I came across this idea in October 2007 as the head for internet marketing in Airtel-International Calling Service.
I believe that whenever we target a niche set of audience, we should observe what binds them together. Each Niche community is sensitive about certain core and common issues and as a marketer if we understand them, recognise them and represent the niche community, half the battle is won.
NRIs also have a latent need to show and share their Indian attributes, this is one thing that binds them together in a foreign land. And I thought given the high internet penetration, high need for communication and community building, why not launch a video contest program where NRIs share their views about India and being Indian...it could be funny, it could entail any hidden talent or a story.
The second challenge that I had was how to seed this program... and how to create buzz out of it.
I thought of organising this Video Contest in a very simple fashion without too much of Airtel branding. (The moment you make these community programs branded, and splash your logos and brand colors all over-it will loose it's charm)
Hence I thought of doing it on YouTube. I thought this has great buzz value, and had the potential of getting good PR across the world.
While it took over 4 months to conceptualise, doing a test run on YouTube and convinicing the management...but it was all worth it when it went live in March (we had to use rediff ishare instead of YouTube- http://www.ithappensonlyinindia.net)
About 300 videos uploaded so far! And I feel proud because of 2 reasons on this:
1. It's the first of it's kind of a program in itself.
2. Despite Airtel not being no.1 in international calling (in terms of market share or product features)- it is ideas like these that will take Airtel closer to it's prospects and customers.
* I left Airtel in mid-Feb, and thank my team for doing the last mile finishing work. Great work Guys!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
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1 comment:
Hi,
Though the initial idea was to host on youtube, we tried doing it in a much better way with complete branding and lots of viral marketing...But still the participation was very low...300 videos uploaded in a span of 2 months is far too less...even the traffic is was drawing was very less inspite of its presence on airtel's site as well as 3rd party sites...video contests by pepsi and nestle had less than 50 videos uploaded...Still can't comment that such type of initiatives do helpor not?
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