WeChat makes a point with Jaat boy and his buffalo 'Katrina'

Conceptualised by Publicis India, the quirky campaign communicates to WeChat users the four new features introduced on the app

Sarmistha Neogy | Mumbai | May 27, 2014

Click on the image to watch the TVC

WeChat, the leading social communication app, has launched a new marketing campaign to promote the cool features recently introduced on the messaging platform. The 30-second TVC, done by Publicis India, is humorous and has been executed in an innovative manner to communicate with all the tech-savvy youngsters. It is a drift from the regular WeChat campaigns which one saw last year, where celebrities like Parineeti Chopra and Varun Dhawan were roped in for the commercials.

Bobby Pawar

Bobby Pawar, Chief Creative Officer, Publicis India, said, “Our challenge was to highlight the uniqueness of WeChat in an innovative way. The youth prefer to stay connected with the help of these messaging apps. Their daily life updates are no longer personal as they prefer to share and upload so that their friends can enjoy a peek-a-boo in their lives. This is where WeChat decided to tap into the need for constant contact and the sense of empowerment in being able to do so in new and engaging ways.”

The four new features introduced by WeChat are real-time location sharing, friend radar, video call and cloud storage to make communication more fun.

Nilay Arora, VP - Marketing and Business Development, 10c India, said, “WeChat has always been a pioneer in bringing innovation to mobile messaging by continuously adding unique features, localisations and educating users through a fun and honest marketing approach. At WeChat, we believe that technology should be approachable by everyone and it should enhance and enrich the lives of users. In our current campaign films, we have tried to portray the local flavours and the colourful life of India made richer through WeChat. The new unique features that we've introduced have been launched after a lot of research on user behaviour and we're confident of their uptake in India.”

“The idea was to communicate, and position WeChat as the starting point of all conversations and interactions - #StartHere. The brief on which we worked on was to educate the features of WeChat to the users in a unique and innovative manner. That is how the character of a Jaat boy, who is in love with technology, was etched out as the spokesperson in the TVC. The Jaat boy is a symbolic embodiment of many young Indians who live and breathe through their smartphones – very proud of their roots and, at the same time, open to all the opportunities that our hyper-connected world has to offer,” added Pawar.

Two films have been released till now as part of this campaign. The first commercial was made to highlight the feature of free video calls on WeChat, where the Jaat boy finds a prospective groom for his pet buffalo, Katrina. The second one showcases the real-time location sharing ability on this platform. Here, Katrina is lost and the Jaat boy helps her back home using real-time sharing location.

Pawar ended on a light-hearted note saying, “We decided that let's not borrow pop culture, but create our own pop culture. The Jaat guy is heavy on rural accent, but uses English to communicate as a result of which none of the viewers would feel left out. You may find his delivery funny and odd, but you cannot ignore him or his message.”

The TVC:

https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/

Credits:

Client: WeChat

Agency: Publicis India

Chief Creative Officer: Bobby Pawar

Executive Creative Director: Joy Mohanty

Account Management: Hemant Misra, Annirudh Deb, Proteek Dey

Film Director: Siddharth Sikand

Production House: Boot Polish

Sarmistha@BestMediaInfo.com

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