Oppo F3's Your Best Diwali Gift falls flat: experts

Oppo F3's Your Best Diwali is nearly a 7 minute long film that takes viewers through a captivating journey.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo Mobiles's marketing strategy has been spot on in the last few years, right from investing in big properties like cricket and looping in big ticket ambassadors. In March this year, Oppo paid Rs 1,079 crore for a five-year deal with the Indian cricket team. It is also currently one of the big sponsors for the television reality show, Bigg Boss 10.

Oppo also has big names like Sonam Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan and recent Deepika Padukone as their ambassador and the communication has always focused on talking about the great selfie enabled feature in all their handsets.

The brand recently launched a new digital film titled Your Best Diwali Gift for their new Oppo F3 Selfie expert in a 6:43 minute long film. The brand tries hands on long format storytelling, featuring Indian cricketers Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, R.Ashwin, and Rohit Sharma. These men while walking around a quaint museum and admiring the artifacts, get stunned when a mannequin of a beautiful woman comes to life suddenly. The rest of the story revolves around what happens next with the boys.

The objective of the brand through this campaign is to highlight the Oppo F3 Diwali edition phone, which has been specially customized for Diwali and is being put across as a perfect gift option during this festive time. Deepika Padukone is the brand ambassador for this phone and a special OPPO F3 Deepika Limited Edition is also available both online and offline.

Social Chatter

The film has clocked more than 1 million views on the brand's YouTube page. On Twitter, Opp is engaging using the hashtag #YourBestDiwaliGift and #OPPOF3.  There are contests to encourage user participation and excite the audience about the new phone.

The film has garnered mixed responses and people have been quite irked with the length of the video and really disappointed with the ending of the film.

Expert Views

We spoke to Naresh Gupta from Bang in the Middle and Fruitbowl Digital's Faisal Amin to get their views on the campaign.

Naresh Gupta, CSO, Bang in the Middle said, “I have no clue what is happening in this film. Why was it made? Is there some culture curry that the brand wants us to indulge in? Look at it from the ingredient perspective; we have cricket, kids, maharajas, magic, mystery, occult and a pretty woman who can take a selfie. All of this has been dine for the final line “best gift”. These long format indulgences rarely work. If it has to work than it has to be focused on the brand.”

He further added, “BMW films made it work ten years back, but they did it with slick story-telling and sharp insights. 7 minutes in today’s world is a short film, and there are many that do a terrific job in 7 minutes. To me this is a brand telling me that I am big and successful because I can do a long film. Opportunity needs a sharper insight and a tighter story telling.”

Faisal Amin, co-founder of Fruitbowl Digital feels that it is an interesting campaign, but lacks in bringing out the identity of the brand. “We were hooked on till the end, wondering how they would track back to the brand. I felt, the colour, sound, story-build up of the campaign is good, but the brand connect is totally missing,” he concluded.

The brand has certainly taken a risk with churning out a nearly 7 minute long film and invested big monies in it! While the experts aren't clearly taken by the campaign, it will be interesting to see how the campaign translates for the brand.