Nissan India has launched the New Star of India ad spot today, on March 30. The key element of the campaign is a 5-minute short movie that features one of the most popular Bollywood stars, Ranbir Kapoor as well as 20 young and talented people selected via Facebook from all across India.

Photo: Ranbir Kapoor

Developed by AKQA, the campaign started with the talent search in October. Bollywood fans had the opportunity to win a role in the movie by uploading a short video showing them of them dancing. In addition, there were castings in shopping malls across nine cities in India. The top 100 were selected out of over 2,300 videos with help of public voting on Facebook. With nearly 500,000 Facebook fans, Nissan has built a strong brand presence within India communities. Then, Kapoor’s team chose 20 lucky winners to star in the film.

The film that tells a typical Bollywood story where of two lovers united by Nissan was shot at Ramoji film city in Hyderabad, India. The film is launched primarily on Nissan India’s Facebook and Youtube channels.

David Parkinson, GM Social and Digital communications EMEA and India at Nissan commented, “Nissan is a relatively new entrant into the Indian market so we wanted to rapidly become part of the conversation by doing something fresh and different. The New Star of India campaign has been immensely successful in helping Nissan build an emotional connection with Indian youth, and of course given us a great platform to continue the conversation with India at scale”.

A 60-second spot advertising the film starts airing in 3,500 cinemas in India today. There will also be a press event in April in Mumbai during which Kapoor will give away an Orange Micra to one lucky winner.

Recently, the automaker has announced it starts producing Datsun in India, Russia and Indonesia again.