Convert your face into an emoji, says InFocus

The US-based technology giant's campaign is about sending a personalised emoji by converting a user's face into a digitised sticker.

When the Oxford Dictionary named the emoji as the official word of the year, it came as no surprise. The smartphone generation swears by it, is obsessed with chatting apps and emoticons, and expresses itself best with such tools. Hinging its campaign on emojis, the US-based technology giant InFocus, rolled out a digital campaign with the launch of its latest smartphone M370.

Interestingly, the campaign urges users to take a break from standard emoticons available on various chat apps, and try the feature pre-burned on M370 model, which allows users to send their faces as digitised stickers on chatting apps.

A user just needs to click a selfie and use various tools to express exactly how he/she feels and convert that expression into a digitised sticker and share it with friends.

Taking a quirky route, the campaign has promoted the new smartphone model InFocus M370, and priced it at Rs 5,299. Targeted at the youth, the campaign urges consumers to have 'unmoderated and eccentric' fun while using this smartphone. InFocus India along with BBH, which has created the two digital films, highlights how bizzare emoticons can be. It is better to send your own face to let your loved one know how you are feeling. Both films have done a collective YouTube of over 6.1 million so far.

Apart from the films, the campaign also comprises of quirky comic strips designed by DigitasLBi, being promoted on social media. Some topics used by these strips included Harbhajan Singh's wedding, James Bond vs CID, and Gandhi Jayanti. The company claims to have an engagement figure of 0.56 million on Facebook.

InFocus entered India in February this year. Speaking about why the company chose to enter the market now, Nitin Garg, marketing director, InFocus India, says, "We've been studying this market and realised that now is the time to enter the country. The smartphone boom started a couple of years ago in India, but we feel with the recent 4G roll out, this growth will be unprecedented in the next three years. It is the right time to be in India."

While there are many home-grown brands like Micromax, Intex and Lava offering competitively priced high-specification smartphones, InFocus is bullish on providing quality to users.

"We are not competing against Indian home-grown brands like Micromax, Lava or Intex," says Garg. "There is a democratisation of smartphones happening. The companies are offering higher specifications at competitive prices, but in such pursuit the quality of the smartphone is compromised. We continue to offer great specification at a very competitive pricing which does not mean being cheapest in the market. Our hardware partner is Foxcon, which manufactures Apple's iPhone."

InFocus India is currently present in both the smartphone and feature categories, with prices starting at Rs 3,999 and Rs 799, respectively.

The target group for the smartphone category is young college goers, while the feature phones cater to users who are older. The company has both an online, as well as an offline retail presence, with Snapdeal being its stategic partner, and with some of its models selling on Amazon. The company has recently forayed into offline retail with multiple chains.

Garg says that while other handset makers are focussing on specifications and pricing in their advertising, InFocus is trying to build its brand value via creating an emotional connect with the user.

Speaking about the campaign, Russell Barrett, managing partner, BBH, says, "We've received an emoticon in a message that makes us go, what the f*** and does this mean?! The starting point was as simple as that and for a phone that promises a simpler, easier way to communicate via text, this seemed like the perfect idea. We had tons of fun making these films (from writing to illustration), and I think if you have fun making something, people will have fun watching it."

Meanwhile, Partho Sinha, national creative director, Digitas Lbi, comments, "Share-ability is what counts today and people are more inclined towards consuming content which touches them at an emotional level. And, what is better than some fun and humour for the youth of the country? The phone is all about a new and awesome way to chat. Hence, we came up with the idea of creating some hilarious chats between epic characters."

The company aims to build its brand in India in the coming year. It also plans to roll out its first television commercial in the first half of 2016.