How ITW PlayWorx's viral ‘Billion Beats' campaign helped Oppo gain market share

In 2019, when smartphone brand Oppo was the Indian Cricket team’s sponsor, it wanted to create a buzz in the Indian market with a spectacular idea: the ‘Billion Beats’ campaign. It collected recordings of the heartbeats of millions of Indian cricket fans to create the base tune of Oppo’s World Cup song for the team — ‘Jeet pe apna haq hai’.

The campaign, conceptualised and executed by ITW PlayWorx, would cement Oppo’s association with BCCI as the principal sponsor of the Indian Cricket Team and instantly create an emotional connect for the brand among the Indian audience.

It involved capturing the human pulse through a flash of light and converting the captured pulse into a distinct sound beat. These beats collected from millions of fans would then be used to create the base music of the anthem, which was to be released during the start of the ICC World Cup, to garner more engagement and to further project the launch of their new flagship Oppo Reno Series, cementing the brand as a leader in innovation in technology.

The campaign intended to produce a crowd-sourced anthem to cheer team India during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. The eventual output was the anthem video that premiered on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms, making the content a viral phenomenon riding on the passion of fans and instant connect the campaign delivered with the youth.

The campaign video:

Idea

The campaign was divided into three clear stages:

1. The Call for Action Stage: A digital film, including a few of the Indian cricketers, calling out fans to give their heartbeat for the team.
2. The Heartbeat Collection Stage: A customised mobile application to collect the heartbeat of the fans and then turn it into the base tone/beat of the official Oppo ICC World Cup anthem.
3. Utilising the collected heartbeat and creating the anthem for Team India and releasing it on all leading media platforms.

The campaign was designed around the use of ‘Photoplethysmography’. The technique is a low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is often used non-invasively to make measurements at the skin surface’. Capturing the human pulse through a flash of light and converting the captured pulse into a distinct sound beat (multiplied by 200 decibels).

The agency collaborated with celebrities and subject experts for the call for action and the heart beat collection stages, where celebrities promoted the campaign on social media channels. The call to action video was released on social media channels, making it an instant hit.

Execution

The campaign stitched together the three parts (collecting the content, packaging the content and distribution) seamlessly with the help of technology. The call to action was communicated using trending social media vehicles such as YouTube and TikTok and the heartbeats were collected through a custom-made app the fans downloaded. The app was designed with a clean minimalist UI with the aim of providing a simple and user-friendly experience. Once the anthem was recorded incorporating the collected heartbeats, it was released on both traditional as well as non-traditional media, including YouTube and TikTok. At each stage, the focus was on allowing the fans to interact with the content, whether it was recording their heartbeats through the app or showcasing their dance moves on TikTok when the song was released.

Brand fit

In connection with the launch of its new flagship Reno series, Oppo wanted to showcase its ability of innovation and interaction with its customers. The campaign was conceptualised to blend these two elements using a mobile app, which through cutting-edge tech would allow the user to be part of the content creation process. Keeping this beat music as the base, Meet Bros created a world cup theme song, ‘Jeet pe apna haq hai’, which echoed the winning ways of the Indian Cricket Team and resonated with the effervescence of ardent cricket fans.

Distribution strategy

The campaign was predominantly designed to take social media users by storm. The collaboration with celebrities and subject experts such as Rannvijay, Archana Vijaya, Suyyash (former Ranji player, actor), Kishwer (TV actress), Karishma Kotak, Sudhir Choudhry (Tendulkar's fan) gave the call for action and heartbeat collection stages a huge boost.

The heartbeat collection video introduced on YouTube received over 29 million views in 48 hours. The celebrities shared the content on the heartbeat collection app, gaining over 1.6 million impressions altogether. The World Cup pre-heat content on the app was divided among the celebrities to be released during two big games, India vs Australia and India vs Pakistan. The heartbeat theme song was released on all leading social media platforms, making it go viral instantly.

The anthem was released on TikTok with a signature hook step challenge where influencers refuelled the campaign, spreading the content to millions of users. The official theme song was also released as a TikTok audio for users to create their own version of the video or the hook step. Trial by cricket, a native content video, was created keeping the ‘cricket’ sport in mind. Marrying Reno 10x Zoom integration with the millennial-centric script and characters on Being Indian, a popular millennial centric channel, Radio city: 8 RJ dance video on the signature step of Oppo song was uploaded on social pages of Radio City.

The first RJ video by Yuvi got a massive response and touched close to 10 million views. The TikTok Hashtag Challenge gained an overall unique reach of 82 million and an 8.5% engagement rate for three days. Live tweets from Oppo handles connecting the matches and the new flagship phone added to the reach from social and took the campaign event higher in terms of reach.

Performance meter

The heart beat collection video garnered a viewership of 29 million for the anthem in India in 48 hours. The call for action video and the anthem put together registered a cumulative 63 million views, a record in itself for a single campaign without involving paid views in the Indian subcontinent.  The final theme song registered a total viewership of 34 million views on YouTube.

The TikTok campaign broke benchmarks, recording a total 4.5 billion views during the length of CWC19. The official music on TikTok garnered 56,722,115 video views with over 7,546 videos created.

The campaign helped Oppo regain 9.81% share of the mobile market in the Indian peninsula for 2019 Q2 as compared to 7.23% in Q1 of 2019, signalling a 28% jump in the sales through the breadth of the campaign.

The campaign helped the brand register desired eyeballs, helping them withdraw from the association with BCCI. The Reno flagship phone, launched as part of this campaign, had benchmarked its sales at one million in India. The product ran out of stock well within the length of the Oppo Billion Beats Campaign.

The six months spent in designing the campaign before the action were key to its planning and sound execution. The adaptability in creating the anthem and putting it out for the audience, with even BCCI re-tweeting it, was a major plus. The direct influence of the campaign helping the brand garner a higher market share during the CWC19 period was a major achievement (considering the brand had no other live campaigns).