Brands on the friendship express

Airtel's brand new advertisement, based on the easy friendship of college youth, is possibly the most talked-about marketing campaign on air today. It is refreshing, it is different, and it is making waves, big time. The theme of this very catchy advertisement is that every single friend, indeed every type of friend is essential to one's life (“ Har ek friend zaroori hota hai ”). The lyrics sing for themselves –

“…Koi chat room friend, koi classroom friend

Shopping mallwala shopping friend

Koi exam hallwala copying friend

Movie buddy, groovy buddy

Hi buddy bye buddy…joke buddy poke buddy

Gaana buddy shaana buddy…Chaddi buddy yaar buddy

Har ek friend zaroori hota hai!”

Celebration of friendship

The Airtel campaign is a spontaneous celebration of friendship, and it appears to have touched a wonderful chord amongst so many viewers. It has achieved such instant success despite featuring no celebrity, not even a known face. Instead, around 70 young actors inject the film with incredible energy. The key reason for its success: The campaign reflects a deep human insight, that friendship is one of the most endearing and treasured aspects of our lives. Several consumers have commented online that the advertisement evokes wonderful memories of friendship for them, that it makes them hum with the glow of friendship all over again.

Will the success of this milestone campaign bring friendship centre-stage into the world of Indian brands? Themes such as family bonding, festive celebrations, romance, achievement, trust, sexual attraction, the husband-wife or mother-daughter relationship have dominated Indian advertising over the past several years. Friendship, on the other hand, has not been such a significant recurring theme in the core propositions of brands, or in their marketing communication. I think this will change.

Friendship in Bollywood

The harbingers of change, as always, are evident from the world of Hindi cinema. Much as I hate to admit it, Bollywood often tracks the pulse of our consumers better than marketers and advertising agencies do. And what does Bollywood teach us? Over the past decade, so many blockbuster successes have been based on the theme of friendship. The most recent Hindi movie I watched, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), is a story based on friendship. It is one of the big box office hits this year, and has received rave reviews. So many other mega hits of the past few years – 3 Idiots , Rang De Basanti , Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na – are also constructed around friendship as their core story and emotion. If you scroll back over the years, every decade has at least one iconic film based on friendship: Sholay , Dosti , Dil Chahta Hai are names that come readily to mind.

Friendship and Indian brands

If so many movies based on friendship are so successful, it is clear that this recurring theme is tugging at the heart-strings of millions of Indian consumers. Therefore, much like Airtel, many Indian brands have begun hopping on to this friendship bandwagon. Here are a few examples. Two years ago, the telecom brand Tata DoCoMo launched a very popular campaign called Friendship Express. It features people from different customs, places, ages, travelling together on a train. The DoCoMo tune creates for them the magic of friendship, on the spur of the moment. And the byline of the campaign captures the thought succinctly: “Why walk alone when we can dance together?” Of course, this dance of friendship amongst strangers on a train is quite different from the thought of friendship on a college campus captured by the Airtel campaign, but it is in the same domain.

In a very different category, Café Coffee Day, India's largest chain of cafés, is based largely on the idea of friendship. Its theme line, “A lot can happen over coffee”, captures the spirit of conversations that are the binding force in any friendship. Conversations can, of course, extend to business or art, but these cafes are primarily positioned as places where friends can bond over a cup of cappuccino, or, if you are adventurous, a more exotic Ethiopian brew.

Fastrack, an exciting brand of youth accessories that I am associated with, has also used campus friendship as a recurring theme in its marketing and communication, with superb success. Fastrack friendship (and break-up) is cool and effortless, reflecting the “Move On” spirit of college youth who are waltzing through some of the best years of their lives.

Brands using the friendship theme is not merely an Indian trend. I distinctly remember seeing a startlingly funny advertisement for Pepsi, when I was travelling abroad several months ago. It shows us how a young man does weird stuff in an office, to help his friend land a job.

“That's what friends are for”, it says, as the two friends walk out into the streets drinking their cans of Pepsi Max.

Fundamental consumer drivers

There are many reasons why friendship will become an even bigger theme for Indian brands, across different categories. The Airtel advertisement will undoubtedly trigger many copycats, but the drivers of this trend are far more fundamental to Indian society.

First and foremost, youth constitutes a very large consumer segment in India. In this young, unmarried age-group of 15 to 25 years, and particularly on college and school campuses, so much of life revolves around friendships. Youngsters have strong affiliations to their immediate group of friends, and often to multiple groups of buddies. They hang out with their friends, they talk and fight with their friends, they eat and travel with their friends. This is also the time of life when strong personal friendships take root, between like minds and hearts. Since friendship is such a key element in the lives of youth, brands which appeal to this target segment can and should leverage this theme. Categories such as jeans, fashion accessories, wristwatches, multiplexes, fast food and soft drinks, are prime candidates here.

Second, with our lives becoming increasingly stressful, the desire for friendships is becoming even stronger, as friends constitute an excellent release from everyday stress and routine. This is a phenomenon across age groups and socio-economic profiles. Such friendships are built in diverse locations, which differ across consumer profiles: within offices, in gymnasiums, in clubs, on the golf courses, even on treks and extended vacations. Categories such as liquor and beer, sporting clubs and equipment, restaurants and cafés, holiday destinations, and even apparel, can leverage this “friendship” insight brilliantly.

Third, social research has thrown up the increasing loneliness of modern, urban lives. Companionship is the perfect antidote for this malaise, and therefore the hunger and search for developing and sustaining strong friendships as well as meaningful conversations with such friends. Brands of mobile phones, telecom service providers, chocolates, wine and tea, apartments and housing estates can directly tap into this deeply felt and growing human need.

Fourth, with the rapid spread of social networking in urban India, a new type of friendship has suddenly and happily permeated all age groups, not merely youth. Men and women are rediscovering with great joy their friends from their past, from offices and campuses they have lived in; and are also developing long-distance friendships other men and women who may stay far away, but share their interests, passions and hobbies. “Facebook friends” has become a modern frontier which is here to stay, notwithstanding the other social impacts of such online friendship. Again, this is fertile territory for marketers, across virtually all product categories. Friendship has added so much happiness and vibrancy to so many lives. Even as we admire the new Airtel campaign, it appears that marketers will now increasingly use this theme to add joy and zing to their own brands.

(Harish Bhat is Chief Operating Officer – Watches, Titan Industries Ltd. These are his personal views.)

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