October 6th, 2014 became the date where India’s biggest e-commerce player announced the launch of one of the greatest, cheapest and biggest online sale the country has ever seen. The price sensitive nation that we are, this was a brilliant strategy by Flipkart to acquire more consumers and develop the category just before the festive season. A lot was on stake for this campaign. They had to make it big, keep it flawless, make everyone happy and probably try and make some money out of it.

Sale, up to 99%off, buy 1 get 1 free, Discount worth Rs. 5000, Free gift vouchers, a chance to win a gold coin on shopping more than worth Rs. 1lakh and many other sales gimmicks are like music to a typical Indian consumer’s ears. Only Flipkart had the credibility to play on these sales gimmicks as it has become a household name now, big enough to get people from all age groups to shop online, even the ones who are otherwise averse and apprehensive of doing the same.

The marketing team at Flipkart had a big task in their hand and they tried almost every trick in their sleeve to make sure that the buzz is created for the big day. This kind of marketing usually happens for big budget movies where they tap almost each and every medium to reach their audience. Let’s see what all did Flipkart try to make people aware of The Big Billion Day.

Keep reading to know more on how Flipkart used TV, Print, Youtube, Social Media, PR, Email Marketing and almost everything under the sun to promote it’s Big Billion Day campaign. I have not covered radio and OOH campaign due to lack of data.

The TV ad

The TV ad saw people from all backgrounds and all age groups anticipating something big that is about to come on October 6th with emphasis on “first of it’s kind in Indian history”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2g_6mukpQ8

An ad for the internet audience

Flipkart roped in stand up comedian turned actor Vir Das to talk about India’s obsession with “big” things. This can be passed as an attempt at native advertising or branded content but without being subtle. Pick a theme, crack a few jokes and announce why you are actually here for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbcWW3Gue4

Let’s go all out on Print. Where? Obviously TOI

Print had to be a part of it. Monday morning, first thing that you wake up to is a newspaper and as soon as you read this you are reminded of the occasion and before you know it the entire family is on it to buy something very cheap which they don’t need it at all.

TOI Front Page

TOI Last Page

Snapdeal.com, however was up for the challenge and they did some pretty decent ambush marketing on Flipkart’s biggest day and stole a little bit of their thunder.

Notice the excellent communication & placement strategy adopted by Snapdeal.

That’s not it. Amazon.in had something to say as well on the same day in the same newspaper just one page later.

Amazon is asking users to save their money for the real deal

How can we forget the good old SMS

Email Marketing

As discussed a lot of times earlier on this blog, email is one of the best performing, low cost media for online companies. It has to be an integral part of any launch or integrated marketing campaign.

The email did everything right, personalized with my name, lured me with offers, gave a sneak peak on how the website is going to look and talk Notice the time at which the email was triggered, so that it’s the first thing I read when I open my mailbox next morning. Perfect execution.\

Not just this, there was an email from Sachin and Binny Bansal as well highlighting how important 6th October Mega Sale day is important for the company and how they are preparing for a smooth execution. Good idea by the marketing and communications team to give it a feel of something very big that requires a special message from the owners as well.

A special message from Sachin & Binny

Youtube Mast Head

This has also started to become one of the impact properties taken by brands these days to promote a campaign.

PR boost

Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and all other major e-commerce portals are in the news almost everyday. There was no doubting that the PR teams and editors of the world would not publish something that India’s biggest e-commerce portal is promising to be the biggest online sale country has ever seen.

All that is fine. How do we make it viral?

I am sure this question would have come up when the marketing team was presenting or discussing their ideas about promoting the campaign. They did a pretty good but very simple and obvious job out of it.

A very cliche 2+1 step recipe to make things go viral on social media

1. Hey, visit our website and make a list, you might win something
2. Wait, making a list is not enough, announce it on all social media platforms to increase your chances, please share
3. Wait and watch the magic unfold

#BigBillionDay

No campaign is complete without making a “hashtag” trend on twitter. Flipkart couldn’t have ignored this after all the efforts they took above. The facebook page was also filled with posts with #BigBillionDay communication.

While Flipkart was ensuring and making all the possible efforts to make The Big Billion Day their property. People at Amazon India decided to ambush them and crash the party by booking www.bigbillionday.com

It’s an absolute treat to watch the marketers being so aggressive with their marketing campaigns. Gone are the days of cola wars!

Make the website, app and mobile site talk the same language

The most important thing in executing an online campaign by using offline media is making sure that you have consistency. Ultimately, it’s the website or the app or the mobile site that will talk to the consumers no matter how many big promises you have done outside. If the consumers dont find what they came looking for it would not take them more than 5 seconds to drop out. It’s important if you are launching a campaign as big as the “Biggest Sale in Indian history” that you show exact same thing on all your owned media.

The Mobile Website

Finally, how do you measure the success of this?

As I was writing this post, I kept wondering about the same, that how will you measure the success of such a campaign. Before that it would be interesting to know what the objective of this campaign was.

1. Was it to increase the customer base?
2. Was it to generate quick revenue out of dead stock?
3. Was it a pure play branding and awareness campaign?

Whatever it was, as the day progressed the campaign turned out to be a classic case of over promising and under delivering. Flipkart in all it’s communication promised the world to all Indian consumers which the product failed to deliver miserably.

The ORM team of Flipkart.com would love to read this hilarious post by

Imaan Sheikh of Buzzfeed – 16 people whose faith in the world has been shattered by Flipkart

I am super intrigued to see a traffic and social media sentiment analysis of Flipkart before and after the campaign. My guess is it would be super spike and super negative respectively

Transparency?

The regular Indian internet consumer is very smart. It has access to various tools and media which can show him/her the real picture and can see through a publicity gimmick. Hence it becomes very important for brands to be completely transparent. Make them believe that they are on the consumers’ side.

Look at how one such super informed consumer exposed the “apparent” scam by Flipkart

This could have been one of the greatest campaigns ever because of it’s sheer magnitude had Flipkart disclosed the items that were going to go on sale and number of items it had in stock. I know it sounds idealistic but by the looks of it, the campaign did more damage to Flipkart than profit.

Check out this article on how it’s turning to be a PR nightmare for Flipkart.com

What do we know? What have we learnt?

Well, nothing new.

1. Always, under promise, over deliver
2. Promoting is only half job done by the marketing team
3. Marketing, Product, Tech and Content teams should work together to see the light of the day of a successful campaign
4. Transparent, please be as transparent as possible