Mobile: Café Café–WhatsApp campaign
By Malay Desai From: Ecaliptoos, Israel For its new campaign ‘Better together’, israel’s largest chain of coffee shops began a hunt for the best group on the popular chat application whatsapp. Users could sign up through a mobile site and enter his/her whatsapp group in the challenge. The campaign’s analytics then checked for the group’s funny levels among other things. There was also a fictional character, a café waitress who would be part of various groups and engage with users. According to the brand, nearly 2,500 groups entered the competition. Why we like On top of the ad trend curve as this column likes to be, it was quite perplexed before opting to feature this campaign. Why encourage you Indian marketers to initiate promotions on Whatsapp — the biggest mobile chat application here, and ruin its neatness. But then it struck our mind that Whatsapp has a no-advertising policy! Which is what makes this campaign intriguing. Israelis were one of the world’s top social networking addicts before Whatsapp even arrived. Now, every weekend, ‘parliaments’ or meet-ups with friends occur over the app’s groups — and apparently an average Israeli is part of 10 groups (well, this writer’s part of eight and thinks that’s normal). To be part of these plans without forcing itself in was Café Café’s challenge accepted. Any large-scale mobile campaign majorly depends on back-end analytics for success and here it seems that department ran well. Rewarding a group with a Café Café meal is gratification enough for folks to sign up for this, besides a new entity judging your group’s humour and friendship levels is fun enough (yeah we’re a judgement-hungry generation). The unique touch was getting a cute waitress (well, a fictional bot but chatting for real) to be part of the groups and engage with them. ‘She’ would also talk about her experiences on the FB page. How’s that for engagement tactics? Nobody really likes to converse with brands on social networks, moreover on Whatsapp, where everything’s more intimate. But a smartly designed campaign such as this is the only way to tap into social spaces that are free of ad clutter. The case study claims to have got 2,500 groups to sign up and even if that’s with a pinch of salt, that’s a massive number of brand-related conversations. Thankfully, barely any brands here are thinking of tapping Whatsapp (perhaps shutting minds only at the no-ad policy), though some are creating funny images to let them go viral (a small Bollywood film did it last week). But it’s only a matter of time before a genius digital agency lures us with a cute waitress and a free meal. To watch this film, feed this link into your browser: Goo. gl/H8ER1y
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