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How We Turned Scrollers into Paid Subscribers for UpGrad
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ABOUT
Project Overview
Founded by Ronnie Screwvala & Mayank Kumar, UpGrad has helped thousands of working professionals upskill and grow through outcome-driven online education.
Their newest bet? SuperUp. A microlearning app designed for the professional on the move. Short lessons, big career impact. To get their TG– metro-city corporate workers, aged 22–35, to not just download the app but actually subscribe, UpGrad partnered with What The Buzz to create UGC Videos for them.
Industry/Category
B2C/ Tech
Services we offered
Marketing
UGC Videos
THEIR PROBLEM
Breaking through to a tough, high-intent audience
SuperUp was a strong product but this audience was already constantly exposed to content around AI, productivity, career growth and upskilling. Simply telling them to “learn more” wasn't going to stop the scroll.
SuperUp needed content that could:
• Grab attention instantly
• Speak the corporate audiences' lingo
• Make learning feel relevant to everyday life
• Drive downloads and ultimately paid subscriptions
OUR SOLUTION
Building a Performance-First UGC Strategy Through Creative Experimentation
Instead of locking ourselves into one content format, we started by testing multiple creative directions. We explored creator-led UGC, AI-powered creatives, different personas, everyday situations and unconventional visual concepts to understand what could resonate strongest with SuperUp's audience.
The strategy evolved through a simple loop:
Test - Learn - Identify Winners - Iterate - Scale
And to achieve that, AI gave us a much bigger creative canvas to experiment.
OUR IMPLEMENTATION
How We Did It
We tackled the brand’s challenges by leveraging user-generated content. Through diverse creator collaborations, unconventional AI formats and engaging storytelling, we enhanced brand visibility & drove app installs.
Step 1 — Concept & Strategy
We started with deep TG immersion. Metro corporate workers aged 22–35 share a specific emotional profile: they feel stuck, they fear being left behind, and they consume content in stolen micro-moments like— the morning commute, the lunch break scroll, the 11 PM wind-down. Our entire content strategy was built around those moments and that tension. We also made a deliberate call early: test both AI and creator formats in parallel, and let data — not assumptions — decide the direction.
Step 2- Script writing
We wrote across multiple creative angles — aspirational, FOMO-driven, humour-led, and relatable workplace frustration. Every script was engineered with a hard-hitting hook in the first 2–3 seconds.
Our standout concept: the donkey-head character— an AI-rendered figure in a corporate setting, used as a metaphor. Absurdist, impossible to ignore, and razor-sharp in its message: "Don't be a donkey. Upskill with SuperUp." It landed exactly the way we hoped.
Step 3- Shoot/ AI Production
We ran creator shoots for the first wave of videos while simultaneously producing AI videos across multiple formats, visual styles, and scenarios. When the data came back, AI videos consistently showed stronger hook rates and lower CPCs. The decision was clear, we scaled AI production and reduced creator shoots, redirecting resources toward formats that were actually moving the needle.
Step 4- Optimize
The biggest creative discovery of the campaign: the Whispering Format. A low-energy, intimate, direct-to-camera style AI video— the kind of content that feels like someone's letting you in on a secret during their commute. It was native to the way our TG actually scrolls, and it became our top-performing format by a significant margin.
We didn't just run it once. We built 10+ variations across real-life settings to keep the format fresh:
Gym version, Cab version, Office pantry version, and more.
INSIGHTS
What did we achieve
Our biggest achievement with this campaign was to eventually find out a number of winning UGC formats that were driving maximum install at the lowest CAC, some of them being: Whispering girl, playlist, semi- animation, etc.
We doubled down on the winning formats making more versions of the same & they all delivered similar results.
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