ICMA 2017: How brands use character-led branded content

Marketers are wasting no time in leveraging content to best present their brands to consumers. More brands are using creative content to tell their stories and engage with consumers, making it that much more important to stand out amongst the clutter.



Indian Content Marketing Awards aims to celebrate the talent, expertise and hard work that goes behind cracking breakthrough ideas and concepts to create exceptional brand stories. As we inch closer to D-Day, here is a look at some of the entries in the character led branded content category.



Kellogg’s Chocos



Kellogg's Chocos tapped into the long-standing friendship between the mascot Koko and Chota Bheem to create excitement for Chocos variants for its campaign. They designed a strategy to utilize the popularity of the characters. They conceptualized and produced a new variant inspired by Chota Bheem’s love for ladoos, thus bringing the virtual ladoo alive. The brand used branded content where they scripted four original episodes integrating the variant into the story-line of a show on POGO channel. The script made the kids discover the Kellog’s Chotta Ladoo and they replaced the ladoos with Chocos ladoos. The content reached over 9.3 million kids.

Raag Paan Masala

Raag Paan Masala chose the digital medium to reach out to its target audience of Sec B/C/D in the age group of 21-35. The primary objective of the brand was to establish itself in the mid-premium paan masala category and to so so Raag chose to position itself as the royal choice. The brand developed 5 digital videos centered around Raja-Rani characters. The ads used Rajasthani miniature in paper art stop motion. Raag Paan Masala became a character in the ads along side Raja and Rani. The five Raag videos (~30 sec each) were promoted on Youtube over a period of 1 month. The sales of Raag grew from 2 crore per month to 30 crore per month. The campaign received 37.6 lakh impressions and 14 lakh views.

India Today - So Sorry

So Sorry was a politoons initiative based on animated political leaders characterized in a

hilarious manner. India Today launched this animated political satire series in 2013-14 and the campaign witnessed a huge popularity across the nation. “SoSorry” focuses exclusively

on the most trending and controversial news from India, creating spoofs and humorous videos about issues.

So Sorry became popular among all age groups. In specific people from B town and rural areas turned out to be the ardent followers of the brand. The videos go viral within hours of their launch and receive lakhs of views each.