Trust all marketers to leverage any opportunity they see to promote their products and services. So the ganpati festival is here and marketers are making a beeline with discounts and promotions around the festival. For all those who want to know more about the Indian God and this festival can read it here. So how can online marketers be far be far behind.
So are online marketers doing anything different this Ganpati festival?
First lets look at the usual discount scemes..
Arzoo.com Sabeer Bhatia’s travel portal announced a special offer where customers can avail guaranteed 12% discount on domestic airfare bookings on Spicejet, Indigo, Indian & Go Air anywhere within India. 6 per cent discount on international airline bookings to US, Europe and Gulf and 10 per cent discount on Indian Holidays & 5 per cent Discount on International Holidays… Yawn.. Boring! Wish they had some original ideas.. And 12% wow thats such a huge discount!! 
A voice portal for Ganpati? Now we are talking..
Airtel has launched an ‘Assal Marathi’ voice portal on 52222 that offers value added service offerings. It has also introduced a contest for the portal’s subscribers. Winner of the contest wins an all sponsored visit and darshan to Ashtavinayak temple from Airtel. The Airtel live Wap portal will also offer a variety of Ganesh special Marathi content including logos, animation, wallpapers, themes, greetings messages.
This is a Smart marketing exercise by Airtel as it hits the religious note but not sure how much will be adopted by actual users.
Here is my favourite online marketing exercise for Ganpati: Ecoganpati – Possibly Fropper‘s only successful viral (even though its for a social cause)
I suggest everyone should visit Ecoganpati. It has pictures of broken Ganpati idols. It shows how ganpati idols that are not made with eco friendly material is not only harmful to the environment but also disrespectful to God himself.
I think this approach of countering the celebration with an eco friendly message is a very smart move by fropper. It will build a connect with the youth and will do what years of advertising hasn’t done for the portal. Though it may not really translate in actual user stickiness on fropper itself.
It will be interesting to see how digital marketers approach the upcoming diwali season which is the biggest festival hat whole of India celebrates.
