The numbers speak for themselves. Priya Nair, general manager, deodrants, HUL says that the company was targeting 10 lakh calls by June but within a month of the campaign breaking they have received 27 lakh calls, 5 lakh wake-up alarm requests and 30,500 ‘Hey Axe man’ ringtones have also been downloaded. She says that most customers were pleasantly surprised to find Tanya on the other side. [source]
I am of course talking about the call me campaign by Axe that they launched some while back. The campaign which essentially revolved around the number 09987333333. All ads in all media pointing to girls giving out this number to guys. More importantly for us, the campaigns also promoted an interactive IVRS on this number to set a wake up service. And the numbers above is for this mobile enabled engagement that took place.
How to use the growing mobile medium for a brands benefit has been on almost every marketers mind in India. Most of the advertising or brand building opportunity has been sought through GPRS users, using WAP selling entertainment content. The concept of an IVRS though the oldest really in terms of a telephone service, is again catching the fancy of mobile marketers. Like the IDEA and Mumbai Indians campaign for instance.
However, here this isn’t a tie up with any particular service provider (like Idea above), however it leverages on the entire medium of mobiles. It integrates various other MVAS into the campaign like the ringtone for instance. And all this purely to create brand engagement and build conversations (like this blog post). Most mobile marketing have been stuck at text as data whether it is sms or wap, and here we have voice the most basic form of data being used for a branding opportunity on mobiles, how cool is that!
The important point here is engagement. Digital media has often been a victim of its own device – targetting, measurement, etc. So it is often liberating to see the most potent media being used to create the most basic requirement of any brand – engage with the audience in a way they would like to. To my mind the results would have been even more visible if players like Set Wet would have taken these initiatives and created a better brand and product awareness to compete with the strong foothold Axe has in the market. With this campaign however, Axe has again shown why it is where it is.
