Bisleri debuts on digital track with 'Kiss to Drink'

The bottled mineral water brand has made its debut on the digital space to promote its latest campaign, 'Kiss to Drink', which urges consumers to buy their own bottle instead of sharing it.

With more than 60 per cent market share in the bottled mineral water category, Bisleri has launched its latest campaign, 'Kiss to Drink', with an aim to promote its 500ml bottle and connect with the youth.

The campaign includes three television commercials designed by Soho Square. The films, based on the simple insight that no one likes to share their water bottles, feature a newly married couple in one, college students in another and an old lady along with a superhero in the third. The humorous films show various situations where people are reluctant to share their water bottles. All the films end with the line, 'Buy your own bottle, kiss it to drink water and Shabaash'.

In contrast with earlier campaigns of the brand, the films were initially launched on the digital platform. Bisleri's digital agency, Flying Cursor, launched teasers for a week and organised contests around them, inviting people to participate on social media. Two Twitter hashtags (#Shabaash and #dontshare) were also launched to drive engagement.

The television commercials were then launched on the social media platform to test the waters. The campaign took off in April and since then, the brand's Facebook page has added more than 30,000 fans. The brand expects its fan base to cross one lakh (www.facebook.com/Bisleri?fref=ts) in the near future.

Bisleri has also partnered with high traffic websites such as Zynga.com, Yahoo!, Burrp!, MSN and Google Display Networks to place banners and video ads to increase visibility.

Shraddha Waikar Nathani, marketing head, Bisleri, says, "Our agenda is to promote the 500ml bottle in the market. According to research, India is primarily a 1 litre bottle market and we have only created it. Now, we want to transform it to a 500 ml bottle market."

Nathani explains that the 500 ml bottle costs just Rs 10 and is easy to carry; thus, it is expected to fulfil a nascent need in the market. Bisleri has also stepped up its 500ml bottle production by 20-30 per cent to ensure easy availability across the country.

Taking a cue from the TVC communication that ends with Shabaash, the brand has initiated 'World Shabaash Day' on April 18 on social media. Under this initiative, people can 'Shabaash' or show their gratitude to anyone, who has done something good.

The initiative is driving a lot of popularity for the brand on the social media platforms, which was the main target for the campaign.

Parag Gandhi, director, Flying Cursor, says, "The digital activity for Bisleri was meant to increase the viewership of the ad and drive engagement, which was the mandate given to us by the brand."

Shraddha Waikar Nathani, marketing head, Bisleri, says, "We did not want to miss the digital bus. It was the right time for us to take it and after much research, we have initiated it to connect with the youth as they spend a lot of their time on the platform."

She adds that the basic idea behind the campaign was to reach out to the youth and increase their affinity with Bisleri.

For the first time, Bisleri has launched a campaign that talks about owning a bottle. Its previous campaigns ('Play Safe', 'Mountain Water', 'Bada Bisleri') have propagated purity of the water and the bottle size.

Speaking about the latest TVCs, Anurag Khandelwal, executive creative director, Soho Square, says, "We didn't want our communication to be centred around 'Pyaas' (thirst) or the quality of water. So, we decided to go into the habits of drinking water. Once we zeroed in on the concept of not sharing the bottle, the challenge was to create a brief that can connect with the audience in a fun way and with a high recall value."

Bisleri is owned by Parle and was acquired from an Italian entrepreneur in 1969. The brand began selling water in 650 ml glass bottles but moved to 750 ml PVC bottles because of the high cost of glass bottles. Soon, it shifted to one litre pet bottles as the cost difference between one litre and 750ml bottles was low. Since then, the brand has launched bottles of several sizes. The brand has 17 owned plants, 33 co-packers, 11 franchisees and a wide distribution and retail network pan India.