The Hindu Business Line : Marriages made on the Net

The Bharat Matrimony.com TVC has tried to reassure its target audience that the Internet is a reliable medium through which people can look for their life-partners.

THE mother opens the door for the father and the daughter and mischievously points out at the bedroom and says, "Ladke wale aayen hain." The father and daughter seem to be taken aback as they wonder why should the ladkewale (groom's side) be made to sit in the bedroom of all places. As they walk into the bedroom, they find to their utter surprise that the mother had actually logged on to Bharat Matrimony.com and had opened the profile of a prospective groom for her daughter. And the tagline says — Lakhon Shaadiyan Sampan Karaiye.

After doing a few regional campaigns, the Chennai-based wedding portal, Bharat Matrimony.com, has forayed into the national arena with a new TVC. Apart from the obvious focus on targeting a wider national audience and creating brand awareness, the larger goal of the campaign says Josy Paul, Country Head and National Creative Director, rmg david, which handles the account, is to make the Web site look traditional and ensure more traffic. "Arranged marriages are a traditional affair and here was a modern vehicle doing a traditional task. Our effort has been to make everybody comfortable to check out a boy or a girl through a portal."

In fact, one of the major focus of this TVC, says Paul, is to get more and more women to log on to the Web site. He says that their research showed that most women are apprehensive about posting their profiles on the Net as they fear whether their parents would approve of it.

"Therefore `parental approval' became our vision and in the TVC we have shown a progressive mother endorsing the idea of looking for a suitable groom for her daughter through a wedding portal," says Paul.

He says a number of categories such as sanitary napkins and cosmetic brands such as Ayurvedic Concepts have in the past also used the `parental approval' route by getting mothers and grandmothers to endorse their brands in order build brand reassurance.

Talking about the impact of the campaign on the business, S. Suresh, Business Head, Bharat Matrimony.com, says that though it is early to comment on how much the campaign has impacted on sales, it has definitely increased the number of walk-ins into their offices in the Northern markets where the company has recently forayed into.

He says that the company has an ad budget of Rs 20 crore this year and would also be shortly launching print and outdoor campaigns. "The TVC would also be aired in other regional languages such as Punjabi, Gujarati, Assamese, Tamil and Telugu."

The TVC has been directed by Film Director, Ravi Chopra. "We decided to get a feature film director to direct the TVC and used prominent movie stars so that the ad gets a cinema kind of a look and the target audience would be able to relate better to the campaign," says Paul of rmg david.

"After all matchmaking on the Net is a new and unique concept and the endeavour of our campaign is to make people more comfortable to look for their life partners on the Net," he adds.

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