Love made in India

Celebrating the launch of our upcoming Qual and Big Data event, Fusion 2019, ESOMAR is excited to announce the launch of our Qualitative week. Offering a number of specially curated global qual impact case studies and qual event impressions through the years, keep an eye out on Research World and our social media channels (#esomar) for impressions and great content! 
And please enjoy piece one from our RW editorial Qual focus below. Many thanks to all that contributed!
–From your Research World Editors.

Love is a universal language – well almost!

When you base your brand advertising campaign on the language of love, and want to take it across countries, you learn quickly that this language is not so universal after all.

The Sarah and Juan TVC for Wrigley’s Extra Gum

In 2015, Wrigley’s created an enormously successful ad for Extra Gum based on the love story of a girl and a boy (Sarah and Juan). The ad strung together several sweet moments in their love story, connecting these with the constant sharing of gum. Set against a cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Haley Reinhart, the ad went viral within days, going on to become one of the most discussed ads on social media.

The decision to adapt Sarah and Juan to Indian audiences – and the challenges

When Wrigley’s launched their flagship Doublemint Mints in India, they decided to do so with the Sarah and Juan campaign – adapted to the Indian market. 

In principle adapting the ad was simple- stringing together a series of significant intimate moments over the love journey with the product tied in.

But the question was – what were these typical intimate moments? It was obvious to even a casual observer that love in India was not quite the same as where the ad originated. The scenes and emotions in the original ad may not work and we needed a new template for India.

Given this state of affairs (pun unintended) research came into the picture. And one of our most interesting projects to date, began.

The research

Our task: to uncover the flavour and trajectory of Indian Love, the significant moments, the themes, thoughts and feelings.

What we did: Collect Indian love stories from Indian lovers! We connected with couples in love – committed couples, engaged couples, and those married recently (before the magic faded!). We requested them to pull together memorablia around their romance and reflect on their romantic journeys. We met them one on one and in small intimate groups, recreated their journeys, tracing the highs and lows, charting their trajectories and sub-plots. We also showed them the Sarah and Juan ad for specific connects and disconnects with the Indian audiences.

What we uncovered:  We emerged from these pheromone charged interviews with nearly 50 Indian love stories to analyse, and plenty of input on the TVC . We broke down the stories and identified patterns, themes and trajectories, significant moments, emotions and gestures.

Some of what we found:

• While the emotion is obviously the same, love operates more under the radar in India. Love stories are subtle, even surreptitious with limited public display. We found textured, and multicultural tales, some dramatic, some just sweet.
• But we also found change – the loosening of conservative binds, physical intimacy and more open display of emotion.
• In the cusp of societal change, there were hybrid models like “arranged love” – compromises between the traditional set up and romance.
• A rich cache of moments – chance encounters, the first glance and stolen moments, fights and
• We identified themes –
  • Serendipity: Stories of chance encounters leading to the first spark of attraction, which converted into deep love.
  • Role reversal: Women taking the lead- reflecting changing attitudes in society.
  • Fairy tale: sweet tales of familiarity evolving organically into love.
  • Hot pursuit: men who persevered in spite of multiple rejections.
  • Love on social media: stories where protagonists found love on social networking sites
  • And more…

Examples of these output formats are given below: 

We also gave a detailed moment by moment connect map with the TVC, culling insights to add to the larger picture.

The Indian TVC for Doublemint

The research informed the approach and tonality of the ad created by BBDO. The ad folllows the love story of shy Adi and bubbly Niara, who meet serendipitously. The film revolves around their ‘firsts’ – first eye contact, first movie date, first dance, fight, separation, and finally the proposal. Doublemint Mints are woven into all these moments through kissed Doublemint boxes. The ad was built around the theme of “start something fresh”. A classic Hindi song originally by the iconic Indian singer, Kishore Kumar, formed the background music.

The ad also reflected the evolving Indian woman who is more willing to make the first move and take charge in a relationship – a facet we had uncovered in the research.
Further, the multicultural texture of Indian society was woven into the theme by showing the protagonists as coming from different parts of the country and different social backgrounds.

The impact

The ad launched in 2016 went viral the moment it was uploaded, marking up over three million views on YouTube in just three weeks. By March 2017 the advertisement had received more than 10 million views, of which more than 70% was organic. Wrigley’s Doublemints Mint TVC was awarded as one of the Top 10 ads on YouTube Ads Leaderboard 2016. A great way to introduce Wrigley’s Double Mint Mints to Indian consumers! It has over 35 million views till date.

In countries like India that are dynamic and highly textured, brands are leaning increasingly on high quality qualitative research to uncover cultural nuances, to forge deeper emotional connects with their audience.