By Gaurav Arora, co-founder, Social Panga
Why the campaign rocks:
Insights to great campaigns are almost always in front of our eyes, waiting to be found. One such insight came from a gesture many football players were often seen doing, putting their hands over their mouths. They did so to prevent cameras surrounding them from recording the words exchanged on the field.
WhatsApp made use of this gesture, which seems like it was tailor-made for their campaign, The Privacy Gesture. Whenever players used the gesture, it prompted a pop-up on the viewers’ screens. The campaign promoted the importance the app gave to privacy, directly through actions of the players. Apart from this, DVCs were also played during the breaks, with the same gesture replicated in the ads.
This created a huge buzz. Players joined in by changing their profile pictures to pictures of them with their hands over their mouths. The posts received a lot of engagement.
The campaign had an impact on 1.2 billion people globally and a reach of over 89 million. This greatly increased the brand recall of WhatsApp, which went up by about 61%. All of this is in half the budget the agency got.
- Campaign: The Privacy Gesture
- Brand: WhatsApp
- Agency: AlmapBBDO
— As told to Akanksha Nagar