The travel and tourism industry crashed during the Covid-19 pandemic. As all forms of travel got banned across the country, Goibibo suddenly lost all relevance with its audience. As for the audience, with enormous loss of life and livelihood, it didn’t just lose hope to travel, but all hope for normalcy in life and future. Despite all odds, the youngsters worked tirelessly on social media to source essentials and save lives but they were exhausted fighting a seemingly never-ending-battle.Stepping up for its audiences, Goibibo decided to uplift the spirits of the Indian youth by acknowledging the pivotal role they played in saving lives through social media. The objective was not just to applaud their effort, but offer them hope, comfort, positivity and mental assurance – something they never asked for, but needed the most.
Instead of going with a young, cool and quirky tone of voice, ingrained in the brand DNA, Goibibo adopted a more sober approach to suit the needs of the time. This time, instead of collaborating with travel / social influencers to become the brand’s voice, Goibibo directed its voice towards them, placing them on the receiving end of the brand’s message. Goibibo re-aligned itself and brought on board Anupam Kher – a youth icon who stands for fun yet meaningful conversations. An Actor/Author/ Lifecoach/ Motivational speaker - who would be able to break the wall of despair to deliver a message of gratitude, hope and comfort to the Indian GenZ. A simple, yet powerful communication - #WeWillTakeOffAgain was launched that put out a direct and heartfelt message that honored the efforts of young Indians, while re-instilling hope for the future.
As Anupam Kher – the voice of reason and resilience became our face of hope, we released his heartfelt message to people and communities. He individually addressed: - People who helped the known and unknown - Influencers to turned their pages into social helpline - Comedians and friends who managed to make even the sick and suffering smile Goibibo social pages quickly became a platform of to express gratitude towards one another. It witnessed people tagging and thanking each other by using the brand video / content. The brand further took the campaign to the next level by engaging with each individual tagged in the posts and turning #WeWillTakeOffAgain into a gratitude movement. Over a period of 10 days, all the tags on the brand’s Instagram page were turned into thousands of DMs. The tagged people were sent personalized audio notes by Anupam Kher and individual gratitude tickets signed by him. These two surprises in the DMs were seen as personal and positive mementos by people brought a lot of positive messages to the brand. The gratitude movement grew bigger as the brand engaged with self-made communities that of memers, stand up comedians, food and lifestyle influencers for using their channel for good. Personalized gratitude tickets were sent to these communities that participated in the fight against covid-19.
#WeWillTakeOffAgain garnered higher brand association score versus the industry standards The simplicity and relevance of messaging dialed up campaign’s comprehension and enjoyability score, both above industry norms The campaign directly impacted TOM recall taking it +4 points for hotels and +2 points for flights
