When entertainment is just a missed call away

In an attempt to expand its reach to the remotest places of the country, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) conceptualised a mobile marketing communication plan that is helping the firm penetrate and up its business in these areas. By simply giving a missed call to 180030000123, anyone within the fencing of the frequencies has free access to on-demand entertainment on their mobiles.

Titled ‘Kan Khajura’ (an insect that sticks in your ears) Tesan (KKT), the campaign by HUL aims at digging into the everyday lives of people from media dark areas and facilitating cultural relevant content that sticks with them.

Persuading people to invite other people to KKT through All India Radio (AIR), HUL is targeting its rural consumers, who barely have entertainment access or choice unlike the entertainment-rich urban crowd. And this is the D factor behind the campaign being successful. Feeding free jokes and songs to a crowd that pays Rs 100 to get songs downloaded on their device is exactly the thing that will increase your consumer base.

While mobile radio is not a new concept in marketing, it has never been explored much for private communication/advertising. With over 12 million claimed users on the platform already, HUL is leveraging the medium by peppering the content with its brand ads.

However, HUL’s Omnicom Group is aiming at not just increasing the number of impressions but also increasing the duration of calls by studying the consuming behaviours and experimenting with ad positioning and enhancing the content quality (like introduction of celebs and promotion of their upcoming films).

Coming back to the analytics, HUL is tracking the consumer behaviour on a dashboard that is giving insights on the verticals of location, frequency of calls, time stamp, returning calls, patterns of users disconnecting the calls, ad impressions, et al.

Also, HUL has introduced a new feedback system where the consumer is prompted to undertake a small survey where his/her general details (like gender, age, etc) are captured. So HUL is not just increasing its consumer base and getting familiar with them, it is also accumulating some very useful insights in their behaviour and communication patterns, which can be a deal breaker in marketing communication.

Taking a step further in making the mobile radio viral, HUL is planning to incentivise referral programmes, persuading people to refer their friends/relatives and get a top up recharge on their mobile. A quick look at the campaign will show how HUL used the traditional medium with a modern approach to attract people to its communication platform.

The basics remain the same – feed the consumers with the type of content they want to consume, at the place they are, at the time they want. This Kan Khajura Tesan campaign by Hindustan Unilever is so intriguing that it won three Gold Lions and one Bronze Lion at Cannes. Can it be any more remarkable?

By: Tushar Kalawatia