Mahindra Holiday focuses on family bonding and fun-filled vacations

The new campaign conceptualised by FCB Interface, shows how when you become a child yourself, you bond with your child better

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | December 20, 2016

Click on the Image to watch the TVC.

Wanderlust is the new buzz word and travelling is everyone's '#goals' At a time when Facebook walls and Instagram pages are flooded with heavily filtered photos of random beaches and unknown waterfalls, Mahindra Holidays has come out with a new campaign that lays emphasis on family bonding and unique experiences.

Speaking about the need for a campaign right now, Giridhar Seetharam, CMO, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd., said, “As a company, we have been silent for some time and we believe that in order to drive the kind of aspiration and awareness for Club Mahindra that we need, we had to be more consistently on air.”

The campaign, conceptualised by FCB Interface, is about a family that is enjoying a vacation in one of Club Mahindra's resorts. While the mother is reading a book and the father is busy on his phone, the son is standing with a fish line, looking bored. The boy catches some plant and accidently it lands on the book the mother is reading. Scared, the mother starts running and the boy chases her with the weed on the fishing hook. The father too now joins the fun, having abandoned his phone.

“We went and met almost 100 odd members while they were holidaying with us and tried to find out from them what they look for from a holiday. Similarly, we connect with almost 10,000 to 12,000 prospects every month and while doing that we also tried to understand what gets them interested in our products. We also did a usage and attitude study, where we did in-depth interviews with multi-generational families. After all this we realised that in today's world, under one roof in the house, there exist three islands -- the mother's island, the father's island and the child's island. The one big insight that we got was that families were using holidays as a means to try and come together and bond. So, holidays became the fulcrum where families came together and had good fun,” said Seetharam talking about the insight behind the campaign.

“We saw that because of increasing instances of nuclear families and broken families, people had really forgotten how to really bond with their kids. So, in a way we listed down three or four parenting philosophies and the most interesting one that came out was the whole concept of 'when you become a child yourself, you bond with your child better',” he added.

“When we take the time to play with our children, they end up becoming our friends. And as we all know, there is no generation gap between friends. The film simply brings alive this fact,” said Robby Mathew, Chief Creative Officer, FCB Interface.

Joe Thaliath, Chief Executive Officer, FCB Interface feels that people have forgotten what real holidays are like and this campaign is an endeavour to remind people what they have forgotten.

“In today's high-pressure environment, everyone is on call 24x7. Research revealed that the consumers live with an unresolved guilt torn between the desire to provide time and an aspirational life to the family, while being committed to their occupational demands even when on a holiday. Holiday decisions therefore have become all about room, nights, destinations and deals. In this backdrop, we wanted to remind the consumer what a 'real holiday' was and show him the value of a Club Mahindra holiday. This campaign builds on this insight and beautifully depicts how the unique experiences in Club Mahindra help him connect and re-bond with his family,” said Thaliath.

Experiences, Seetharam believes, is Club Mahindra's unique selling point or USP.

"We have fantastic platforms like the Ashtamudi Resort in the ad film that help families come together and offers unique experiences and we felt that we should use these to tell people about the kind of experiences they can expect to have at Club Mahindra and that, I believe, is our USP. While Taj can talk about luxury, and exotic food and somebody like OYO and Airbnb can talk about cheaper rooms or value rooms, we are really good at providing these platforms for experiences and that is what we have tried to bring to life with this campaign,” said Seetharam.

A complete 360 degree campaign, the strategy involves television, print, digital and cinema.

“It is a complete 360 degree campaign. We will have television, which starts on December 18 and will end in about five weeks. In addition to that there is going to be significant spend on digital. There is also going to be a print campaign, which will be in the market in December and then again continue in the month of March. We will be present in cinemas. One third of our marketing budget is on digital and the rest on everything else. But all this -- television, print, digital, cinema -- is all external focus according to us. We have a set of two hundred and twenty thousand families who are already our members. We are doing a big campaign targeted towards our base of members to encourage them to talk about us and help make the campaign viral,” elaborated Seetharam.

Commenting on the challenges of marketing for such a category, Seetharam talked about the challenge and the opportunity he sees in developing the category. “The category is really underdeveloped in India and being the market leaders in the category, the onus is on us to grow. In the US, vacation ownership is about five per cent of the leisure space. In India, vacation ownership is only one per cent. So, this is a huge opportunity in front of us, so how to leverage it and how to drive category education is the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity.”

“Secondly, those who are already our members have fantastic opinions on us and talk very highly of us. How to translate the energy, enthusiasm and love they have for the brand to prospects is another challenge. The third challenge is that increasingly people don't want just a basic holiday any more. They want to immerse themselves in the local food and local culture. They look at experiences as something they want to bring back home and therefore, how to continuously try and give these experiences is the third challenge,” said Seetharam.

The TVC:

https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/bmi/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Mahindra-Holiday.jpg

Credits:

Client: Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd.

Creative Agency: FCB Interface

Creative Team: Robby Mathew

Account Management: Mitushi Verma, Ravi Sangtanai, Shuchi Kothari, Yakshit Shetty

Director (of the TVC): Vinil Mathew

Executive Producer: Swadha Kulkarni

Production House: Breathless Films

Post production studio: Prime Focus

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