SRK is KKR's 'App Coach' in Nokia X's spot

Nokia India has recently unveiled its newest campaign, this time to leverage its association with the Kolkata Knight Riders. Shahrukh Khan features in the campaign, the idea for which came from Nokia’s digital agency Havas and was executed by JWT India. In the ad, SRK declares himself to be KKR’s ‘app coach’ for the Nokia X, challenging users to help him suggest apps to keep his team motivated.

Firstbiz spoke to Viral Oza, director, marketing at Nokia India to understand the campaign.

Oza said, “The Nokia X App coach challenge features SRK acting as an app coach to the KKR players. Consumers are invited to suggest apps that keep SRK and the players ‘appy’.

The film begins with SRK speaking to viewers about a typical coach - he doesn’t just coach a player, but shapes who he becomes. He further goes on to reminisce about all the coaches he has had in his lifetimes; his sports coach in school, his acting coach, his fitness trainer - everyone has helped him be the person he is. He then announces himself as the new ‘App Coach’ for KKR. He asks viewers to help him with motivational apps that can pump up his team. The ad ends with him throwing the challenge open to viewers.

See the film here:

Oza explains, “There are a number of challenges that are posed in the form of questions to consumers inviting them to suggest the app most suited to solve that particular problem.” The app suggestions that make it to the winning list will feature in ‘Fastlane’ in SRK’s Nokia X.

Speaking about the campaign, Babita Baruah, executive business director, JWT said, “We were tasked with launching the Nokia X and leveraging the association of Nokia with KKR in a unique and engaging manner. We had to also bring out the ease of accessing a person’s favourite Android apps and activities via Fastlane."

Baruah said that the youth of today want to live a fast-paced and spontaneous life, with the confidence and control of staying on top of all the activities and events in their lives, which is where the insight stems from.

She added, “Fastlane allows consumers to do this by putting activities, apps and games consumers have used recently right at the top of Fastlane. Keeping this feature in mind we came up with a script that showed how easily a task can be done effortlessly with a Nokia X via Fastlane, and the comparison to competition devices was used to add a layer of intrigue and quirkiness that would appeal to the youth. The tagline of the commercial is - Your Fastlane to Android apps."

In addition to the app suggestion making it to winner’s list, the consumer also gets to meet SRK and the KKR team.

When asked about the other touchpoints in the engagement, Oza said, “The main TVC shows consumers how easy it is to access apps and their most recent activities via Fastlane on the Nokia X. The digital engagement as described above invites consumers to suggest apps that help solve the problem for KKR players, and thus make it to Fastlane. There are a number of digital challenges/questions that will be posed on a periodic basis to consumers for their app suggestions. For instance, in the first challenge, consumers are asked to suggest apps that help kill the KKR players’ boredom, when they travel from one city to another. There will be another challenge posed in the next phase, and so on subsequently.”

JWT Credits

Creative: Surjo Dutt, Sayantan Choudhury, Sumonto Ghosh

Planning: Pinaki Bhattacharya, Shubhrojyoti Roy, Kamakshi Thareja

Account Management: Babita Baruah, KRK Ganesh, Kiran Reigo, Alisha Mitra

Havas Credits

Creative:

Executive creative director (Delhi): Ravi Raghvendra

Creative director: Nikhil Guha

Chief strategy officer: Saurav Ray

Planning director: Shradha Dudeja

Senior VP: Chandy Mohapatra

Associate VP: Ashish Chandra

Account director: Abhishek Kumar