India Health Quiz is to educate Indians in the simple nuances of health as a subject. 

For both initiatives, the idea is to reach out to a larger section of the Indian audience. Hence, we had called for a multi-media network pitch and we liked the ideas presented by Network18 for India Steps Challenge and Times Network for India Health Quiz. 

The method to evaluate was the integration of content with advertising. In both the cases, content integration was via anchor promos, vignettes, editorial, social media plug-ins, etc. Our media mix is across media platforms such as Print, TV, Radio and Digital.

Going forward, what is your strategy to build on your growth?
We are continuously innovating our services as well as wearable devices. Soon, we will be launching our new device in the healthcare space. We do not really have any competition as we are the only preventive healthcare company that has a complete health ecosystem that is empowering consumers globally to lead healthier and better lives. GOQii’s smart tech-enabled healthcare platform brings together the entire preventive healthcare ecosystem. Its Smart Health Ecosystem integrates tools for real-time personalised coaching, an explosive high-growth health e-commerce store, scheduling health check-ups, a health locker, and a unique ‘GOQii Cash’ programme, where healthy behaviour is rewarded with cash discounts and insurance discounts based on health management data. Given the state of ‘Sickcare’ delivery infrastructure in India, the company strongly believes that preventive healthcare is the only viable, long-term, mass-market solution.