Siddharth Agrawal on OLX Autos’ first major association with sports

OLX Autos has partnered with Bollywood director Rohit Shetty and actor Sharman Joshi for their latest campaign, titled, “Shetty Ke Car-Naame”. The campaign, conceptualised by Lowe Lintas Delhi, seeks to drive awareness about OLX Autos’ “Best Price” proposition for consumers keen to sell their pre-owned cars and consider OLX Autos as the leading destination for the same.

The digital-first multi-film campaign, showcases Rohit Shetty as a consumer keen to sell the cars from his movies to Sharman Joshi, who poses as an OLX Autos employee evaluating the cars for sale. “Car-Naame” is a word play on the word “Kaarnama” (Hindi word for acts or antics). The campaign films are a humorous take on the common tropes found across Rohit Shetty’s movies, where cars are often shown in a glamorised fashion performing gravity-defying stunts and often forming the centerpiece of the movies. To leverage this campaign further, OLX Autos will also undertake a digital campaign across various social media platforms to reach more consumers.

Click here to attend IMAGEXX 2022

The year-long campaign will see the 4 digital films being released around marquee topical days to capitalise on the key months when consumers are actively looking to sell their cars. The films combine humour and Bollywood tropes to showcase much to the delight of Rohit Shetty, the car seller, to convey the delightful experience consumers can expect when selling their cars to OLX Autos staff portrayed here by Sharman Joshi.

In conversation with adgully, Siddharth Agrawal, Country Head - Marketing, OLX Autos, speaks about roping in Bollywood filmmaker Rohit Shetty and actor Sharman Joshi for their latest campaign, OLX’s association with sports and innovatively leveraging IPL features, and more.

What is the communication objective behind the campaign?

The ‘Shetty Ke Car-Naame’ campaign, featuring Rohit Shetty and Sharman Joshi, is built to drive awareness about OLX Autos’ “Best Price” proposition for consumers through a humorous take on the common trope found in Shetty’s films. Conceptualised by Lowe Lintas Delhi, the multi-film campaign showcases Shetty as a consumer, who is keen to sell the stunt-cars used in his movies to Sharman Joshi, an OLX Autos representative, while getting the best price for his used cars.

Why is OLX Autos focusing on sports via their new campaigns like IPL DSR?

OLX Autos partnered with Star Sports, the IPL broadcaster, to leverage the fall of wickets and DRS (decision review system) features, and showcase the brand contextually. The campaign was based on the ‘In & Out’ concept, where once a wicket falls, a new batsman walks-in and the old batsman walks out. We have tried to leverage upon this “In & Out” phenomenon in the context of selling used-cars, with a used-car going out, and the best price coming in. For OLX Autos, this resonated with our manifesto and we decided to build this as an event and associate it with a high impact property (IPL).

This is also OLX Autos’ first major association with sports. Sports has a huge fan following amongst the male audience. That’s our larger TG, as they take the decision for buying or selling a car in the Indian market. Our association with cricket is the first step and we will be building on it over time.

Why do you think Rohit Shetty and Sharman Joshi are the perfect brand ambassadors for the brand? What was the criteria you looked at to sign them on?

Rohit Shetty and cars are synonymous in the Indian pop culture and there is no one better than him to bring this campaign to life. Sharman Joshi’s everyman portrayal across his movies fits the mold of what we were looking for in highlighting a pertinent consumer challenge when it comes to selling pre-owned cars.

We wanted to create a digital-first campaign to reinforce the “best price” message in a manner that would not only help us build rapid awareness for OLX Autos, but more importantly, also drive engagement with our audience in the digital environment.

What is the positioning of your brand and what kind of differentiation do you plan to bring in the marketplace vis-à-vis competition?

The Indian used-car industry continues to be dominated by traditional offline dealers, where price-discovery and transparency are a major pain points faced by used-car sellers.

With a sharp focus on “best price” based proposition, OLX Autos has rapidly scaled-up to become India’s second largest used car player.

OLX Autos will continue to build on its core proposition of providing the best price for its consumers and amplify the best price proposition through innovative campaigns – such as digital first campaigns, for example, “Rohit Shetty ke Car-naame” and integration with high impact properties that include tie-ups, for example, high impact feature properties in IPL – promoted across various social, digital and OTT platforms to reach a wider spectrum of our audience.

Who is the communication targeted at? Could you elaborate on the profile of the target audience?

The current campaign is primarily targeted towards digital savvy car-owners in the metros, with digital media being a part of their daily life, and who like to engage and share interesting content with their friends and colleagues.

The tie-up with a high impact feature property during IPL, and digital first campaigns with Rohit Shetty and Sharman Joshi have helped us resonate with our target audience across the country.

How do you plan to engage with your audience? Will it be digital-led engagement or are you going to explore some mass media also to reach a wider spectrum of audience?

The campaign is meant to drive user engagement and we will focus on digital media to reach and engage with our audience.

The campaign is a fresh take to showcase our communication while sticking to our core messaging and strengthening OLX Autos’ proposition of “Price is the Hero”. The deployment for the campaign is going to be digital and the message will be more contextual to the format. Our communication approach will be digital-first as we want to create content that drives engagement and conversation among our target audience.