Background:
Panchayat is a comedy-drama which captures the journey of an engineering graduate Abhishek, who for lack of a better job opportunity joins as secretary of a panchayat office in a remote village of Uttar Pradesh.
While the first season sets the context of the plot and characters, season 2 gets more real and talks about the challenges and problems of the village. Along with the fun, wit and satire, what remains constant through both seasons is Pradhanji’s (Village Chief’s) homegrown Lauki (bottle gourd). It acts as a problem solver in every situation and hence, we planned to make it the hero of the show by asking our audience to click a #SelfieWithLauki.
Challenge & Objectives:
After a long wait of 2 years & 2 months, expectations for season 2 were sky high. The major challenge was to revive the existing fandom and get the conversation started around the launch of the new season. The aim was also to build a recall for the series by populating the fans’ feeds with the ‘not so low key’ – lauki.
Creative Solution:
The overarching idea was rather simple but a little bizarre – to make lauki the hero of the campaign. The vegetable took the entire screen and attention throughout the show’s previous season. So, to bring it into the limelight, we launched a fun and engaging activity for the Panchayat fans and asked them to share their love for Lauki and Panchayat with their atrangi #SelfieWithLauki. We kick started the activity right after the launch of the show.
Strategy & Execution:
Lauki has been a constant element throughout the two seasons of the show, critical in establishing several of the story’s themes. It also appeared in several pop culture references of the show after the first season, which established its relevance and fondness among the audience. So, the strategy was to further build on this affinity by making lauki the hero of the campaign. Further, the campaign leveraged the uniqueness of clicking selfies with a vegetable to spike the audience’s interest.
1. We announced the activity through the very stars of the show- Jitendra Kumar, Chandan Roy, and Faisal Malik via video.
2. The tadka to this delicious activity was added when various content creators from India and across the pond viz. Canada & America posted their selfies.
3. The show’s cast also posted selfies with lauki on their handles and amplified the activity further.
4. And of course, our fandom who couldn’t deal with the FOMO anymore, shared their uniquely beautiful selfies.
So that’s how our dear lauki traveled across the globe
Impact OR Results
1. Our lauki became an overnight sensation as 5k+ people clicked selfies with it and posted them on their social handles.
2. Our campaign successfully reached 8.22 million people, garnering around 5.5k mentions and more than 11M impressions.