It's probably no secret that I'm not in the target market Nissan India is aiming at with their new campaign for their Nissan Micra -- the car isn't available here (and as far as I know, there are no plans for it to come to Canada), and, well, I actually already own a car (my beloved Smart). And then there's that fact that Nissan India's latest marketing campaign (starring Nissan spokesperson Ranbir Kapoor) is squarely aimed at the 15-24 year old age bracket (they're hoping to connect with future car buyers in all this). Clearly I'm ::cough:: just a little bit older than that ::cough::.
But as someone who's hung around the fringes of social media circles for a while now (and Mr. Totally Filmi has been on the organizing team of Podcamp Toronto, the unconference devoted to all things social media), I'm always interested to see how companies are using these tools to connect with potential clients. So when Nissan India sent me some information about what they were up to, I was kind of interested to see how it was going to play out.
Essentially, Nissan India decided that a cool way to reach out to those potential future customers would be through Bollywood -- the plan was to creative a Bollywood short film. To that end, Nissan India created a Facebook campaign called "Nissan New Star of India". People were invited to upload a dance clip (of 30 to 45 seconds) on the campaign's Facebook page, and in all, they received over 2500 audition clips. A shortlist of 100 videos were selected from a vote conducted via the Facebook page, and then Ranbir Kapoor (starring in the short film) and Ahmed Khan (choreographer of many well known films, and the director of Fool 'n' Final, who would be directing the short film) narrowed the field down too what they felt were the twenty best auditions.
Those twenty winners were flown to Ramoji Film City to take part in shooting for the film, as part of a cast and crew that involved, according to what Nissan India has told me "over 600 people, 100 Nissan Micras, Ranbir Kapoor, and Choreographer-Director Ahmed Khan…..one of the biggest productions that Ramoji has seen."
I think it's a neat way to connect with potential customers, and I'm dying to see the finished product, apparently releasing tomorrow, March 1st, in Mumbai, and I'm really keen to see the final product. In the meantime, though, here's a taste of what we will see, in the form of a wee trailer:
I'll be checking out the Nissan New Star of India Facebook page tomorrow to see how it all turned out. Will you?
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