OPPO Sells Reno 8T in Just 10 Days by Igniting a Social Media Storm

Damyant Singh Khanoria, CMO, OPPO, believes that Reno 8T boosted the brand’s growth on the back of a segmented marketing campaign.

Consumer electronics manufacturer OPPO, known primarily for its range of smartphones in India, began 2023 with the launch of OPPO Reno 8T. The phone was introduced in the domestic market on February 2, 2023.

As per a Canalys report, OPPO emerged as the only Android vendor to register year-on-year growth in the first quarter (January-March) of this year. OPPO now holds 18% share in the smartphone category, trailing only behind the market leader Samsung.

In an interaction with afaqs!, Damyant Singh Khanoria, CMO, OPPO, calls the launch of Reno 8T a pivotal moment for the brand. “From a brand standpoint, Reno 8T’s successful launch became the moment, on the back of which we’ve been able to perform outstandingly well in this first quarter of 2023.”

Reno 8T was launched exclusively through OPPO Experience Centers, the brand’s offline channel. Khanoria informs that the phone was sold out within 10 days of its launch. The reason behind this, as per him, is the company’s marketing campaign.

“The reason why the campaign worked was because we managed the storyline quite well over a period of time. I think it’s a fairly difficult thing to do and OML helped us pull this off successfully.”

The brand didn’t want to begin the campaign by introducing the phone directly. It wanted to combine it with entertainment, shares Khanoria. “We shot the campaign with the intention that people will start talking about the new phone. We didn’t feel the need to introduce the product narrative right from the beginning.”

Before the phone’s launch, actor Ranbir Kapoor, OPPO’s ambassador, was seen throwing a fan’s phone, in a paparazzi video posted by Viral Bhayani. Later, a video, where Kapoor was seen giving out an OPPO Reno 8T handset to the fan, surfaced.

Khanoria mentions that OPPO wanted to started off the first phase of the campaign by creating a storm on social media platforms. The brand claims that the initial part of the campaign, featuring Kapoor in short format videos, reached out to over 49 million people. The videos generated more than four million user engagement. However, it also created a lot of controversy – whether the marketing tactic was misleading.

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“I think with any marketing campaign, you can’t see things in isolation. We had a strong narrative in place, right from the beginning. The great thing about this narrative was that each story lent itself beautifully to the next bit. It forces people to figure out what’s next,” Khanoria comments.

Roycin D’souza, VP, Only Much Louder (OML), shares that the Reno series is the flagship phone series in the premium segment for OPPO. The users of this category of phones don’t tend to switch devices over the short-term. Hence, the company wanted to create excitement for the audiences and encourage them to upgrade their older devices to newer ones.

“’Out with the old, in with the new’, was our brief. We were sitting and figuring out if we should be telling people to throw out their phones. People want to click photos with celebrities all the time. So, we thought, why not make (Ranbir) Kapoor throw away a fan’s phone and then give him a new phone,” D’souza shares.

OML built an amplification plan for the phone, by sharing the campaign in 50-60 different community pages and fan clubs, to stir up a conversation. After reaching a satisfactory set of its target audience, the company first released the ad where Kapoor is handing a new phone to the fan. Kapoor is then featured in a TVC, promoting the phone.