In India, the adoption of digital payments has exponentially increased. The number of UPI transactions is 4.65bn/month, growing. The user base of these digital payments has also expanded to the older generation. However, with that, digital payment frauds have also increased and reached the value of 410 million. Because of vulnerable parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who are unknowingly embracing the scams that come along with it.

Payments on WhatsApp, a new entrant in the digital payments market decided to step-in and help the older generation, by creating not just another ad, but a PSA for the larger audience.

Educate consumers on how they can avoid being scammed and the different types of frauds by keeping their digital payments safe with Payments on WhatsApp. But the challenge was to do this in a comforting way with the intent to provide a sense of control than heightening fear of scams.

To try and attract the attention of the right audience, especially without inducing fear about digital payment, we tried to entertain the audience instead of preaching.As a young brand, WhatsApp leveraged use cases, with the film showcasing real scam stories to save others, through a Bollywood song. By using an evergreen classic song that spoke about being cautious in a fun and catchy way, we resonated with the target audience in the India market and raised awareness about digital payments safety in a memorable way. The video that accompanied our song captured rampant scams, currently affecting our target audience. Music plays an integral part of the TG’s life and has the power to instantly transport the TG to a space of comfort, helping educate and engage them in an entertaining way. Tone of the song resonates with the tone of WhatsApp - a caring guardian who's looking out for people.

Our TG; urban Indians, especially the older groups who use digital platforms and are part of a lot of groups on WhatsApp with huge social circle, spending a lot of time forwarding and reading messages. They’re easily confused when it comes to technical terms, but they’ll hesitate to ask questions or clarify for coming across as unaware.

Overt trust in tech and taking things at face-value, some users are naïve & unaware of how they are falling prey to scams.

Considering WhatsApp’s brand character, the approach was to educate the consumers about the different types of scams and how only WhatsApp provides all the tools to stay safe with the use of a popular Bollywood song.

Music was our hook.

We recreated an iconic Bollywood song from the ‘70s that spoke about being cautious in a fun way, tapping into nostalgia of the older generation

‘Aye bhai, Zara dekh ke

We kickstarted the campaign on 26th July 2022, with the film on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram which helped us reach the majority of the audience who are always plugged in to one social media platform or another.

We went a step further and engaged with people where they are most prone to such scams. At bus stops, tea stalls, railway stations, we turned the same posters that hackers used to scam them into messages that would save them from scams.

Business impact – sales, donations, site traffic

The campaign drove brand reach by 43.5M with a total of 357M impressions, higher than WhatsApp’s initial objectives.

● Brand engagement increased by 22.3%

● Earned Impressions - 256,977,184

● Brand reach - 43,480,970

The film helped create awareness among the mass audience across the nation on how scammers could fool them and how WhatsApp, with its multiple layers of protection can help secure them against these scams.