Intex launches multi-crore campaign for Aqua i7

Intex, one of the quite aggressive companies in terms of advertising and reaching out to their TG has recently launched a new TVC featuring its brand ambassador, Farhan Akhtar for its new flagship model– the Intex Aqua i7.  The campaign was made by Intex’s in-house team and Fusion Films is the production house.

Earlier models of Intex phones were limited in the Rs 12,000 price range. The Aqua i7, priced at Rs 22,000, is a premium model and the campaign had to be clutter-breaking to show that. At the same time, the campaign was meant to highlight the innovative first-time features offered by the smartphone like full HD resolution (1920 x1080 p), 13 MP camera and vast internal memory (32 GB). The phone caters to a niche segment, therefore the richness and the elegance of the phone needs to be communicated to the audience through TVC. Thus, the objective of the commercial as told to us was to communicate these features to the consumer in an enthralling manner.   

Adgully caught up with Keshav Bansal, Director- Marketing (Mobile), Intex Technologies to know more about the campaign.
 
The 30-second TVC opens with a fight sequence between two Japanese warriors. During the fight sequence, brand ambassador Farhan Akhtar can be seen as a close spectator, experiencing every move of the warriors against each other. In another shot, it is shown that Farhan isn’t actually present but is actually watching the fight on an Aqua i7 and it was an immersive experience for him because of the full HD resolution of the smartphone.

The multi-crore TVC was shot in Mumbai and Malaysia while the VFX and editing has been done out of Singapore to give it a larger than life appeal. Elaborating on the spends Bansal said, "We have spent around 40 crores for this campaign and are marketing it aggressively through social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in addition to TV, print and outdoor media."

The TVC went live on Oct 2 and is currently seen running across major electronic channels such as GEC, Music, Sports, News and more. Apart from TVC being aired in prominent time slots across channels, the product is also being promoted through outdoor media (hoardings) and digital marketing campaign. 

In terms of exploring digital and social media with regard to this campaign, Bansal said, "We have allocated specific budgets to digital media in our annual marketing budget this year which comes to around 40 lakhs per month. Intex is giving additional importance to social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and is aggressively engaging with its customer on these platforms. This is mainly due to the prominence and vast reach of this medium that benefitted us immensely in our last campaign for Aqua i5 and we are expecting even better results with our extensive social media campaign around Aqua i7 this time."

When asked about the degree of success the campaign has achieved in highlighting the innovative features offered by the new flagship model, he said, "Aqua i7 is a path breaking smartphone from Intex and with this campaign, we have actually been able to emphasize our growing focus on metros. It is a phone for an evolved user who wants more than a touch-screen device with a few handful of productivity apps. It is about an evolved device providing enriched user experience, quality features and multitasking capabilities which makes user to feel that the device is an integral part of his/her day to day life. The TVC captures the major features of Aqua i7 in a contemporary fashion in just 30 seconds where we see Farhan Akhtar as a consumer who is so besotted by the overall user experience that he envisions himself to be a part of the video being viewed on Aqua i7."

With the launch of Aqua i7, the company is foraying into the premium handsets segment. When queried on how will the product provide best user experience to consumers who are looking for a device with pleasing aesthetics, simultaneously designed to offer power packed performance; Bansal, "Intex Aqua i7 has quality features that empowers customers to make the most out of their everyday life. The phone has a lively full HD screen, 1.5GHz quad-core processor coupled with a 2GB RAM which is not available in any other device in the market at this price point. Other than this, the device is laden with 32GB internal memory + 5GB cloud space to provide customer delight and again one of the extraordinary features of this phone."

The smartphone is pre-loaded with a host of useful applications and various cool features such as ‘My screen’ that allows user to perform four functions simultaneously, ‘Look away’ feature pauses the device when the user looks away, wireless display, over-the-air (OTA) software update, Matrabhasha app supporting 22 regional languages to enables use of smartphone in user’s own mother tongue. Other fun apps include Intex Play which facilitates downloading popular applications and games and Intex movies for unlimited streaming and downloading of latest Bollywood movies free of cost for a month.

"Coming to the aesthetics of the phone, we have reinvented the complete look and feel of the phone. Bordered with a metal band, the phone is a pure pleasure for the beholder. The phone comes with a matte finish back panel that makes it easier to hold and making it resistant to finger prints. It is the best product out of our Aqua series that a user can proudly own," he added.

Elaborating on why Farhan Akhtar as the face of the campaign, Bansal said, "Both Intex and Farhan were dark horses in respective fields when started out on their journey. Both have worked really hard to achieve considerable ground today which is something that resonates the same kind of emotions or messaging. Also, our target audience for Aqua i7 is young, urban professionals and the youthful and thus, a versatile yet credible identity of Farhan helps in creating a connect for the brand with the desired audience. We saw that the synergies of our brand match with his and thus we zeroed down on him as brand ambassador for Intex mobiles."

Credits:
Creative Agency: In-house
Creative Team:  Keshav Bansal (Director – Marketing, Mobile), Pravin Kumar Gupta  (Creative Director )
Creative Brief: Keshav Bansal (Director, Marketing, Mobile)
Production House: Fusion Films
Director:  Henri Barges