Bell ExpressVu South Asian Television: Cousin Sisters, Cousin Brothers

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  • Bell ExpressVu needed to cut across cultural and linguistic divides to launch ATN – its South Asian television offering. Our response: a print campaign that spoke in the audience’s vernacular – Indian English, used familiar icons and targeted the community’s shared sense of home. The connection was humourous, emotional and effective. So effective, in fact, that some publications offered to extend the ad run as they were getting readership for the ads. It was the first time that advertising in “Indian English” had been created in Canada.

  • The Background:

    Telecommunications giant Bell saw the lucrative opportunity in advertising its ExpressVu satellite service to Canada’s largest visible minority, the South Asian Canadian population. Their product – ATN – was a direct-to-home satellite television service, which offered 24-hour programming in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu and other South Asian languages. The challenge was to make use of a limited budget to communicate in a way that cut across cultural and linguistic divides.

    The Solution:

    In response to this challenge, we created a print campaign that spoke in the audiences’ vernacular —Indian English. The creative used familiar colloquialisms and iconic symbols and targeted the community’s shared sense of home, to make a connection that was humourous, emotional and extremely effective, even working around the quibbles of lawyers by featuring spoof products like “Funkey” brand toothpowder.

    The Result:

    The campaign received such positive feedback from the community that some publications offered to extend the ad run as they were getting readership for the ads. The ads also generated media attention, as it was the first time that advertising in “Indian English” had been created in Canada.

    Today ATN has 39 channels and it reaches over 100,000 Canadian households.