Bharat Matrimony has a funny take on marriage matters

The new, mobile-only campaign from the matrimony site promotes its app, so that users can choose their partners themselves.

Matrimonial website Bharat Matrimony addresses the pet peeve of people in the 20s who are always cornered by relatives with enquiries about their marriage plans. The matchmaking site is asking people to take matters in their 'own hands'.

Its first-ever, mobile-only campaign comprises three 20-second videos, which portray how the society is more bothered about marriages of other people. The videos tell users how to shut inquisitive people up.

The first video features a middle-aged woman asking into the camera (as if asking the viewer directly), while biting into a laddoo, "Toh beta, have you found someone as yet?" This dialogue is repeated for about 20 seconds, while a call-to-action message urges users to take matters into their own hands by clicking on a link to make her stop.

Similarly, the other two videos show a young lady protesting against the matching of horoscopes and a young man confessing that, though he is ready to take the plunge, he hasn't found someone yet.

"Self-arranged marriages have been the communication peg for Bharat Matrimony for some time now. The positioning, 'hum unse milate hai, jo aapko samajh paate hai', itself is a take on the fact that you get to choose your companion. This empowers the TG and signals a shift from the traditionally arranged marriages to self-arranged marriages," explains Amit Akali, managing partner and creative head, What's Your Problem (WYP), the agency behind the videos.

The insight the brand uses in this case is the common scenario where parents create an account for youngsters, check suitors, shortlist a few and then present them to their children for final approval. However, with services such as downloadable apps on smartphones, the company hopes, the younger lot can actually keep a tab on their accounts themselves.

"It is a tactical exercise to increase downloads of the app. We realised that our TG in this case seldom watches television. He or she is most likely to do all kinds of networking through phone, which made the hand-held device a perfect platform for this campaign," adds Akali.

The campaign features native FB ads which are targetted only at mobile users, or those who check Facebook on their mobiles. Further targetting has been done so that the first film can be viewed by all, but the film with a male protagonist can be viewed only by men, and the one with the female protagonist can be seen by female viewers only on their phones.

"The data is available on Facebook, and the basic tools are all there on Google for us to help target our audience. We have just used our understanding to package it differently. What we have also used is the 'Madras Cut', where the same scene is shown from 10 different shots," explains Hammad Khan, director - servicing and technology, What's Your Problem.

Talking about the brief, Kaushik Tiwari, vice president, marketing, Bharat Matrimony, says, "Our brief was to get young guys and girls - between 20 to 25 years of age - to download the Bharat Matrimony Mobile App. Since the objective was so clear, we decided to add a mobile centric campaign to the media mix. With effect that these films will be seen only when the consumer is on the mobile phone, and will be seen only by the target audience and no one else."