OnePlus India ditches the ‘cliché advertising’ this Diwali

What would a typical Diwali ad look like - full of lights, sweets, and some good-natured pay-it-forward spirit? This festive season campaign OnePlus took a break from emotion-led storytelling to deliver #SimplyDiwali with direct communication around their best offers. 

For years brands have chosen to depict ‘emotions’ as the hero of their festive campaigns - the traditional portrayal of familiar bonds and values, the house adorned with festive lights, sweets being made, and families helping out those in need. Amidst all the sentiments-led storytelling, direct selling sometimes tends to take a backseat. This Diwali, OnePlus India chose to do a straight walk, communicating directly with the consumers to rise above the clutter. 

With #SimplyDiwali, OnePlus India rolled out a series of video ads, straight-to-the-point print adverts, engaging social media creatives, and innovative OOH activations complemented by peculiar radio excerpts. Rather than adopting the storytelling route, OnePlus India made their fantastic offers the core of the campaign to lure in the consumer’s attention. 

Diwali this year, not only marked the peak of the festive season but also signs of economic revival as consumers this year were ready to spend meeting their pent-up needs and even luxuries. With captions like ‘An ad, you can't skip, enjoy offers that skip the drama’, the brand brought forth offers that consumers are looking for, capitalizing on the increasing purchase appetite this year. 

The #SimplyDiwali ad films showcased outdated television sets running cliched ads that were also now out of date. The revelry was paused and cut to a girl dressed in black set against a dark background highlighting how OnePlus brought in the unexpected this year – simply the offers that matter. 

The TV ads were supported by a 360-degree marketing campaign launched across social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Promoting the OnePlus TV U1S and the OnePlus 9 Series, the campaign featured an intriguing scenario where the protagonist dances aloof blissfully to the tunes of the OnePlus TV, indulging in luxurious meal, cutting the normal festive jazz, and focused on the primary objective of selling the features of the device. 

The brand took to the newspapers with a full front page ad with compelling copies. ‘An offer that skips the drama’ inked in bold, the print advertisements in national dailies including The Times of India, Telegraph, ABP, Maharashtra Times, Dainik Jagran, and The Hindu, marketed the OnePlus Nord and OnePlus 9 series. 

The print copy “Would you rather have an ad with a bunch of random people pretending to be a family and doing cliche festive things? Or just turn the page over? #SimplyDiwali,” followed by details of their offers.

Also Read: How OnePlus took an O2O approach this Diwali with #YourFestiveShot

With strategic placements set up in proximity with OnePlus’ Experience Stores pan India, OOH hoardings were also leveraged to showcase great products, and offers that spoke for themselves this Diwali season while ‘skipping the drama.’

The OOH campaign was augmented with cross-channel promotions in order to create heightened recall value for the devices and phone series. 

Amplifying the communication further, major radio stations Radio Mirchi, Radio City, Big FM, and Red FM were leveraged across cities to create multiple touchpoints for OnePlus’ simple yet on-point communication.

In a bid to intensify the campaign activation, the brand brought into play the OnePlus community and launched an innovative one-of-a-kind online to offline integration with #ShotonOnePlus Diwali contest - #YourFestiveShot. To gratify the best clicks, the shortlisted entries were displayed on live billboards across Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. The winners of the contest also stood a chance to win a OnePlus 9 Pro or a OnePlus Nord 2.

With subtle branding at the core and simple narratives, OnePlus stepped the advertising game with the #SimplyDiwali campaign and walked the talk with being a brand of and for the consumers.