Following Vodafone, Idea and virgin mobiles approach to "virtual character" base ad campaign Reliance Communication has also geared up for the same for its GSM and CDMA Mobile service. Reliance Mobile is borrowing a concept from the Charlie Chaplin classic The Great Dictator. Just as Chaplin dances with a globe in the film, RCom's forthcoming advertising campaign will shows five animated characters dancing with a globe.
The similarity doesn’t end there. In The Great Dictator, Chaplin is spoofing Adolf Hitler's wild ambitions to conquer the world. In its ad campaign slated for launch next week, RCom is taking on Vodafone-Essar’s engaging and hugely popular Zoozoos.
Being developed by Delhi-based RocketScience, the characters five of them representing the five network bars on a mobile phone are yet to be given a name. Right now, they're being referred to as "humanized network bars.
But much like the Zoozoos, these "humanized network bars" will communicate the strength of the company’s network through five second spot advertisements. RCom is making seven short films to be aired across various TV channels beginning next week. The campaign, which also includes an online viral, will run for two weeks.
The company’s brief to the agency was to make network bars the brand’s identity and a medium of communicating with its customers, a RocketScience source said.In one of the advertisements, four of the humanized characters are lifting the fifth and threatening to drop him on the ground. The tagline says: ‘Our network never fails’ another one has all the five dancing around India’s map, mentioning its “coverage across 20,000 towns and 500,000 villages”.
RCom will spend around Rs 150 crore (the amount includes the GSM campaign featuring Hrithik Roshan launched a fortnight ago) over a 60-day period. RCom will also extend its humanized characters to sell its portfolio of value-added brand, just as Vodafone did with Zoozoos. Going a step further, RCom will create jokes around its humanized characters that will be available over SMS and e-mail.
