With the festive season going on and Diwali around the corner, Mondelez India Foods has rolled out a 360-degree campaign titled “Shops for The Shopless” for its Cadbury Celebrations brand for communities to come together through technology-enabled solutions.
Cadbury will use its QR code technology, through which users can scan its chocolate boxes to identify any hawkers nearby and find products sold by them. It’s an interface where buyers can also promote and set up a virtual shop for their locally known hawkers by adding simple details like vendor name, phone number, and a few product images onto the website. Once they are registered, anyone can shop for the products. Hence, helping the hawkers to continue their business without having to find a new spot every day.
The ad showcases the concept of virtual stores. The brand film opens with a man looking for his local hawker who hasn’t been present at his regular selling spot for a few days. On being spotted and being enquired about his whereabouts, the hawker emphasizes the volatility of his business in a rather spirited manner, which the man already understands and finds a way to resolve for his favourite hawker this Diwali. He makes a gesture of gifting him Cadbury Celebrations and uses the QR code on the pack to set up the hawker’s very own virtual shop, leaving the hawker and his son teary-eyed.
According to Anil Viswanathan, vice president, marketing for Mondelez, Diwali is an important period for hawkers, but their business is often affected due to the lack of a permanent spot or shop to sell the products. “Building on this insight and keeping purpose at the core of our strategy, we conceptualized this campaign, an effort to give hawkers a permanent virtual store. We hope our latest tech-enabled effort strikes an emotional chord with the audiences, leading them to participate in small acts of generosity for a brighter and sweeter Diwali”, he said.
This will be a seamless tech platform to connect buyers to the unorganized retail owners, who we often refer to as hawkers or street vendors in this country. This tech infra will not only make our generosity campaign more inclusive, but with the campaign it can potentially transform the way we shop in future.