Background

Indian’s love comedy. Comicstaan is an Amazon Prime Original, a nationwide hunt for the next best comedian, helmed & judged by some of India’s best stand-up comics. The task was to launch the show Comicstaan by A) building a community of comedy lovers on social media B) engaging & co-creating (UGC) with the community. Our community lived, spoke & engaged in a language that comedians do (read sarcasm & humour), and our content sounded real & honest. Whatever the idea, we had to relate to our Indian audience in a way that felt real, relatable & honest. To put it simply: how can we make humour social in the Indian context?

Describe the creative idea

A) WORLD’S LONGEST JOKE CHAIN ON INTERNET: We picked a cultural moment that would relate with every Indian – Haathi-Cheenti Jokes – a joke form that always involves a Haathi (an Elephant) & a Cheenti (an Ant) and together they form groan-inducing jokes with terrible puns thrown in. They are the Indian equivalent of Knock Knock Jokes. The idea was to get users on the internet to co-create these jokes and create the World’s Longest Joke Chain on the Internet by passing the mic via tagging each other. B) INDIA’S FIRST BRANDED GIF-T PACK: Since the #funny world of social media lacked Indian faces and humour, we introduced the 'Comicstaan GIF-T Pack', India's first ever branded GIF pack featuring the judges of Comicstaan and famous Indian comics depicting local humour to give something back to our community. Something that would help them express themselves in funnier and relatable ways.

Describe the strategy

Make ads that don’t look like ads. Instead, create fun & engaging content that feels organic silly & social using local influencers and their profiles together with paid media. We focused on Instagram to tap into the younger target audience. Our fans on Instagram loved engaging with us on IG stories which helped us understand that they engaged more on vertical content that is more mobile-first rather than our feeds. A) International Joke Day was right around the corner, so we used that as a topical event to launch the #LambaHaathiCheetiJoke campaign. We integrated our Talent’s faces & their social handles with Instagram Stories to kickstart the longest joke chain on the internet. B) We also collaborated with GIPHY (most popular search engine for GIFs/stickers) to make the GIF-T pack available across social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and Whatsapp.

Describe the execution

On Instagram, our talent & social influencers uploaded their jokes and passed on the mic to the next influencer, challenging and @tagging them, thus starting off a spiral effect chain where users also took the challenge, joined in and contributed. The sticker pack gave them ways to make their jokes look even cooler. These vertical videos were then uploaded on Instagram Stories on International Joke Day and a trend of #LambaHaathiCheetiJoke was created. The longer videos by fans resided on IG TV. The ads to promote the challenge and sticker pack ran across Facebook and Instagram as form of IG stories, feed videos and statics.

List the results

> Comicstaan broke all records and became the most watched Amazon Prime Video Show in India ever. > 10,000+ video submissions recieved. > 2000+ hours user generated content created > 61.5 Million+ GIF views within the first week. 106 Million+ GIF views in total. > 45 Million+ people reached across Instagram and other platforms. This activity helped engage and co-create with our community, created enough buzz and drove people to watch the show that released in the week after this activity. This campaign helped Comicstaan become the most watched Amazon Prime Video show in India.