Last year, Parle Agro launched a campaign for its Frooti brand, featuring a giant mango rolling down a slope, catching people unawares. Since it was a candid campaign, shot in Pune, the emotions of the people on camera were real. The company decided to put the campaign up on its Facebook (FB) page. “A lot of those who got captured in the film commented on FB, which in turn led to a lot of positive word of mouth,” says Nadia Chauhan, Joint MD and CMO, Parle Agro. She’s now planning to use FB for employee branding and recruitment.
Aircel has recently launched FB Voice Updates, which allows people to connect with their family and friends on FB in their own voice, even without internet access on their mobile phones. The company has received 100,000 calls in just a few weeks. “Voice Update is an interesting innovation because it cuts across population strata,” says Rahul Saighal, CMO of Aircel. He now hopes to extend the service to the vernacular segment.
When FB first launched as a college-focused social network in 2003, business applications seemed a far cry. From eager beaver teeny boppers to corporates and decision-makers, FB’s audience demographics have undergone a sea change over the years. In India too, Mark Zuckerberg’s popular social networking website is gradually becoming the face of many companies in their quest to connect with their consumers. Interestingly, companies seem unafraid to cling on to their FB pages despite negative posts that may even result in bad publicity. After all, cyberspace gives democracy its truest expression.
Take, for instance, a post by one Vineet on the Bharti Airtel FB site. ‘NEVER GO FOR AIRTEL…even their small recharge is double that of the Vodafone recharge,’ says the post, which has been up for four weeks. Mohit Beotra, brand head at Bharti Airtel, will not let that come in his way.
To FB or not to FB
He quietly goes on with his business with a three-pronged presence on FB – AirtelIN, that engages with customers in terms of product updates and general information; AirtelPresence, which handles customer queries and grievances; AirtelSoccer, which is the company’s FB page to promote the sport. “For the AirtelIN FB page, we have 8,000 active monthly users and 506,863 interactions a month,” he says.
More businesses in India are likely to latch on to the FB platform once PC prices plummet further and broadband connectivity increases. Meanwhile, it is the slew of smartphones ushered in by the onset of 3G technology that is paving the way for homegrown corporations on FB and other social media. “Though very few brands are using FB in India as a B2B tool, it is largely being used to reach out to audiences in a much more personalized way than the traditional approach,” says Prashant Mehta of Komli Media, the exclusive advertising partner of FB in India. Mehta presents the example of ‘Vitamin Water’ health beverages in the US, which connected with its audience through FB by asking them to create a flavour for the company. “This linked Vitamin Water users directly with the brand and led to the co-creation of ideas,” says Mehta.
For the 32-year-old Garima Bahl and her mother Sunila, their year-old Gurgaon-based chocolate boutique Choco Tale now has a pan-India footprint with large corporate orders to boot. Similarly, Saaga, their small wooden handicraft venture from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, has seen fresh traction as they’ve reached out to an online marketer on social media website FB, who in turn have sent their contacts to their buying desk to take their brands forward. “Recently , Saaga was up on the retailer’s FB page for a 3-day event and notched up 3.5 lakh in sales. Choco Tale was up for six days, selling 87 boxes,” says Garima.
Harish Bahl, co-owner of e-retailer FashionAndYou , has learnt to leverage FB. “During the evolution of our business, FB emerged as a platform cutting across various business functions,” he says. Bahl’s company has established over eight lakh fans in just one year. “We realised that a very high percentage of our sales was coming from FB since we are largely a direct marketing firm. It is giving us the best response despite our hawking across other social media platforms,” he says. Apart from the tried and tested B2C channel, Bahl is increasingly using FB in the B2B space.
Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL) deodorant brand Axe seems to have struck a chord with the 18-25 year olds on FB. The Axe FB fan page was launched last May and already boasts 1.2 million members. “The brand just facilitates the interactions (with members) and over a period of time, it is the fan club members who sustain these conversations which are fun, witty, relevant and offer the brand a one-on-one opportunity to interact with its consumers,” says Srinandan Sundaram, category head, oral care and deodorants, HUL.
Companies are also increasingly using FB to promote sports, or a cause. While the Airtel soccer page on FB reached 1.57 lakh members in four months, it has on an average of 500 people signing up to the community each day. Meanwhile, rival Aircel has successfully used the platform to launch its ‘Stripey The Tiger Cub’ page, as a part of ‘Save the Tiger’ campaign, which already boasts 3.7 lakh users. Besides promoting a social cause on FB, Aircel also has a couple consumer-focused FB pages in its kitty. German auto major Volkswagen, on the other hand, promotes polo on FB since “it is the ideal medium to reach out to young talented drivers,” says John Chacko, President & MD, Volkswagen India. Newbie handset maker Micromax relies on a two-pronged approach – it furthers cricket and also music events on FB. It also links to other FB pages where Micromax is present, such as in the UAE, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Then there are others who just hard-sell their brand on FB. Clearly, the engagement quotient is yet to evolve. Volkswagen too does it for a large part with its Volkswagen page with 5,000 fans from India and nearly half a million worldwide .
“Volkswagen wishes to establish one of the largest social media fan bases in the automotive industry in India,” says Lutz Kothe, Head of Marketing.
How novel is that? Couple it with what PC maker Lenovo is doing, and it gets as mundane as a Monday morning chore. “We have started getting frequent posts (on Lenovo India’s FB page) seeking information and advice on what products to purchase,” says Shailendra Katyal, Director, Marketing, Lenovo India.
On the other hand, when shower maker Grohe launched its FB page last April, it came up with an innovative ‘Become a shower ambassador’ campaign. Only within days, the website garnered 10,000 fans. The campaign was riveting enough to keep people coming, for it involved inviting people to tell the company their reason to shower with Grohe, and the best entries would get a prize. “There was a phenomenal response globally with over 2,000 shower ambassadors getting to experience the Grohe way of showering… we had a particularly impressive response from India from where over 200 lucky shower ambassadors were chosen,” says Mathew Job, MD and VP, Grohe India .
The Grohe experience echoes what Nadia Chauhan of Parle Agro did with India’s first reality campaign on FB last year. In her words, “FB is appealing to the youth provided content is still king.” Bottomline, you rule FB only if the heart of the matter truly matters.
Moinak Mitra