Canon India succeeds in connecting with Millennials through Big Smile campaign
Winning hearts and spreading smiles, Canon India, a leading digital imaging player in the country succeeded in strengthening connect with the millennial audience through the ‘Big Smile with Canon’ campaign. Extending the brand’s corporate culture of spreading Big Smiles in the community, the unique corporate campaign was launched to amplify Canon’s image as a young brand targeting millennial customer group and build top of the mind recall.
Celebrating its 25th year milestone in India, Canon India reiterated its legacy and strengthened customer connect by adopting a unique, trendy and relatable format of comedy marking a shift in its marketing strategy. Led by Mr. Manabu Yamazaki, President and CEO at Canon India, the campaign witnessed massive engagement across social media platforms through a video series with the ace stand-up comedian – Mr. Anshu Mor. The campaign registered a huge success as more than 48 million users engaged with the videos released and various UGC initiatives across social media platforms, further making the #BigSmilewithCanon trend on Twitter for the first 4 hours of its launch. Leveraging comedy as a platform, the 5 episodes series showcased the ideal synergy of discussing mentorship, professional culture, work-life balance, passion, and creativity in a quirky way.
Commenting on the success of the initiative, Mr. Manabu Yamazaki, President and CEO, Canon India, said, “We are extremely proud of the fact that Canon enjoys a strong 25-year legacy, which is defined by our loyal customer base and our line-up of innovative products and solutions. Through our ‘Big Smile with Canon’ campaign, we intended to reinforce this legacy amongst our audience, especially the millennial group and be recognized as a young brand with strong corporate values. ‘Big Smile’ as a culture is deeply ingrained in Canon’s DNA, and in a post pandemic world, it becomes important more than ever to make the efforts to spread big cheer in the community. I am beyond thrilled to see that the campaign has been received exceptionally well by the audience more than we expected and that we have been successful in our endeavor of seeing genuine smiles. It was indeed a memorable and fun experience for me working on this campaign, and I think it brought me even closer to the beautiful culture of India. The big smiles won’t pause here as we will continue to delight through our products, services and more of such meaningful initiatives”
Canon further followed a three-pronged strategy to maximize reach and spread word of mouth, implementing a 360- degree integrated approach. The one-of-a-kind corporate campaign saw remarkable engagement from its employees, partners, customers, and communities at large, through an inspiring mix of brand storytelling and multiple engaging initiatives in the most innovative ways, spreading unlimited smiles. The series of activities demonstrated brand’s true spirit of bringing cheer in the post pandemic world, living up to its motto of ‘Delighting You always’!
Contributing to holistic social development, Canon India also brought the humanitarian touch to the campaign by extending it to its adopted communities and villages through multiple meaningful initiatives. Canon India team led by Mr. Manabu spent a fun and engaging day with the community of Maheshwari Village. The celebration began with a full-swing cricket match between the Canon India team and the children from Maheshwari Village, followed by an interactive and inspiring storytelling session for the children with the senior leadership. Staying true to their focus on Environment under the 4Es CSR policy, he further marked his visit to the village with a tree plantation.