Focus is to engage with the youth: Blackberry's Ashish Gupta

Catch Them Young! is not just a phrase or a practice used in the field of sports or entertainment anymore. The concept has been well accepted by the marketers as well and brand owners go out of their way to woo the youth, the key target audiences as far as selling their products are concerned - be it at the retail malls, key sporting events or college festivals. As such the TG is often showered with allurements such as free gifts, contests and rewards to ensure that the companies market keeps growing.

Recently Blackberry resorted to ground activation and promotion of its Blackberry Q5 line of handsets which are targeted at youth and priced at around Rs 24,000. It did this by associating with the Malhar Festival at Xaviers College. They tied up with Malhar festival to create awareness and experiences around the BlackBerry Q5 with various branding innovations- with the red colour and the mantra "Turn ideas into reality” & Malhar theme “Zara Hat Ke.”

Speaking to Adgully, Ashish Gupta, Director, Marketing, BlackBerry, India said, “By associating with Malhar we intended to reach out and engage with youngsters who love technology and want to be connected with their friends, family and larger community, even while on move.” The idea was to provide Malhar revellers with a unique experience of BlackBerry Q5 smartphone while engaging them with exciting contests, merchandises and giveaways, he added.

At the festival, BlackBerry users at Malhar were given a direct access to VIP entrance, all they had to do was show their BlackBerry smartphone at the entrance to get in. A BlackBerry stall had been set up which was the hub of all the action where participants  could get the BlackBerry 10 platform experience contests, puzzles, caricature artists, stilt walkers and dart games. At the end of it, participants became eligible to win exciting BlackBerry merchandise and also gain a direct access to games and tasks at Malhar festival

The showstopper of the event, however was the 'MY Q5' lucky draw that gave the students at Malhar 2013 a chance to visit and participate in the lucky draw at the BlackBerry exclusive store at Palladium sporting RED clothing. An exciting week of Malhar 2013, thereby came to a phenomenal end as three lucky students won a BlackBerry Q5 smartphones as part of the  lucky draw. The MY Q5 lucky draw saw participation from hundreds of excited collegians that culminated in the winners being announced by BlackBerry store -Palladium mall in Lower Parel, Mumbai.

Recently, Blackberry had tied up with Barista and Café Coffee Day outlets in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Lucknow, Kolkata and Bangalore to spread awareness and provide young people (who visited these cafes) with hands-on experience of its flagship product BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. As for the future programmes, Gupta says, “the urban youth is going to be a major focus for us going forward. Going forward, we will definitely look to evaluate promising opportunities and drive pertinent conversations with our audiences. We have already initiated a lot of programs to expand our outreach.”

The smartphone category in India has evolved over the years and has become more exciting and has opened new avenues for the manufacturers. Says Gupta, “Marketing initiatives such as these help our brand to stay relevant and in sync with our audience.”

On the youth as a TG, he says, “they are an emerging segment as a strong buyer of smartphones that further drives the increased usage of mobile internet and social networking along with the availability of 3G services in India.” This was the second year of Blackberry’s association with the Malhar festival.

Marketing
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