The ad catalyses shift of offline to online: Saujanya Shrivastava on MMT ad

MakeMyTrip has unveiled its new campaign with its brand ambassadors Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. In line with the company’s aggressive efforts to tap into the hotel bookings segment and further build on its leadership position, the new brand campaign aims to drive consumers to shift from offline to online for hotel bookings. As part of this campaign and in a move to further strengthen its brand imagery, the company has also refreshed its logo.

Conceptualised by Publicis Capital, the campaign highlights compelling and relevant benefits of booking hotels on MakeMyTrip such as widest range of hotels to choose from, great deals, trust and reliability – all of which are key drivers of online hotel bookings. The high decibel national multi media 360 degree campaign will heavily be promoted on TV, radio, outdoor, social media and digital platforms from March 20, 2016.

The TVCs will be on air for a period of eight weeks on GECs, news channels and movie channels. The ad films have been launched in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages.

Make My Trip Ad - Taxi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4nlL_Os7d8

Make My Trip Ad - Hotel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSgbXyyhEsI

Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder and CEO-India, MakeMyTrip, commented, “The year 2015 saw the online hotel bookings market opening up due to smartphone penetration and better bandwidth. At MakeMyTrip, we have witnessed phenomenal growth in our India standalone hotels business. In fact, in Q3 2015-16 alone, the transactions for standalone hotels booked on mobile increased by 756.4 per cent year-on-year. We believe that this is just the beginning. The Indian hotels market is still highly underpenetrated and fragmented and we have made aggressive efforts to tap into this segment. Our current campaign is also reflective of our larger business strategy of rapidly growing our hotels business. With this campaign, we seek to bring new customers into the online hotel category. Our value proposition is that whatever be the customer need, they can find a hotel of their choice on MakeMyTrip – quicker and cheaper and our new campaign completely resonates with this philosophy.”

Elaborating on the new campaign, Saujanya Shrivastava, CMO, MakeMyTrip, said, “As market leaders, we have taken on the task of online hotel category expansion. The campaign seeks to catalyse the shift of offline to online by providing tangible reasons to non-users and fence sitters to come to MakeMyTrip for their hotel booking requirements. The campaign marks the debut of our new brand ambassadors Ranveer and Alia. They truly represent the new age Indians – confident, bold and dynamic. They are a great fit with the brand and we are sure that through this campaign, we will also inspire more of India to travel.”

On the new logo, Shrivastava added, “MakeMyTrip has become a mainstay for Indian travellers, has strong equity and has fuelled the travel ambitions of customers. The new logo is a reflection of an ecosystem that has evolved over the past decade – younger audiences, high mobile penetration and high customer propensity to undertake leisure travel. The new logo is younger, fresh and future ready.”

The campaign will have high visibility and impactful 360 degree approach, activating every possible touch point with the consumer. It will be supported by an all rounded TVC campaign, including GECs, news channels and high impact print exposures and a prominent presence across the IPL. There will be an aggressive and sharply targeted outdoor plan; along with activations in the digital platforms as well.

The story of the characters in the campaign has been brought to life by Publicis Capital, directed by Amit Sharma. Talking about the creative concept, Bobby Panwar, Managing Director, South Asia, Publicis Worldwide, said, “We focused on a singular fact that the brief pointed to – a large part of travellers prefer to walk into a hotel and book. They believe that they can get a better deal ‘directly’. The idea was create dissonance in these over confident travellers and dramatically highlight the inadequacy of this ‘direct’ approach while reinforcing the MMT advantage. The presence of Ranveer and Aliya allowed us to create the histrionics required for this dramatisation.”

The hotels segment in India is underpenetrated and highly fragmented. Over the last year, the market has exploded as a result of increasing mobile penetration and adoption. As per a recent report by Millward Brown on the Indian hotels segment, MakeMyTrip emerged as the leader with 25 per cent online hotels market share among all OTAs. As the market leader, the company therefore is looking at category expansion by tapping audiences who are not in the online space as yet.

Campaign credits:

Client: MakeMyTrip
Creative agency: Publicis Worldwide
National Creative Director: Joy Mohanty
Production house: Chrome Pictures
Director (film): Amit Sharma
Producer: Poonam Wahi