Movie marketing goes on WhatsApp – Spying on Bobby Jasoos’ marketing efforts on WhatsApp.

Well, we all know, WhatsApp has now become quite a phenomenon. It has completely wiped off the SMS service from the face of earth and also made other “instant messaging” applications useless. After the 19 billion dollar deal that Facebook cracked to acquire WhatsApp, it made everyone look up to this small little 55 employee baby giant that is now threatening to social networking websites and instant messaging applications simultaneously.

Mentioning the fact that WhatsApp is changing the way people communicate is stating the obvious. As on December 2013, WhatsApp had around 30 million active internet users in India, which means slowly marketers will also wake up to this gem of a medium to reach out to consumers without even having to pay a single penny. However, it will take time for marketers to properly start milking the application or figure out a way, as WhatsApp keeps stressing on no ads policy every time, even after it was bought by Facebook.

On an individual level, quite a bit of spamming and intrusive messages have already started appearing on facebook and there is not even an option of activating a DND service here.

WhatsApp replacing SMS Marketing

Even small business, real estate brokers, individual dealers, freelancers have now started sharing pictures and closing deals on WhatsApp itself.

Here is one example of a real estate professional, who offered to add me on WhatsApp so that he can share images of flats he has to offer.

Now that we have established the case that WhatsApp can be used as a powerful medium to reach out to a lot of people, for free and build engagement.

Let’s see if today’s marketers are actually using it for the same? The answer is, yes they are.

As always, marketers outside India, always beat us to it, even after this particular technology and medium being as famous and as accessible to us compared to anyone else.

Absolut Vodka did first of it’s kind WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFLRwzyO6Q

Indian Marketers, however, are not too late in jumping on the bandwagon. I came across this campaign being run by Vidya Balan’s latest movie Bobby Jasoos where Bobby, the character, is asking users to add her on whats app and leave a message for her.

The attempt in my opinion is brilliant, however it’s half hearted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tWm_DwqmA8

The campaign is not being given the push that it should be, given that the idea is so brilliant. While the actual trailer already has 1.8 million views, the whatsapp video is still struggling at 8000.

For research purposes, I went ahead and added Bobby Jasoos on whatsapp, just to see, how their community manager is going to handle the huge number of conversations from this campaign. How is he/she going to engage the audience and what exactly have they planned, the objective behind the entire whatsapp campaign.

Turns out, there wasnt any objective, it was probably done, only because the Marketing Head in a random meeting made a comment which said,

“We shouldnt ignore whatsapp, let’s do something there”, thus a KRA was met.

Look at the mass marketing messages being doled out in a medium as personal as whatsapp. Why would the consumer still want to be a part of this, why would they continuously want to be bombarded by marketing messages that is not going to give anything in return, not even free movie tickets, the least they could have done for instant connect and high engagement.

I thought I’ll troll a bit, but failed miserably

What followed were a flurry of bland, typical, push marketing messages.

Blah Blah. Good Morning, Good Night, Good Afternoon.

I dont really understand the point of hashtags in a whats app message. Seriously? However, I was little happy to see a custom bit.ly link there. They got that right at least.

 The point being before getting on to a medium, you should try and understand how you can use it to your benefit. What exactly drives engagement on that medium rather than taking on to it randomly, just because you should. The idea of Bobby Jasoos on WhatsApp was brilliant, if only it would have been executed in a better way.

I tried my hand at WhatsApp marketing in my current capacity as the brand manager for Shiksha.com. I tried to engage the community of first year MBA students with aspirants who want to join their MBA college. A group chat was organized between the both which got a decent engagement as the platform is liked by students, it’s instant gratification in terms of answers to their questions and on-the-go low time involvement for both stakeholders. The event got decent coverage in press and was appreciated overall. Do let me know how this could have been done in a better way.

Quicker and convenient than any medium

Trying to connect to youth on a medium they understand

Have you come across any marketing campaign on WhatsApp that did or did not impress you. Do let us know, it will be great to have some insipiration. Till then, keep whatsapp-ing.