upGrad's latest campaign deploys gender & interest-based micro-targeting

Venturing into vertical-specific marketing, upGrad - Asia’s Higher Edtech major is back to amplify the importance of upskilling across tech domains for working professionals, through its digital-first, gender-specific micro-targeted campaign. Following an increase in interest from women across upGrad's tech offerings like Blockchain, Full Stack Development (FSD), Big Data, DevOps, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Computing, the digital-first campaign aims to encourage more women professionals to upskill and scale up their tech careers, across the industry. Aligning with the viewer's needs, the campaign targets professionals using gender-specific ads and creatives, based on their area of interest.  

Using wit to narrate the value of techies in organisations, the digital campaign highlights the need for upskilling across technology domains, through courses powered by upGrad. The digital campaign deploys micro-targeting to offer viewers solutions of their choice, across tech domains including Blockchain, Full Stack Development (FSD), Big Data, DevOps, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Computing. With close to 10 different versions, the campaign aims to micro-target users who are seeking to upskill themselves, by showcasing creatives and ads that align with their gender and subject interest across technology programs. With increasing intent and interest for tech skills among women as witnessed by upGrad, the digital campaign is improving efficiency by aligning with audience preferences, wherein a female viewer who is interested in DevOps will only be shown women-centric DevOps ad films and creatives. Through this method of intuitive targeting, upGrad is emulating audience preference and gender by sharing the exact information that the audience is seeking out. 

Moreover, given the increased interest by women professionals across coding and software programs, upGrad's campaign is reinforcing the importance of women coders by representing female protagonists in the ad films. The film showcases women learners upskilling with upGrad's tech courses to become 'very very important' team members who drive organisational growth and success at their jobs, upon course completion.

Conceptualised by The Womb, the digital film showcases the mayhem that ensues when there is a fire in the office, and who the team rescues. 

Commenting on the tech campaign, Ankit Khirwal, Head of Marketing, upGrad said, “We can no longer pretend that skilling is not important, especially in the field of technology, where human-machine interactions, Web 3.0, brand building in Metaverse are happening as we speak. Following this trend, we have witnessed an increase in interest from women coders for our tech offerings across Blockchain, FSD, DevOps, Cybersecurity, and more. Therefore, to encourage them further to upskill and fast forward their careers, our digital campaign will undertake a micro targeting approach, to showcase the right offering to the right viewer based on their interest and profile, to help them navigate their upskilling solutions.” 

Till date, upGrad learners have received an average career hike of 51% while getting placed with top companies like Uber, Flipkart, Meesho, and Razorpay, after completing tech courses with the edtech major.

 “When there’s fire in the office, who will you save? Yourself, your boss or the most important employee in the office? That’s the premise Gunjan cracked when thinking of this campaign. The chaos added to the drama, the twist added to the fun and thus, we found a creative way of highlighting the importance of tech courses in today’s world.” concludes Suyash Khabya, Creative Head, The Womb.

The campaign has been directed by Roopali Singhal of Chrome Pictures and is live on digital. 

Agency Credits: The Womb Communications

Founding Partners: Kawal Shoor and Navin Talreja

Creative Team: Suyash Khabya, Gunjan Gaba and Paritosh Lonkar

Planning Team: Sneha Raina and Ipshita Khan

Account Management: Heval Patel and Richa Shah

Production House Credits: Chrome Pictures

Director - Roopali Singhal

Producers:  Napolean Daniel Amanna & Kush Malhotra