HTC Explorer: 'Waiting, hating & sweetypie' take centrestage
Meridian Delhi attempts to catch the youth's pulse with 'fingers doing the talking' for the brand
Neha Saraiya | Delhi | December 8, 2011
HTC is the latest mobile maker to join the race to launch handsets loaded with oodles of features specifically targeting the youth comprising the spectrum ranging from college-goers to young jobbers. But being a late entrant in the Indian market with the launch of its new phone, HTC Explorer, the mobile phone company wanted to break the ice quickly and effectively with the youth TG.
With Indian youth today preferring to stay connected with friends and loved ones through Facebook, Twitter, online chats and messaging, the virtual world has largely substituted get-togethers, meetings and talking on phone. Based on this insight, Meridian Delhi has drafted a lighthearted, playful and youth-centric story that revolves around a guy trying to woo his girl back as she is upset with him. Using his fingers to create the imagery of walking legs, the guy is seen doing everything possible to win her smile back. The TVC ends with his fingers doing the magic, getting the girl back, thus establishing that with the new HTC Explorer the world is just a touch way.
Commenting on the use of a compelling background score and finger characters as the main highlights of the campaign, Krishna Mani, Creative Director, Meridian Communications, said, “We wanted to create a background music that would stick in people's mind. A lot of ads in the past have used music as a clutter-breaking factor. Thus, a lingual which is focused on youth was attempted to launch the entry-level touch phone from HTC. Also, since it's a touch-phone, we wanted to show a boy and girl communicating through their fingers.”
The TVCs:
The 60-second TVC that breaks on-air from today followed by four shorter versions of 15 seconds each, has a catchy background score (Tere maafi ko mai waiting waiting) composed by Ashutosh and was shot in Bangkok.
The Print Ads:
The print campaign for the phone depicted through the fingers imagery denoting walking legs, connotes that you can explore the world with just one touch has been taken forward through hoardings, POS material (standees, posters, danglers and buntings).
As part of the campaign, HTC is running an online contest inviting people to express their love for HTC Explorer in as many Indian languages as they can. The winner stands a chance to win a HTC Explorer every week. This is aimed at creating a buzz about the handset's USP of being the first Indian smartphone to support communication in vernaculars.
The brand also has a Facebook page with a fan base of close to 170,000 people.
Besides, the agency is currently working on rolling out communication to announce that HTC Explorer is the first phone in India to have “regional message/MMS/email” support in local languages/vernaculars.
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