I have always believed that it is never enough to be present on any medium in isolation in a marketing campaign. To drive home the message, increase brand recall, amplify awareness, it becomes necessary in today’s world to tap each and every medium that your target audience is consuming on a day to day basis. Its very important to be present on multiple touch points. Your over reliance on any one medium to give you desired results might backfire as even after spending decent amount of money, you wont be able to achieve top of mind for a particular category. This should be brand management 101 as the world moves forward towards 360 degree integrated marketing campaigns.

This brings me to the latest advertisement that have been doing the rounds of every huge impact property on TV from top GECs to IPL to movies.

#MTSInternetBaby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzWK-x5WlXk

Personally, I feel MTS India has done a brilliant job of coming up with the concept for this particular campaign. They have cracked a brilliant observation which is that the next generation is coming to this world smarter.

Kids are born with an innate ability to be tech-savvy, handle phones, tablets, TV as efficiently as their parents or grand parents and even teaching them a trick or two.

Baby pictures and videos have always been the most shareable and searched for content with instant likability factor so a message with a tech-savvy, smarter, advanced baby who’s born for the internet and MTS acting as an enabler to such a generation is a brilliant idea’ from a marketer’s point of view.

I tried to talk to some of my friends who are planners with top agencies in India and most of them felt that although the idea is brilliant the execution could have been much better and less creepy or disgusting. It didnt really have a connect with the non-marketing audience as well as my friends, relatives ridiculed me for liking the ad in the first place because they couldnt relate to it. However, apparently the MTS dongle sales went up by 10% after 4 weeks since the birth of #MTSInternetBaby. Now, I dont know what the objective of this campaign was, whether to increase sales or a pure play brand campaign and if it served it’s purpose.

The top marketers in India have given very mixed reviews some saying the client does not get a mention while some appreciating the clutter breaking effort.

I really loved the ad and so I went a step ahead to see what is MTS doing on the internet for it’s MTS Internet Baby. I was quite surprised to see the consistency in creatives that supported this mega brand campaign on traditional media. MTS overhauled almost all of it’s properties,  drove twitter hashtags and even display banners on various internet portals ensuring the visibility and recall are amplified and people dont just call it the “baby ad” but they start recognizing the baby as “MTS Internet Baby”

Let’s look at how they give a fine example of having a consistent and creative online communication strategy after their traditional media efforts with the #MTSInternetBaby.

The Youtube Channel

The youtube channel would have been the first online property to get an overhaul considering the nature and message of the campaign.

Twitter

The best part about the online connection and the MTS Social media properties is they have made it look like the baby is talking to the audience. With the hashtags and giving the baby a name, he/she has become a brand ambassador. They even changed the profile picture where the logo is now replaced with a the MTSInternetBaby selfie.

This telco does not need a bollywood brand ambassador

The Facebook Posts

MTS Social Media team really upped the game by posting some really relevant internet related messages with baby as the voice.

#LikeaBoss wasnt required

#LikeaBoss wasnt required here when they had a #BornForTheInternet and #MTSInternetBaby working for them.

For a change a good holi wish on facebook but very bad photoshop skills

Finally the display banner

A good relevant banner ad

Now, this was the banner ad that I saw on cricinfo. Instantly made me read, connect and click. Plus, the placement, the communication was so bang on again breaking the clutter with consistent out of the box communication both online and offline.

What’s the point?

No matter what people say, I think this one of the dream marketing campaigns that you want to be a part of because it changes a brand communication, it sets a benchmark, it makes people talk both in and out of the industry, you become a part of something legendary either way. Also, the insight to implementation to execution has been flawless both online and offline which makes it an example worth keeping in mind when you talk about a good mix of online and offline for driving the message home. It’s always the game of reach, relevancy, frequency and impact. MTS India delivers a little on all the 4 factors.