HomeShop18 launches "Shopping Makes Me Happy" Campaign with TVC's , Microsite and a Twitter Activity

HomeShop18 recently announced its latest TVC campaign around the mantra “Shopping Makes Me Happy,” which has a unique and fresh idea and breaks away from the clutter. The idea was to build top of the mind recall for HomeShop18 as the most trusted shopping platform for customers across age and income groups. The campaign unveils its new animated brand mascots - Billy and Sunny, a father and son cat duo, positioned as the co-founders of HomeShop18 with an aim to spread happiness via shopping. This exciting new initiative offers a fresh makeover to the website’s image and ramps it up by inducing humour.

HomeShop18 has perfected the character-driven marketing code by launching their new mascots, Billy and Sunny, across all marketing platforms offline and online. The brand launched a TVC, a microsite and a Twitter contest as a part of the promotion.

The microsite is an individual property, distinct from the HomeShop18 website, but linked to the latter. The user is welcomed by the cheerful father-son duo on the microsite that has enough to offer to the customers, from TVC integration, deals and offers, that subtly directs the users to HomeShop18’s site. Funny memes, information about the mascots, humourous confessions and other hilarious stuff is stored here.

The TVC which was launched today focusses on promoting the HomeShop18 website. The lively anthropomorphic cats have a humourous tone and the TVC ends with a resonating jingle on the lines of Shopping Makes Me Happy.

Buzz on Social Media

On Twitter, Billy and Sunny have their own Twitter accounts called @PurrfectBilly and @pAwesomeSunny, each having over a 130 followers in a day’s time. Launched on 4^th June, the two accounts have had over 800+ interactions each. The accounts have been tweeting hillarious updates and have a tongue-in-cheek attitude.

The brand connected with 45+ influencers to have conversations with these accounts.

Apart from this, the brand has also started a contest with the hashtag #18HappyMoments.

The Right Mix of Direct and Indirect Marketing

With a 360 degree marketing approach, the brand has tapped the potential of most platforms. Creating a pre-buzz activity on Twitter was a great start to unveiling the new mascots of the brand. Creating Twitter accounts for Billy and Sunny and then populating them with interactions from influencers was a nice way to generate curiosity before launching the TVC, microsite and Twitter contest.

On the microsite, the cats do not directly push the brand and this subtle connection built between the mascots and the brand is possibly a better way of creating brand evangelists.

Humour has struck a chord with many and HomeShop18’s new campaign Shopping Makes Me Happy pushes the user to instantly connect with Billy and Sunny. Everyone wants to talk to them through their Twitter handles.

What’s even more exciting is the fact that HomeShop18 is the first brand among the e-commerce industry to integrate WhatsApp in their marketing strategy. This adds a whole new dimension to engagement and reach as WhatsApp is practically used by everyone across India.

By integrating WhatsApp in their campaign, HomeShop18 has ensured they remain in focus even when a user isn’t necessarily online on social media. HomeShop18 has begun sharing funny memes and jokes via WhatsApp and users can subscribe to HomeShop18 on WhatsApp from their new microsite and share their favourite jokes directly from WhatsApp. Since humour works really well, we can expect this innovative strategy to reach greater heights.

The Number Connect: 18

HomeShop18 has used their hashtags very smartly by building a brand connect through the number 18. They are using #18HappyMoments and running a contest using it. Influencers across the platform will be using this hashtag to run contests. HomeShop18 itself has been promoting the Happiness quotient by updating various tweets.

These contests will run for 8-10 days.

HomeShop18, which was one of the last brands to jump into the bandwagon of advertising among its industry peers, has taken a rather offbeat route and this is indeed proving to be a fun way of marketing and using social media.