The start of this month began on quite a high thanks to the noise and expectations around the Union Budget. It clearly was one of the biggest talking points of the year. However, despite its stature and significance, most consumers find the budget speech too long and also hard to keep up with certain technical terms.
‘Sounds of Budget’ the annual campaign by Digitas India for digibank by DBS for the Union Budget has been all about cutting through the clutter on an otherwise visually heavy medium. Utilizing audio cues, the campaign has been successfully grabbing the audience’s attention every year and the team wanted to continue the trend this year as well. This year, digibank by DBS and Digitas India decided to break down the Union Budget announcements by highlighting key aspects of the budget through conversations that would normally happen in a typical Indian household. This was done by creating compelling, short-form, audio-led narratives that took a look at conversations that the Union Budget announcements were likely to spark and seeding them on Social Media platforms. The narratives were designed to be quippy and revolved around fictitious family members and friends while keeping the key topic at the heart – the budget and the impact it had on their lives.
Commenting on the campaign and its success story, Gaurav Kashalkar, ECD, Digitas India shared: “Twelve seconds – that is the average attention span of millennials. And when it comes to something as complex as the Union Budget, the attention only reduces further. With consumer attention becoming more selective, we knew that we had to grab the audience’s attention (without boring them) and do so quickly. Weeks of planning before the actual event and an agile approach during the actual Union Budget speech, with responsibilities assigned to each member (at the agency’s, the brand’s, and the production house’s side) ensured that the campaign ran smoothly while keeping the turnaround time low. By ensuring that content was entertaining and real-time ensured that Sounds of Budget hit closer to the consumers’ hearts (and ears) this year.”
The campaign launched two days before the budget through a series of Kaanasanas to prepare our audiences for the Sounds of Budget. On the day of the budget, the team put out real-time, snackable, audio-first budget updates showing humorous conversations between people as the announcements for various sectors were made. This was all done while ensuring that it used the lingo adopted by the audiences, to keep the engagement and entertainment quotient high. The brand also urged its audience to share their reactions to the budget to further drive the engagement. Social Media influencer Raj Shamani was roped in to further the reach of the campaign.
The campaign hit the right notes with the audience. The average engagement per post grew by 176% for Instagram, 231% for Facebook, 950% for Twitter over the previous quarter.
The campaign can be accessed and viewed here:
Team Credits:
Client: digibank by DBS
Agency: Digitas India
Creative: Supriya Char, Aditya Satarkar, Marilyn D’Cruz, Sonakshi Jain, Trusha Navalkar, Kiran Sakharle, Bhakti Vichare, Shoaib Usmani, Tushar Mengane, Janki Shah, Rahul Powale, Sanjay Rajpurohit, Vishal Rao, Shraddha Patil, Vishal Davde, Amol Mestry, Gaurav Kashalkar
Account Management: Suraj Nambiar, Pankaj Sahay, Rikesh Premchandra, Isha Chaudhari
Planning: Abhishek Chaturvedi, Shashank Rawat, Pooja Parekh
Production House: Nirmit Shah (Fat Cat Productions)
