Royal Challenge boldly moves to radio

The whisky brand has extended its 'Make a bold move' campaign to a song, which will be promoted on radio channels, not as an advertisement, but simply as a song.

As an extension for its 'Bold Move' campaign, liquor brand Royal Challenge has released a song for radio. The song is a 120-second spot that will be played on radio channels across seven cities nationwide. The brand cites the popularity of the jingle used in the audio-visual creative, that was promoted on television and digital media. Interestingly, the company claims that the song will be played on radio, not as an advertisement, but as a song, without a brand sign-off.

Amrit Thomas, CMO, United Spirits, explains, "The TVC for the 'Game for Life' campaign has created a strong buzz, receiving over 5,77,000 hits on YouTube. We were thrilled with the positive response that the background score received and decided to ramp this up by creating a two-minute Hindi track called 'Make a Bold Move' on the same note."

While the campaign was released in May this year, the radio version was released on October 19.

The campaign has been created by DDB Mudra and the agency's chairman and COO, Sonal Dabral, has written the lyrics for the song. Additionally, the song has been composed by Mikey McCleary and sung by Rachel Varghese. While the original jingle was composed in English and Hindi, the radio spot is only in Hindi.

The song has two versions of 181 and 120 seconds respectively with and without brand sign-off at the end. Cities such as Delhi, NCR, Pune, Jaipur, Kanpur, Nagpur and Hyderabad will be targeted. The radio campaign is three-and-a-half weeks long, while the TV ads will continue until December.

In order to keep up with the changing preferences of its target group of young adult men, in the age group of 25-30 years, the brand has recently undergone a repackaging. Amrit Thomas who calls the new packaging bolder and more masculine, adds, "We identified that Royal Challenge's lion and the roundel have the strongest recall and brand association, and hence we decided to carry these from the past to the future. However, we decided to contemporise the brand logo and create a lock-up so that the core brand assets became one unit rather than two separate symbols." These two brand symbols will also be used in all other communication from the brand.

The brand's 'Make a bold move' campaign is an addition to the brand's long-term proposition 'Game for life'. Through this campaign, the brand tries to asks the viewers to 'go for it', against the advice of naysayers. The campaign is otherwise heavy on TV and digital, apart from the new radio leg introduced to it.

Royal Challenge is a premium whisky brand from the house of United Spirits, which is now under the control of the Diageo Group. According to reports, the brand is one of the fastest growing Indian whisky brand (in terms of consumption) in the country, with a recorded 30 per cent growth.