Manjari Singhal on mounting Flipkart’s Big Billion Day on a much grander scale this year

With the country in the midst of the festive season, the retail sector as well as e-commerce portals have upped the ante to whip up buying frenzy amongst consumers. For over two years during the pandemic period, people had been mostly purchasing essentials, grocery and health & personal care products from various platforms – online and offline. With positive market sentiments this year, thanks to the lifting of all Covid restrictions, the massive vaccination drive across the country and fall in the number of fresh cases, the festive season this year is expected to be a bumper occasion.

To tap into this positive sentiment, Flipkart is all set to roll out its annual online sale – The Big Billion Days 2022. The sale period begins on September 23 and will continue till September 30. The Big Billion Days Sale 2022 will offer huge discounts on top brands across categories, including electronic gadgets, devices like laptops, mobiles, smartwatches, along with kitchen essentials, clothing, footwear, furniture, beauty, toys and much more.

This year Flipkart promises to deliver a revamped app experience and has onboarded lakhs of sellers, Kirana delivery partners, MSMEs, to provide customers with differentiated offering across price points. Around 130 BBD Specials (Big Billion Day Specials) have been announced and designed by over 90 brands across electronics, fashion, mobile phones, personal care, large appliances, and handicraft categories. The revamped app experience is led by technology-enabled features such as Image Search, enhanced UI experience, Brand Mall mode, Live Commerce, Virtual Try-Ons. New gamification initiatives such as Coupon Rain, Treasure Hunt, Spin The Bottle have also been introduced.

There are multiple discounts, cashback offers, pay later options that will be provided letting the customers to enjoy a seamless shopping experience. This year, customers will also get a chance to pre-book their products, across categories such as General Merchandise, Beauty, Lifestyle and Electronics, with a token advance of Re 1. It will also offer interactive entertainment experiences on the Video Commerce platform. It has also come out with a new offering, wherein customers will get access to a wide assortment of new products, which are co-created by brands and celebrities such as Chef Vikas Khanna, Virat Kohli, Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, PV Sindhu, Hrithik Roshan, KL Rahul. It has also rolled out its Open Box Delivery process, wherein the delivery partner will open the product at the delivery time and the customer will accept it only if the product is in the intact state.

To give a further push to its festive strategy, Flipkart has launched the #AbPooraIndiaKaregaUpgrade campaign with star campaigners, including Amitabh Bachchan, MS Dhoni, and Alia Bhatt. The campaign is expected to reach 500+ million people, spread across over 150 channels.

In conversation with Adgully, Manjari Singhal, Senior Director – Customer, Growth, and Events, Flipkart, speaks about the strategy drawn up for the festive season this year, how the annual Big Billion Day sale has been planned on a much bigger scale in 2022 and how Big Billion Day has turned into a cultural event from just a sale event over the years.

What can we expect from The Big Billion Day sale in 2022?

Over the years we have established Flipkart Big Billion Day as a cultural festival from being just a sale event and in doing so, we have tried to create a couple of things both on our app and in the external environment as well. One is providing an engaging experience through partnerships, through activating multiple touchpoints, through engaging constructs – that is how we try and get our customers together. This is in line with the feeling of festivities that happen during this time.

In terms of on-app experiences, we have a couple of engagement constructs, first one being Coupon Rain, which went live on September 3 and its doing really well. It gets people to come back every day, play a game to earn coupon points which are nothing but currency that they can exchange for higher value during Big Billion Day. We also have a differential experience that we are building for a higher fluent user or a brand first user. So, you will find something called a Brand Mall on our app, where if you toggle in, it’s an immersive branded experience, as opposed to the core Flipkart experience, which is far wider and caters to much bigger audience. In terms of partnership, we actually have stepped up the game, quite a big this year.

We have numerous partnerships from the brand world. We have this product called BBD Specials, where we partner with brands such as PUMA, Nike, and sellers as well, to get curated offerings for Big Billion Day. These are then promoted by not just us, but the brands and the brand promoters as well. In our case, there will be Amitabh Bachchan, Virat Kohli, multiple other celebs, who will be celebrating Big Billion Day, along with us through these products, when Big Billion Day goes live.

On the external marketing front, we have activated multiple touch points to ensure that we cater to each and every kind of audience and Flipkart does cater, to almost entire India, so how do we become relevant to these audiences was very important to us. Apart from the core TV and digital media that we activate every year, we have also activated outdoor and cinema, with close to 400+ screens where we will have high engagement happening for Big Billion Day.

For lower fluent, we have partnered with IRTC, 40+ screens are getting branded with our messaging. We have also partnered with autos in key metro cities to display the Big Billion Day branding and messaging for the audience. Apart from that, we have partnerships that we have activated and this is first of its kind. So, we have partnered with Swiggy offering certain menu of theirs as Big Billion Day curated menu, Fasoon, Behrouz Biriyani, they have Big Billion Day curated menu which Swiggy will be promoting.

We have partnered with Google Pay for their game, called Indie Homes, through which they will be celebrating Big Billion Day along with us. There are multiple partners like that to whom we have reached out to and engaged with, such that it is not only Flipkart which brings the message and festivities of Big Billion Day to the audience, but it is the entire 360 degree ecosystem that stands together to celebrate the cultural  festival that it has become.  Personalisation is also very critical to us, given the diverse nature of India and its inhabitants. We are ensuring that we are very personalised in our communication, so a higher fluent will receive messaging based on their activity on the platform. Branded selection is what we will show them first. Similarly, for people from Tier 2 and 3 cities, we have partnered with regional TV stars. So, in most states where Flipkart has dominant presence, we have gone ahead and done tie-ups with regional TV stars, where they will be promoting the message of Big Billion Day. In terms of messaging, we are reaching them through the right medium, where we can be far more relevant and personalized to them, giving them the right offering that Flipkart has put together in its effort to get them to engage with Big Billion Day.

What is the concept behind #AbPooraIndiaKaregaUpgrade campaign?

Flipkart and Big Billion Day stand for providing great value to consumers and we try and better it year after year. This year, our message is to our wide set of customers, saying that don’t comprise, don’t adjust but upgrade your lifestyle and Big Billion Day stands with you to enable that. That is the core messaging of our communication. We have three big national celebs that we have tied up with – Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt and MS Dhoni are our front face, supported by the regional celebs. They will take the message to the audience through the multi-media approach.

What is special about this edition of the Flipkart Big Billion Day?

The extent of partnerships that we have put together is with multiple brands who are coming together to celebrate Big Billion Day along with us. Another special thing is the personalised approach to identify how we remain relevant to the metro audience and the Tier 2 and 3 audience at the same time. That is something we have delved into deeper for the first time. We are already at a one million daily active gamers and that is unprecendented in Big Billion Day’s history. Users also want to engage with Big Billion Day in line with what we provide them every year.

Because of Covid in the last two years, we did not activate the offline media, for instance, outdoor, cinema, autos, trains. We have done at this scale for the first time and given that people are celebrating and going out this year, we believe that our users will be able to engage with Big Billion Day in multiple forms.