Linen recreates classic lost & found love story as Oppo enters India

Oppo, a global major in handsets, which had launched its flagship model a few months back in India, has unveiled a full-fledged multimedia campaign for the brand. It has paired Hrithik Roshan and Sonam Kapoor as ambassadors for the brand in India. Earlier, Linen, a Lintas group Company was given the mandate to launch and manage the communication duties for Oppo in India. Announcing the launch of the campaign, Constantin Haoran, Head of Brand Development India, Oppo commented, “Oppo endeavours to deliver customers with the most delightful smartphone experience through meticulous designs and smart technology. The aim is to recreate the overseas success story in India.”

Sharing his views on the insight that went behind creation of the campaign, Haoran said, “Compared to simply focusing on the specs, we wanted to adopt a more non-intrusive and emotional approach that makes consumers actually feel what they can get from Oppo behind those less interesting technical terminologies. And that was the brief given to the Linen team. We are glad to see the TVC receiving a positive response in the market and trade. It is a great debut for the brand in India.”

Mobile advertising is simple yet complicated. Complicated because of the structure of the communication. And simple is what Linen created. It decided to underplay the product and decided to tell a story.

The objective of the campaign was to define a unique brand space for Oppo, which is a mix of design-technology-emotions. “The TVC is long format, which follows the recent onset of a new category of communication designed specifically for digital space and a certain audience type many of whom call it a YTC-“You tube commercial”. The fact that the TVC earned more than 15 lakh views on Youtube in the first 15 days of its release is a testimony that we have managed to achieve both. Now with the launch of the commercial in TV, we wish to multiply this traction,” shared Abhik Santara, Executive VP, Linen.

Jaideep Mahajan, Executive CD, Linen added, “Oppo wasn’t known in Indian market. But despite that they chose to enter by launching the flagship device priced at approx. Rs. 40,000 where they would be competing with the best of the phones from the biggest of brands. We decided to narrate a story, where the phone and the features take the story forward. There are a lot of firsts in this communication. To begin with, the pairing of Hrithik and Sonam as a couple (which has never happened either in ad space or in Bollywood films), the way the product is handled and not falling for using  Hrithik’s dancing skills to grab a quick eyeball.”

Pranav Sharma, the Group CD and the writer of the campaign commented: “The 3-minute short film revolves around three characters - two celebrities and one phone. The project followed a lengthy and complicated process, which is similar to a feature filmmaking and is different from a quick TVC production process. After locking the script, character sketching was done for both the celebrities, a detailed screenplay was written, where every shot was broken down to its minutest detail. Doing away with the regular advertising-jingle space, we churned out a 3 minute song for the film.”

The film has been directed by Siddarth Anand (who has directed hits like Salaam Namaste, Bachna Ae Haseeno, Anjana Anjani etc) and produced by Film Farm India.

Team Credits:

Creative: Jaideep Mahajan, Pranav Harihar
Account Management: Kunaal Bhardwaj, Sakshi Kapoor
Planning: Devika Sharma
Production: Film Farm
Producer: Anirudh Bagchi
Client: Oppo Pvt Ltd.