"Vivo’s campaigns are about how imaging tech plays a role in bringing people together"

Diwali this year saw brands of all hues celebrate people coming together in person for the festivals after two years of celebrating while staying apart due to the pandemic. Brand campaigns has also been reflecting this sentiment of coming together.

One of the Diwali campaigns that stood out was that of global innovative smartphone brand Vivo, which released a heart warming Diwali campaign – ‘Together With Joy’. Conceptualised by FCB Ulka, the digital creative campaign put an emphasis on the festive season, celebrating togetherness and encouraging viewers to make moments joyful and brighter together. The film is an expression of the message of the celebration of togetherness during the festival. It emphasises on the fact that the absolute joy of a festival is realised only when a family celebrates it #TogetherWithJoy.

The campaign was a part of Vivo’s efforts to strengthen bonds and help in creating a world of joy through superior yet simplified products as well as experiences. It is a gentle reminder of the fact that festivals are nothing but an opportunity to spend quality time with your family and the place where our loved ones are together, that becomes the home of celebrations. The brand film shows a father expecting his son to visit him during Diwali with his family, while the son insists on the father visiting him instead as he has an important meeting. The grandfather then sees a video of his granddaughter who says that she is not able make the rangoli properly because her ‘dadu’ is not with her this Diwali. The househelp then gently reminds the elderly man why it is important to celebrate Diwali with family, and that it is not important where it is celebrated – it is just about catching a flight. Then the film shows the grandfather having a glimpse of the nameplate of his son’s house, with both their names together. Finally the grandfather gives a surprise visit to his son’s house to celebrate Diwali with him.

In conversation with Adgully, Yogendra Sriramula, Head - Brand Strategy, Vivo, India, said “We call the campaign ‘Together with Joy’ because joy is not about in this home or that home, joy is when people are together and you are able to express your feelings and you are bonding with your loved ones.” Excerpts:

What is the concept and story behind Vivo’s ‘Together with Joy’ campaign?

Everything that we do in vivo is rooted in the brand purpose that we have. So the brand purpose for vivo is to create a world of joy through superior yet simplified technology. We believe that technology exists for a purpose, it is not technology for technology’s sake. And the purpose that we think that technology should serve is to bring joy to people. And especially during Diwali, families come together, people are able to express their feelings and emotions, so it’s the opportune moment for people to bond together and come together, so we saw this as an opportune time to spread this message.

The line we use is ‘Together with Joy’. Usually around this time, there is a lot of travel. People try to get together but there are logistics issues, and obviously people are now quite busy, there is miscommunication and things go the wrong way. Friction happens in relationships and its all natural. But in this day and age we feel that a lot of communication actually happens visually whether through images, videos and in the centre of all of this communication lies this device called the smartphone, which has become all pervasive in our lives.

So, we believe that as a piece of technology which is existing everywhere in our lives, we have this responsibility to build and strengthen these connections. And so the film unfolds in the same way, how the grandfather misunderstands his son, during this tight timeline and how does technology happen to patch things up between the grandfather and the son and the granddaughter and how they come together and celebrate Diwali. That’s why we call the campaign ‘Together with Joy’ because joy is not about in this home or that home, joy is when people are together and you are able to express your feelings and you are bonding with your loved ones. That’s when joy happens and that’s why we call it ‘Together with Joy’.

How did Vivo promote the campaign?

There are four legs to this campaign. The first part is the branded content itself which is the film. The second part is that we have tied up with few celebrities, influencers, who can take this message of ‘Together with Joy’ forward. We have tied up with three celebrity couples – Sohali Khan and Kunal Khemu, Farhan Akhtar and Shivani Dandekar, Genelia Dsouza and Ritesh Deshmukh. Again, we believe that these people stand for the values that we endorse which is ‘Together with Joy’ or families bring joy together. So, these people will be reinforcing the message in their own ways and in their own Reels and obviously they will increase the reach for the main content as well. The third is that we have association with a community of photographers, whom we call vivographers who are established photographers with huge following of their own. They would create content around ‘Together with joy’ and try to spread the message. These people have been with us for quite a while. They can understand the brand’s feelings and emotions.

In addition to the celebrities and influencers, the vivographers as the photography community also take this step forward. The fourth leg is User Generated Content.  We are inviting people to share their own moments of ‘Together with joy’, where they are finding joy during the festive time and tag us and they will have a chance to win some goodies from vivo. At Vivo, we have always believed that it is the message which should guide the medium, and not the medium which should guide the message. The message here demands that we do long form communication. And hence we choose a video platform which will allow us to do this communication mostly. So, we are targeting over 100 million views for this video. And we do know that we need to give frequency to the message of ‘Together with joy’ and the values that the brand endorses. So, we will use a bit of social media to do this add on of frequency to the message.  There is also a Whatsapp Virality angle that we are exploring.

Who has conceptualised the campaign?

The campaign was created by FCB Ulka. This is the first campaign that they are unveiling for us. We are very glad that they have partnered with us. It is an extremely good ad film, with great music, great acting. Script was terrific, landed exactly on brand values. We are very happy about this partnership with FCB as well.

What are the expectations out of this campaign?

When you see festive campaigns, these revolve usually around a few things. There are either sales offers being communicated or some of the brands which are ingrained in the culture try to say that they spread festive cheer, whether its gifting, whether its chocolates, clothes. Then sometimes there is a third angle revolving around a responsible social angle. But I believe that if we are trying to do communication like this, it should be rooted in your purpose, it should be rooted into something which is authentic to you, and if we do it once in a year or once in a while and forget about it, the audience is intelligent enough to see through. And so we believe that with this campaign we are able to land on the authentic, innate value that Vivo has, which is it is a warm empathetic brand that believes in helping to build connections between people, helping them express their feelings and emotions, through the visual language which our cameras enable to finally create a world of joy. So, we hope that when we land this message the consideration and the preference for the brand moves up.

And we do believe in Daniel Kahneman’s theory that ‘Half the decisions you make are through your system one and system one isn’t just about numbers and specs, it’s about how you feel about the brand. And through communications like this when we establish what the brand stands for, we hope to improve our consideration and preference among the audiences.

What are the other marketing activities undertaken by Vivo this year?

We have been quite active actually throughout the year. We had a CSR film which we launched early on in the year, then when the pandemic had just gone by, we did a campaign called ‘Haath Badao’ which was basically saying that we know that smartphones are so pervasive in our lives, and smartphones are the medium through which we probably could spread joy during the tough times. And we as a brand are glad that we could play a little bit of role in giving people that joy and the hope. So that was the campaign we did.

We did a co-branded communication with NGC on the stuff that we are doing in India. We are actually an organisation which has invested a lot in the country. We have over thousand distributors, over 70,000 retailers. Our factory employs over 10,000 people. As an organisation, we give direct and indirect employment to almost 1.4 lac people. There is a lot of content that we showcased to the world in our partnership with NGC. Then we did a direct brand purpose campaign during IPL. Post that now we are doing this Diwali campaign and there is more lined up in November and December as well. All the campaigns that we launched revolved around joy, around how the brand is warm and trying to build connections between people. And how we see technology having a purpose. Technology is not about battery, clockspeeds of processors, megapixels of camera. Every technology exists for a purpose. That purpose needs to be humane. It needs to help people find joy. So all the campaigns I spoke about, will revolve around the same space.

How has the pandemic impacted Vivo’s brand vision?

The pandemic impacted the supply chain more than anything else. So supply chain did lead to some challenges but I think that as supply chains restored themselves globally, including the semi-conductor supply chain pretty much back to normal, we have done quite well over the last year and this year as well. Market shares is pretty stable, the newly launched products are doing very well. And if you want a really low light camera to celebrate Diwali, the x8 series and the v25 series are great, especially the x8 series with the T star coating. When you do the night photography, with the diya, with the lights, to enable absolutely zero ghosting and blurs, the way it focuses, it’s a great a great technology that will give you great output. And the Ois that we have on the v25 series that we launched recently, again is a great response to that product. The 64 megapixel camera that we have on the Ois is again a great tool to celebrate Diwali, capture these moments of joy and store them forever.

What are the growth projections for Vivo this year?

The numbers are looking really good. We are meeting our expectations. We are very happy with the response to all the products that we launched, whether its X series, V series. In fact, we had run out of stocks on quite a few of our models and we had to really strengthen the supply chain to meet that demand. So, we are pretty happy with the way the business is progressing.

Will Vivo deviate from its homecoming narrative in the coming years?

What I can guarantee is that whether it is 2022 or 2023, the stories will revolve around people, relationships, connections, feelings, emotions, and how imaging technology plays a role in bringing people together. Whether it will be about home, homecoming I cannot guarantee, but the stories will be about human feelings, emotions, and the role that smartphone can play in strengthening those bonds, to bring people joy.