Why is this work relevant for Media?

What happens when the world’s largest search engine takes on the world's largest e-commerce platforms in order to make people’s lives a little less complicated when they shop online? A media first campaign that straddles across societal narratives inspired by search trends of the country.

Background

E-commerce is set to reach $200billion in sales by 2026 in India. The brief was to make Google the preferred platform for e-shopping and showcase how Google is here to simplify the complex and crowded world of e-commerce. Google wanted to be that ‘trusted’ platform to curate and find the best deals for all buyers so that they do not have to spend a lot of time across various seller platforms. Hence the campaign KPIs were : - Achieve a brand appeal score of 70% - Reach 80million unique audiences

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

To help showcase how Google makes shopping easy for everyone, we identified relevant cultural conversations across India. From new age Indian parents who turn to the internet for parenting tips to pet owners who seek quality and value so their purchases last, and tech-savvy millennial travellers who are dominating the travel scene in India, each film resonated with varied audiences. These specific cultural trends were picked up by analysing real time Google Search trends and the digital chatter around it. Once we’ve identified the trends, our strategy revolved around building a narrative around all the shopping decisions these trends will give way to. Thus creating a meaningful conversation with all e-buyers of India.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

From a demographic filter, we targeted 105 million users with 5 key descriptors - the internet, smartphones, +18-34 ABC, metros and tier 1. This was the first time Google ran a campaign to resonate with the e-shoppers of India. We had the uphill task of convincing them why they should ‘start’ their shopping journey on Google and not go down into many rabbit holes across various platforms. Relying on search algorithms to unearth shopping moments across various cultural trends in India added an interesting technical narrative to the campaign too. We identified ways to string together varied audiences under a single narrative and tapped into real user-generated content to add authenticity and relatability. This allowed the campaign to highlight Google’s role in providing inspiration, information and tools that help shoppers everywhere make more informed purchase decisions.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

Plan, Browse, Buy Google Search algorithms led us to many key trends to focus on for the campaign narrative such as New parents, pet ownership, travelling, etc. Let’s take a look at two of them in detail. New Parents: This year, India beat China in the number of babies born on New Year’s Day - 67,385. Many new parents turn to the internet for parenting tips and 8 in 10 mothers use a smartphone to get help on parenthood. Pet Ownership: When you bring home a pet, you buy into a cycle of purchases that will need to be made along the way. Because of the recurring nature of some purchases, quality and value are high on the priority list. We wanted to show that no matter how challenging a life journey may be, Google can help you navigate through the necessary shopping decisions in the most well-informed manner.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign resulted in an unprecedented increase in daily active users and a brand appeal score of 83%, which was 13% higher than the campaign KPI. We selected platforms with higher affinity for the audience - YouTube, Facebook, Instagram - reaching 120 million unique audiences with an average frequency of more than 8, over two months. This was a 20% increase in performance when compared to industry average. Plan, Browse, Buy was indeed more than a campaign as far as the e-commerce industry was concerned. It was the first time Google had come out and showed all consumers how they could rely on Google to help them simplify the complex world of e-purchases #WithALittleHelp from Google. It perhaps also showed the other industry seller platforms that you don’t need to shout out ‘promotions’ to build buyer affinity but you’ve just got to show them genuinely how helpful one could be.

Describe the use of data, or how the data enhanced the campaign output

Data gathering and interpretation played a key role in this campaign as it relied heavily on Google trends analytics to help unearth social strata narratives that involved e-commerce purchase decisions. The campaign ran extensively on mobile first social platforms. To help showcase how Google makes shopping easy for everyone, we identified relevant cultural conversations across India. From new age Indian parents who turn to the internet for parenting tips to pet owners who seek quality and value so their purchases last, and tech-savvy millennial travellers who are dominating the travel scene in India, each film resonated with varied audiences. And these films were optimised for mobile devices and backed by a digital first media buy to further amplify the campaign.