Bashundhara Exercise Book Goes Viral with Its New Social Media Campaign

By Farhat Chowdhury Zishan

In a country where copies and notebooks have had a traditional touch to it for ages, Bashundhara Exercise Book has surely picked up the pace with its newly launched social media campaign. Ever since the inception of this particular SBU of Bashundhara Group, the brand has successfully positioned itself as the market leader in the highly competitive local stationery market. Backed by operational efficiency and automated machinery, the brand was the country’s very first to introduce pin binding exercise books. And now they have apparently won the heart of millions with their newly launched social media campaign.

The “Odommo Moner Jore Egiye Cholar Golpo” revolves around the story of a school-going girl named Beauty. Despite facing many social barriers, she strives to sit for her SSC exam. Encouraged by her teacher, she puts her heart into her studies and focuses on improving her handwriting by rigorously practicing to write. Her father was her biggest support, providing her with Bashundhara Exercise books to practice her handwriting on. She studies diligently till she finally appears for the exam. Now, the story seems quite ordinary till this part. And that is when the main theme of the campaign pops up. Beauty finishes her exam and walks up to her teacher and submits her exam script. And submits it with her limbs – yes, she is a physically handicapped student who has appeared for the Board exam. All throughout the video, the viewers were not given any clue that the resilient young woman has been practicing writing on the Bashundhara Exercise Book with her feet. This is the edge that has made the campaign stand out from the array of other stationery product campaigns. The portrayal of a young SSC student from a remote village resiliently writing with her feet and passing her exams with flying colors has caught the attention of many on Facebook. The campaign has garnered 2.2 million views on Facebook and has created more than a thousand social media impressions.

This campaign has successfully helped position Bashundhara Exercise Book as a brand that proudly represents the students who never give up. Unlike their numerous competitors who mainly focus on exams, grades and the resulting success to create their brand positioning, Bashundhara Exercise Book has carefully crafted its niche and positioned itself as the one representing the majority who strive to earn knowledge and achieve success later on. The result? The creation of a brand with a unique identity and a distinguished portrayal of their target audience. Instead of having a cut-throat sales objective, the campaign solely focused on communicating with the masses and the results are more than impressive.

But this was surely not an overnight success. The campaign used a real-life character (Beauty) and capturing her impressions on camera was surely not an easy task. Taking a girl from Joypurhaat and capturing her entire story was indeed hectic and the Bashundhara officials were having second thoughts about launching the campaign right before Eid-Ul-Adha, fearing that they might fail to reach their expected amount of exposure. But all the hard work eventually did pay off.

So, what’s next for the brand? The SBU of Bashundhara Exercise Book was established on 2011 and hence it’s still a relatively young brand compared to its peers. But it has already created a strong offline brand presence by sponsoring numerous School debate championships including this year’s 5th National Science Debate Tournament. Its Facebook page is also up and running, by occasionally offering small competitions for their target audience. The goal is to further leverage the campaign on both its online and offline platforms and come up with similar contents in the future. The market, as stated earlier, is filled with challenges and obstacles due to local imitation exercise books and similar low-cost products. But the Bashundhara officials are quite hopeful that this particular campaign has helped them significantly differentiate from the others in this product category.

By extending the portfolio in the upcoming years, exporting the exercise books and introducing newer elements in their marketing repertoire, Bashundhara Exercise Book plans to stay lightyears ahead of its competition. “Odommo Moner Jore Egiye Cholar Golpo” seems to be the perfect campaign to kickstart its journey.  And despite the phenomenal growth of the brand, the vision stays synonymous to the parent brand of Bashundhara Group; to do something “for the people, for the country”.