Summary
Every Diwali scammers scam and dupe the innocent. So Truecaller instead of running a generic feel-good Diwali campaign teamed up with Jamie and Jessie Lever and annoyed the scammers with mindless conversation. Giving them the taste of their own medicine and making Diwali safe for real.
Challenge
During Diwali, every other brand would do mushy sales and discount campaigns. However, the festival of prosperity also has a darker side. According to CheckPoint Research, shipping and delivery-related scam calls/SMS-es in India increased by 23 fold during Diwali in 2019. And losing money on Diwali is considered an ‘apshagun' or highly inauspicious. So, rather than wishing a generic ‘Happy Diwali to you', Truecaller, a brand known to protect users by verifying callers and blocking scammers did something to make their Diwali safe for real.
Objective
1) Create awareness amongst the audience about the different kinds of scams. 2) Generate engagement and set a template to create more content around the same theme in the future and reach a stage where the brand is directly recalled with this series (#JamTheScam)
Strategy
We tied up with Jamie and Jessie Lever to create a light-hearted concept through a series of videos where we showcased how a group of Truecaller vigilantes bore the hell out of scammers by engaging them in long wasted conversations. They would act as innocent victims only to annoy the scammers. Both Sparsh Srivastava and Pooja Jha from Netflix's Jamtara fame gave their voices as the scammers adding to the context of scam calls. This unique concept allowed us to create a combination of educational content and trailers for both the artists to create intrigue about the overall concept and then come up with the 2 main videos across platforms and generate engagement and conversations about scam/spam calls and their threat. We created a media strategy where we leveraged the power of video content on Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram. The campaign began with teasers being launched across channels with the 2 main videos dropping within 24 hours from each other.
Data
Data shows us that in India, scam calls spike up during Diwali. Through our analysis, we found out that there is a sharp increase in the number of offer/service/scam calls during this season. Due to the brand history, Truecaller has a database of verified scam callers which alerts users when they receive calls from any of these numbers. However there was a need to create large-scale awareness about how users can not only identify scam/spam calls but also block the same.
Solution
For Diwali, every brand creates a generic feel-good campaign to tap into the context. However, the festival of prosperity also has a darker side. According to CheckPoint Research, shipping and delivery-related scam calls/SMS-es in India increased by 23 fold during Diwali in 2019. And losing money on Diwali is considered an ‘apshagun' (highly inauspicious). So, rather than wishing a generic ‘Happy Diwali to you', Truecaller, a brand known to protect users by verifying callers and blocking scammers did something to make their Diwali safe for real.
Results
The campaign witnessed 30 million overall impressions, with a total of 100,000+ hours of watch time, an 11,000+ increase in subscribers, and 8,000,000+ video views. It also got featured in a variety of publications like Afaqs, Brand Equity, Ads of the World, and Financial Express to name a few.
