Describe the creative idea

Introducing Hagglebot. The world’s first-ever online bargaining experience. Where Indians brought their bargaining best to set prices on products for the rest of India. Only this time, not over the counter, but over their resident voice assistant of choice, Google Assistant. In the lead up to the country’s biggest online shopping days, when users instigated Google Assistant with ‘OK Google, talk to Flipkart,’ they could be crowned the country’s craftiest bargainer by Hagglebot. Flipkart challenged hearts and minds of users in their quest to squeezing deals on top products, simulating the importance of feeling like they’re driving the value in a deal. Instead of seeing another checkout page, users were surprised with a completely gamified bazaar hosted by Hagglebot. It was the only place in the world to satiate thrills of a bargain, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to liberate India off its budget constraints on The Big Billion Days.

Describe the execution

Shopping in India hasn’t been the same since Flipkart started building disruptive, unique, and scalable solutions. This approach propelled the brand to influence behavior, overcoming marketing and technical hurdles at every turn. Our task was to: 1. drive interest in the category for new users, while exciting current users. 2. create a disruptive solution to nullify competition outspending us 4:1. First, we identified the singular, unique trait every Indian believes in: bargaining! Indians love bargaining hard on every single purchase: right from a hairpin up to a house. This set the foundation for the retail experience we could simulate. Secondly, we noticed the evolution of voice technology as a paradigm shift in smartphone use in India, where it overcomes the barrier of typing for the next 100 million. To grow excitement and use, we decided to tap a latent desire from the category: to get a full market experience online. We built a game for uniquely Indian virtues. We travelled across 30 bazaars in India to build a robust foundation for responses. We realized bargaining is about reaching a middle ground, and that Indians have a mental utility belt of responses to get to the best deal. 8 commonly used bargaining strategies were shortlisted. Google Zoo’s teams across four countries then translated each API for India and Hagglebot. Bargaining strategies like Blackmailing and Lowballing was handled with panache; GIFs and sounds helped recreate the feel of a shop. Even brownie points for words like “please” was built-in. Hagglebot was ready for India. Drop-offs, a known barrier for the tech, was finally overcome. A pledge in the beginning. Mini games to solve for monotony. A demo to educate. All to let over 1200 contextual responses shine, and let users take the spotlight. Ultimately, a scoring algorithm definitively rewarded the best bargainer.