Social media helps to endorse the business promotion

Business brands find simple using innovative advertising through social media for powerful promotion of their business!!

Twitter.com/commercefriend

"Every medium has its advantages for marketers, but social media has the power to transform a campaign into a religion." [Source]

A Nielsen Company report indicated figures for 2011 stating that about 30 million online Indian consumers are members of social networking sites. Out of these, about 20 million spend time surfing through these sites on a daily basis. The report also went on to suggest that Indians spend more time on social media than they do checking their emails, TOI mentioned. Many Indian companies have already cashed in on this trend and only more are jumping onto the bandwagon of using innovative advertising campaigns on social media. Mint reports that social media is being used not just for plain one way advertising but also for customer engagement, marketing events, generating sales, launching product buzz, introducing innovative concepts and even creating new markets for their existing brands.ET reports Shiv Singh, Global Head Digital at PepsiCo Beverages affirming the same

"Digital media should be used for real time marketing and we use this medium both for brand building and generating sales."  [Source]

Here are a few examples of how Indian companies are using innovative campaigns on social media, either for direct advertising or for enhancing their brand profile.

Johnson & Johnson’s Nicorette

In 2011, Johnson & Johnson’s launched its advertising campaign for Polacrilex Gum, an anti smoking Nicorette with an innovative Facebook application. Penn-Olson reported that its Facebook page gathered about 33,500 fans in a period of just two months of its launch. The Facebook page featured an application known as Nicorette Support through which the user could enter their quitting timeline or could invite loved ones to quit smoking. The app also encouraged existing quitters to help others do the same.

Kolkata Knight Riders

In 2011, Shah Rukh Khan was unable to attend the final of the fourth edition of the IPL. In a traditional scenario, principal sponsor Nokia would have been at its jittery best, considering the branding, marketing and advertising loss that Nokia would have incurred. But this time around, they were at their calmest best, reported TOI. Why? Because their Facebook campaign ‘KKR tension mat le yaar’ had already become a success, Viral Oza, Marketing Director at Nokia told TOI. The campaign revolved around inviting fans and users to recommend fun and innovative ways in which the KKR team could reduce their stress levels. An approximate of 2 lakh entries from fans were received, reported TOI. Customer interaction was well managed and brand awareness was sustained.

Hippo Chips

Hippo, a unique baked wheat snack food brand launched in the Indian snack market in 2010 and successfully deployed an innovative social media brand awareness-cum-customer engagement-cum-advertising campaign with shot many birds with one stone. HT reported that in February 2010, Hippo launched a Twitter campaign asking consumers and retailers to tweet Hippo’s availability on retail shelves on Hippo’s Twitter page, because they were facing difficulties in tracking distribution across India. The company promised to take action on the tweets which stated unavailability in specific stores. Parle Agro claimed that they received such stock related tweets from 25 cities and that the number of people tracking Hippo stocks on Twitter equaled 45 per cent of Parle Agro’s foods sales team. Their sales had jumped by 76 percent after this campaign, reported HT.

“Hippo has effectively used social media to do what no one had done before: crowdsource and assist retail inventory tracking.” - Nadia Chauhan, joint MD & CMO, Parle Agro

This innovative use of social media for advertising is being taught as a case study in B-schools, received acknowledgment by TWTRCON, San Francisco, won a Gold in the Interactive category for Creative use of social media at the Abby Awards that year, and also won three Golds in Campaign India Digital Media Awards presented by BBC for Best Loyalty Campaign, Media Innovation and Best Social Media strategy amongst many other accolades, reported MXM India.

Reebok EasyTone

One more Facebook contender in the list, Reebok launched the Butt Revolution campaign in 2010 in which an interactive page allowed users to get answers to their queries about fitness from certified Reebok trainers. This catapulted sales for their EasyTone shoes mainly targeted women in the 18-24 age group, reported Mint. This social media campaign was used as a follow up to the same campaign released on traditional media.

Fiama Di Wills

In 2012, ITC’s leading personal care brand, Fiama Di Wills launched Fiama Di Wills Men – Aqua Pulse range of shower gel and bathing bar. They envisaged their innovative social media advertising campaign to target urban Indian males with active lifestyles, reported TOI. The campaign was called the ‘Mega Aqua Pulse Australian Adventure’. It was essentially a contest to give Indian water sports enthusiasts an opportunity to win a free trip to Australia. The contest received more than 4000 entries and approximately 40,000 friends were invited to participate. The brand made sure that there was continuous customer engagement by offering tools such as Wall Posts, Reviews, Mentions, Discussion Posts, Videos and much more on their Facebook page. According to TOI, The Fiama Di Wills Men community on Facebook registered 1.7 lakh fans, with 3.7 million post views and over 19,000 feedback posts, all within just 30 days of its launch.

Interestingly, PepsiCo allocates more budgets for its digital and social media campaigns than for traditional advertising mediums. Sandeep Arora, Category Director for Colas and Media at PepsiCo and Srinandan Sundaram, Category Head (Deo’s & Oral Care) at HUL confirm,