Language is our core strength: Chhandita Nambiar on Helo Pe Milo

Aiming to inspire people to express themselves and connect with like-minded people in native languages, Helo, a leading regional social media platform, recently rolled out its first ever multimedia brand campaign ‘Helo Pe Milo’. The integrated campaign consists of Helo’s new brand slogan ‘Helo Pe Milo’ and four multilingual TVCs, titled Hostel, Akhada, Cricket, and Shayari, that creatively highlight some of the most popular content categories on the platform – Entertainment, Celebrities, Food, Sports and Humour, respectively.

Commenting on the new brand campaign, Chhandita Nambiar, Head of Entertainment, Helo, said, “At Helo, it is a constant endeavour to transform the way people interact on social media by enabling the most comfortable environment for self-expression in one’s language of choice. Through this campaign, we aim to emphasise the key ethos of our brand to our existing as well as potential users, that is, to be inclusive and stay rooted at heart. The campaign also encourages people to ‘Get together on Helo’ for an exciting experience of multilingual content across categories of their interest.”

Conceptualised by Helo’s creative agency Leo Burnett, the creative concept of the brand campaign is based on user insights from Helo’s market study conducted in July 2019, which revealed that people feel more confident while expressing themselves in their first language or mother tongue. The qualitative study also revealed that 82 per cent of these people feel a need to be up-to-date with information regularly and are able to relate themselves better with local language digital content because they find it more reliable and credible. Helo offers biggest celebrity interactions, latest trends and interest-based communities and empowers users by enabling the most comfortable experience of creating and consuming content in 14 Indian languages.

The national campaign will be deployed across multiple platforms, including TV, digital and outdoor, aiming to target a diverse range of audience across geographies and age groups. The campaign went on-air on March 12, 2020 in Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil and will further be rolled out in 9 different languages in phases throughout the year 2020.

Meanwhile, Helo is also offering a wide array of in-app stickers, templates and contests for its users to create content around the campaign and win prizes.

Creative Ideation

Speaking to Adgully on the creative thought process, Nambiar said that being the first ever brand campaign, ‘Helo Pe Milo’ aimed to encourage both existing and new age Internet users to ‘Get together on Helo’ for an exciting experience of sharing, creating and consuming multilingual content across categories of their interest. “While we have received a great response from users across the country, we felt that there was a need to highlight the value that Helo brings to a user, ‘Helo Pe Milo’ promotes the idea of self-expression and connecting with like-minded people in their preferred language across geographies,” she added. 

Nambiar further elaborated that the creative concept and approach to this campaign was based on two key considerations. “The first one being, the user insights from our market study conducted in July 2019. Secondly, with factors such as increased penetration of cheap Internet enabled devices, availability of affordable high-speed internet and India’s rising digital literacy, the language Internet user base is growing at an exponential pace in our country today. In fact, as per a recent KPMG report, Indian language internet users are expected to account for nearly 75 per cent of India’s Internet user base by 2021.”

Helo intends to showcase its key USPs, including like-minded communities on the platform, that gives people the most comfortable environment of self-expression their preferred language. 

The three key elements of this campaign comprise the new brand slogan ‘Helo Pe Milo’, four multilingual TVCs titled Cricket, Shayari, Akhada and Hostel, that reflect the most popular content categories on the platform – Entertainment, Celebrities, Food, Sports and Humor – and the specially curated in-app stickers, hashtags and templates for users to engage. All the films have an underlining touch of humour to keep it light-hearted. 

Giving the creative agency Leo Burnett’s take on the campaign, a spokesperson explained that the TVCs seek to bring alive the unique purpose of enabling millions of Indians to become a part of a fraternity that comprises people with similar and varying interests and in the process, express themselves. “It’s a narrative of inclusiveness and of empowerment,” the spokesperson added.

Based on brand idea of ‘Helo Pe Milo’, the agency created four films which focus on the most popular content categories on the platform – Entertainment, Celebrities, Food, Sports and Humour. The films bring alive the role of Helo app of creating a platform that brings people from different schools of thought together and aid expression and consumption. The films were directed by Sharat Katariya, a National Award winner for direction for movie ‘Dum Lagake Haisha’.

The campaign objective

Nambiar informed that through this campaign, Helo wanted to emphasise on the key ethos of the brand to its existing as well as potential users, that is, to be inclusive and stay rooted at heart. “The campaign result expectations are worked out on various levels, including one of the primary objectives – gaining value-based growth, which further translates into loyal users who believe in the brand and use it regularly on day to day basis,” she added.

Nambiar claimed that Helo achieved a milestone of 50 million monthly active users in June 2019 and ever since had been witnessing the numbers growing at record speed.

The TG

Given its language appeal and unmatched product experience, Nambiar insisted that Helo is pertinent to all sections of the society across the country. Therefore, with this campaign, the brand is targeting the new age Internet users who use the Internet but are not on social media, as well as the existing social media users who have only explored English language social media platforms.

The TG is across all 14 regional languages available on Helo and regions pertaining to these languages. “We are proud to be a platform that appeals to users who are experimental and unconventional in nature, but at the same time believe in being authentic and inclusive in their approach,” she added.

Media strategy

The brand tagline and TVCs are on-air across OTT platforms such as Voot, Hotstar, ZEE5, SonyLIV, etc., as well as prime language television shows like ‘The Kapil Sharma Show’, ‘India’s Best Dancer’, ‘SaReGaMa Punjabi’ as well as through in-app activations. The TVC have been deployed first in Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil languages.

Helo is also amplifying it through creative ads across offline platforms and displays. Being the first ever year-long national campaign, ‘Helo Pe Milo’ has been strategically designed to be rolled out in phases in 9 Indian languages since the brand aims to effectively deliver its endeavours to its existing and potential users across each language and region. “We believe language to be our core strength, hence we consider each language and region as an individual market for us,” Nambiar affirmed.

She further elaborated, “The media strategy is an amalgamation of digital and high reach media (TV & OOH). While TV will enable us reach the single TV households, digital media will help us in reaching the younger audience who are normally the early adopters and the agent of change within their households. Since this is our first brand campaign, there were no stones unturned to promote it.”

“We aim to democratise the usage of Internet amongst Indians, making it more proficient and appealing to India’s diverse pool of regional and multilingual audiences,” she added.