Privilege Matrimony: The invisible matchmaker

Though the service has been running for close to a year, it is only now that the company has decided to launch a television commercial and make noise about its offering to the young executive who is too busy to search for a life partner

For those who believe in the idea of arranged marriages and look up to the online matrimony services for solutions, Bharat Matrimony, a part of Consim Info, has launched Privilege Matrimony to provide assisted matchmaking services. As part of this, a customer is assigned a personal relationship manager, who takes care of the entire process of matchmaking - starting from shortlisting the potential profiles to fixing up the final meetings with the family of the prospective bride or groom.

Though the service has been running for close to a year, it is only now that the company has decided to launch a television commercial and make noise about its offering. It targets young executives in the age group of 25-35 years, who may not be users of Bharat Matrimony. These men and women are confident professionals with little time at hand to search for prospective life partners online.

Tale of a mysterious hand

The TVC opens in an elevator, showing a well dressed executive accompanied by a nosy colleague. As the door of the elevator opens, a mysterious hand delivers an envelope to the executive. The envelope has a picture of a potential bride. True to his nature, the nosy executive starts an investigation to find out the story behind the mysterious hand by spying on his colleague for many days.

In the next few shots, the mysterious hand makes an appearance at every location in the office, including the conference hall, the photocopying room and the workstation area, delivering envelops and furthering the matchmaking process.

In a desperate attempt to know what's going on, the nosy executive follows his colleague to a restaurant where he is meeting the family of a prospective bride. As the meeting wraps up, the nosy colleague lands up on the deserted table, only to come face to face with the mysterious hand holding out the visiting card of a relationship manager from Privilege Matrimony.

Murugavel Janakiraman, founder, Consim Info observes that matchmaking is a time consuming process and a relationship manager can make things a lot easier. "The communication is an attempt to reach a larger chunk of young professionals pan India. If you visit privilegematrimony.com, you will see that it just gives away the basic information about the service, along with the contact details. There are no profiles," he adds.

Currently, Privilege Matrimony has a team of 100 relationship managers. Next on the company's agenda is to start Privilege Matrimony Lounges to facilitate customer-relationship manager interaction. The first set of these will be opened in the South and based on the response, the company will roll out more lounges in other markets.

The creative idea has been cracked by 1pointsize, a Chennai based creative agency. The team includes executive creative directors Sharad Haksar and Anantha Narayan, copywriter E Prakash and account manager Aswin Rao. The film has been put together by the team at Footcandles, with Anand Menon and Amarjeet Phukan handling the production and Rani Jeyaraj working as the director. The music score is by Samiruddin.

Narayan shares that with this campaign, the service has been positioned as something different from the brand Bharat Matrimony, which has a strong South Indian feel to it. He adds, "Every office has a bunch of nosy people who are always charged up to pull the leg of a colleague who is surfing a matrimony website. Another such situation is when a friend just puts your name in a search engine and it throws up the link to a matrimony website with your profile.

"That is where a relationship manager steps in to avoid the embarrassment and be that 'someone' who may not have met you, but understands your needs."

Besides TV, the campaign is being backed by print across India.

Match fixed?

Anindya Banerjee, executive creative director, Law & Kenneth finds the commercial fresh and funny. "The casting is bang on and the production is superb. Every time you look at it, you discover interesting patterns. For instance, the 'helping hand' progresses from the normal to the bizarre," he says.

"I wonder if the nosy colleague is really needed in the film. Removing him and focusing on the guy who is looking for a match being surprised all the time could have been another interesting way of doing it," he adds.

According to Naresh Gupta, director, strategy and planning, Dentsu Marcom, the relationship shown in the commercial is similar to the one people share with their banking officers. "Wedding is a big market in India and initiatives like these go a long way in increasing the customer base," he adds.

According to experts, the online matrimony industry in India may reach 21 million registrations with revenue of Rs 297 crore approximately by 2010-11. Also, the popularity of online matrimony services in India has grown mainly due to its convenience and cost savings.