Category: Short-term Initiatives

Title-Samsung Corby Color Wars on Twitter

Share a little about your organisation

At Samsung, we see every challenge as an opportunity and believe we are perfectly positioned as one of the world’s recognized leaders in the digital technology industry.

Our commitment to being the world’s best has won us the No.1 global market share for 13 of our products, including semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, monitors and CDMA mobile phones. Looking forward, we’re making historic advances in research and development of our overall semiconductor line, including flash memory and non-memory, custom semiconductors, DRAM and SRAM, as well as producing best-in-class LCDs, mobile phones, digital appliances, and more.

Executive Summary

Samsung Corby Colour Wars was an initiative by Samsung Mobile India during the launch of its touch-phone, Samsung Corby – an affordable and stylish touch phone, the first of its kind, for the Indian youth.

In India, the Corby brief was to connect the dots around three key words – Youth, social networking and colour.

Samsung Corby Colour Wars brought all aspects the brief together.

We chose Twitter as the main platform for connecting stakeholders (supported by Facebook, Slideshare, and blogs as other touch points); chose a viral format to make it attractive to youth and brought out Corby colours at, literally, every little step of the activity.

Though seemingly tactical in nature, the impact of the activity goes beyond just the obvious –the Corby was major launch for Samsung Mobile India, giving it a hold in the youth and touch segments. The buzz generated helped Corby take a position in this attractive segment. Given the importance, the team spent many weeks planning the initiative to ensure it marries back into the big picture for the brand.

This initial connect we established with a variety of stakeholders gave the brand an opportunity to continue the engagement. Over a course of time, we’ve engaged select participants for feedback and insights for other Corby products (extensions) as well.

The Digital Brand Index 2.0, jointly brought out by Edelman and Brandtology, earlier this year (shared in detail below) derives that there has been an exponential (123% ) increase in the number of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions) over the previous quarter, taking Samsung to #4 in the Index (against #7 in the previous quarter).

The Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Twitter as part of our Social Media campaign is likely to have contributed to this jump (given that the index also showcases Twitter as the buzziest social channel). Our own post-activity analyses show over 3000 mentions of Samsung Corby, amounting to nearly 6,15,000 exposures.

Importantly, other than winners getting money and Corby phones (both team leads and members), the team ensured that everyone who was touched by the activity feels that like a winner and that the experience is the reward. philosophy around the activity comes alive.

From a total of 3284 tweets with brand mentions in the 12 days, 2853 tweets were from the teams and other fans, leading to an overall exposure of around 6,15,750 exposures at the rate of 0.09 INR per exposure, our expense on the activity being a total of 58,000 INR.

Background

Samsung Mobile is the market leader globally for full-screen touch phones and has been focused on its touch phone strategy to grow its market share in India. In Sept 2009, the company launched Corby S3653, its first mobile handset designed to support the highly connected lifestyle of today.s younger mobile users, complimenting the Company.s existing touch screen strategy “touch for every lifestyle”. The Corby was a crucial launch for the brand given that it was the entry point for the company in the youth segment. The unique differentiators of the product were –

• Tailored to suit the youth of today – Stylish body design and colors; it came with bold color options such as Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal White, and festival Orange so that users could choose their favorite color. The focus on cutting edge design also extended to the handsets user interface by providing Cartoon UI, a highly stylised graphical menu that altered according to handset functionality.
• Full support for a wide range of social networks that were integrated directly into the handsets user interface.
• Attractively priced at MRP Rs 9,600.

The task at hand was therefore to position Corby on three key planks – colour, social networking & youth. While globally, color was the key thematic for the Corby, in India the focus of the brand was more around social networking. As an important element of the product itself, social media had a significant role since the task was to create a unique experience for the customers on social networking platforms that would create awareness for Corby and build association in the product category.

Approach / Strategy

Objective

• Create buzz and generate conversations around Samsung Corby in the launch phase to help the brand take a strong position in the youth and touch phone segment. Choose a viral format that connects Youth, social networking and colour as three key concepts associated with Samsung Corby.

Concept

• Five active, vocal Indian users were invited to form a Corby Colour team each (based on the 5 colour options for Corby available in the Indian market).
• Corby Colour Wars team leaders approached friends and asked them to follow the team colour. To join / follow a team, all participants had to tweet the team’s hashtag ONCE (vote would be counted only once).
• Top three Corby team leaders, who reached a certain set target of followers over the activity duration of 12 days, could win a Corby. Team members / followers of all 5 teams combined also stood to win a minimum of two. Samsung Corby handsets, selected through a lucky draw.
• The Team Lead with the maximum number of members/ follower in the team would also win Rs. 10,000 in cash.
• Ensure that ‘experience is the reward’ and everyone feels like a winner at end of the activity.

Duration

• Planning: 20th Oct – 30 Oct
• Execution: 02 November – 13 November, 2009
• Evaluation: 14th November – 18th November

Resources allocated

• Five Corby phones for winners
• Rs 10,000 cash prize for the final winner

Budget

• Rs 58,000 (MRP of a Corby phone = Rs 9,600)

Stakeholders

Taking Youth and Social Networking as the foci for the initiative, it was aimed at socially networked, online savvy youth both influencers and potential customers for Corby. The choice of medium for the initiative – Twitter allowed engaging with the stakeholders extensively given its viral nature.

Enthused by the viral nature of the activity, several participants expressed interest in becoming team-leads, there were constant requests for the next edition of the Corby Colour Wars and extensive feedback received from the participants.

This initial connect we established with a variety of stakeholders gave the brand an opportunity to continue the engagement. The contest also helped generate queries from customers around Corby. Over a course of time, we.ve engaged select participants for feedback and insights for other Corby products (extensions) as well.

About the initiative

The internal discussion by the team was to make Corby Colour Wars like Big Boss with twists, turns, and soft controversies to generate talk and excite participants.
Identifying the five Corby team leaders:

One of the important steps in planning for the initiative was to identify the five leaders for the Corby Colour Wars (given the success of the initiative was driven to a great extend by the level of participation by the leaders). Based on certain parameters – young (target group for Corby), highly vocal (to ensure enthusiasm) and having a strong network (to ensure reach), the team identified 12 target team leaders and reached out to them for participation. The following five team leaders were finally selected after securing their approval.

Introducing interesting twists to drive conversations and build engagement:

• Twist in the tale # 1 – proposed team leads allow change of vote once – lots of back-forth-tweets emerged. Team leads didn’t agree.
• Twist in the tale #2 – brought down the number of followers to win, to 200 per team –renewed interest in the game at end of week 1.
• Offered continuous back-end suggestions & support to the teams on how to build supporter base.

Actively engaging to ensure the fun quotient was high:

• Predictions and prophecies – periodically shared the tally of the team leads always preceded by fun videos, songs, riddles.
• Undertaking exit polls to drive interest among participants and push supporters.
• Prophecy in the form of a song lyrics (100 miles by Catie Curtis) for a team leader (Dhempe) trailing by 100 followers.
• Prophecy in the form of a movie video, “Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai”(Film – Kaalia), for team leader on top but accused of spam.
• Prophecy in the form of a movie video, “So Gaya, yeh jahan” (Film -Tezaab), for an inactive team leader (baxiabhishek) trailing in the game, his reaction showcasing the spirited play.

Amplifying the natural twists in the game

• E.g. A team leader wanting to quit – teasing, challenging and successfully getting him to jump back with renewed energy.
• Taking a strong stand against spam and engaging with participants having identified the bots.
• Facilitating the competitive build-up among players in a spirited manner.
• Team leaders luring supporters by offering prizes at own behalf ranging from movie tickets, lockerz invites and even declaration of contributing 10% to charity.
• Building hype for the grand finale.
• Periodic polls to evaluate the participants sentiment.
• Great excitement among the participants.

Touch points and channels used

Brand Samsung Mobile also utilized the thriving Corby community on Facebook as a channel of getting more participants over Twitter by sharing periodic updates, content.

The real highlight were the touch points and channels set-up by the participants that helped build greater visibility -

• Blog posts by team leaders & supporters.
• Facebook event page set up by leaders & supporters.
• Give-aways offered by team leaders on their own behalf to win supporters!
• Tracking mechanisms being put in place by the participants themselves.
• Tracking tools /mechanisms set up by team leaders/their supporters to track the Corby Colour Wars, a great example of the level of engagement that the activity was able to build with its participants.
• Facebook event pages set up by team leaders to garner support for their respective teams.
• Blogs by contestants and participants around the Samsung Corby Colour Wars.

Impact – Outcome

As elaborated earlier, Samsung Corby Colour Wars did successfully bring all aspects the brief together. In doing so, not only did we generate huge buzz across the platform and other Samsung Mobile touch points for Samsung Corby, but also seeded Samsung Corby as the youth phone in the touch-screen segment.

• Exposure – the total exposures received from the activity were 6,15,750*(* Exposures – sum of all the tweets mentioning the relevant keyword, each multiplied by the number of followers of the person tweeting)
• Engagement with stakeholders – From a total of 3284 tweets with Samsung Corby mentions, 87% came from the participants.
• Three of Samsung Corby Colour Wars hashtags among the top 25 most trending topics in India*
• On Slideshare.com, the Corby Colour Wars Terms & Conditions document came into the “Hot on Twitter section” 8 times in the duration of the contest: The findings of Digital Brand Index, an independent survey conducted by Edelman in association with Brandtology for the period Oct-Dec 2009 validated the impact of the Samsung Corby Colour Wars on Samsung’s overall presence online.
• Samsung ranked #4 among the top 10 buzziest brands in India, jumping 3 positions from the previous quarter July-Sept.
• 123% increase in the no. of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions). It is noteworthy that the number of tweets (with Samsung Corby.s mention) were 2853 contributing 56% of overall brand mentions.
• Twitter was the top channel of buzz with 76 per cent of all mentions (118,150) found on the micro-blog platform.
• The activity was able to connect the brief with strategic objective of positioning the Samsung Corby as a youth touch phone.

Learnings

The activity re-affirmed for us that if the concept seeded is strong and resonates with the brand rationale as well as the target audience, it will enjoy a natural success.

While we got tremendous hype for the activity, we never made becoming a @Samsung_Mobiles fan mandatory for participation – the idea was use this buzz-oriented activity as an opportunity for engagement – one out of every two people we interacted followed us of their own accord.

Some of the challenges we faced due to the heavy volumes of conversation were:

1. Tracking – An elaborate process of filtering involved in tracking the activity to ensure accuracy of results:

• Multiple tweets from one account for one team were counted only as one submission. Therefore duplications had to be removed within and between teams.
• If a Twitter handle tweeted for more than one team, the team they tweeted for first was taken as their valid entry.
• People outside of India who tweeted a particular team’s hashtag were included in the count for purposes of selecting the winning team, but not in the draw for prizes (for themselves).
• Brand / Company Twitter accounts were not to be included in the count.
• Threat of spam – there were bots identified during the contest that were getting participants to share the team hash-tag. There was a strong stand taken against the same with team leaders being informed of a potential disqualification were they found to be involved o Bots were eliminated from the team members lists (accounts with 0 followers and only one tweet with one of the contest’s hash-tags). People who joined teams on manipulated by bots were included in the draw, but kept out of the count for selecting the winning team.

What Next

Samsung has created Social Footprints and the engagement is growing. The Social Media journey for Samsung Mobiles has been received with great acceptance and initial excitement, and we’ll be building on that in the future.

Reasoning

Our focus was clearly on strategy

• Even though the Samsung Corby Colour Wars may appear only a tactical initiative, it marries back into our bigger strategic objective vis-à-vis both Samsung Corby and the Touch segment.

Extremely high conversation factor

• From a total of 3284 tweets with brand mentions in the 12 days, 2853 tweets were from the teams and other fans, leading to an overall exposure of around 6,15,750 exposures at the rate of 0.09 INR per exposure (given our budget for the activity).

Credits Strategy

Blogworks – strategic social media solutions

Credits Execution

Blogworks, Starcom (Buying)

Testimonials

At the outset, thanks much for an opportunity to get involved in the fun. Fun, yes, coz for me the idea of engagement was fun. And the way the tweets from @Samsung_Mobiles motivated/teased/commented, everything came out as an entertaining and involving (very important) initiative rather than a hard lined marketing effort. Kudos to the team (and the individual managing the Twitter account)! It clearly showed the hard work put into the effort. – Abhishek Baxi, Team Leader, Corby Colour Wars

SamsungCorbyWars was fun! No matter who wins but it was a feeling which I could compare with the tug-of-war we did in high school. – Praval Singh, Team Leader, Corby Colour Wars

Shimauli the Chief Buzz Officer of Buzallong highlights the Social Media Marketing campaign by Samsung Corby” in a Blog post by Sorav Jain that compiles the Social Media Highlights of 2009

Factsheet

Name of the company: Samsung Electronics Private Limited

Number of Employees:5000+

Category: Brand

Case submitted by: Ankur Sharma, Digital Manager

Website: www.in.samsungmobile.com

Category- Long-term Initiatives

Title- Positive Journalism – The Better India

Share a little about your organisation

The Better India is a news organization with a difference – it reports only positive stories, showcases unsung heroes – people who are making a positive impact and leading developmental solutions.

Executive Summary

Founded by a Bangalore based couple, The Better India aims to use the concept of positive journalism and bring about a mindset change amongst its readers.

We hope that by showcasing stories of social and economic development by ordinary citizens, we might be able to inspire at least one amongst our readers to do something that leaves an impact. Small or big. But, an impact.

Background

Most sources of news provide a larger coverage to sensationalism, negative news, stories of despair and tragedy. Everyday newspapers were becoming difficult for us to consume. Surely, there had to be a lot more to India than just the deaths, scandals and corruption.

This led us to start The Better India – an initiative to showcase Positive news, Happy Stories and Unsung Heroes.

Approach/ Strategy

The web has a low (or nil) barrier of entry. We set up a portal, started searching for positive news via friends, colleagues and other organizations. Slowly, we also started amassing a steadily growing readership. Now we have reached a stage where readers point us to various events of positive development in and around their communities.

Readers are on the lookout for such news, and in turn are inspired to do more for their surroundings.

Stakeholders

We’ve engaged many NGOs who desperately needed a platform to showcase what they were doing. However, from an effort perspective, it was just a team of 2 who started this and ran it for more than a year. In the recent past, we’ve managed to get 2 more people on board our team.

About the initiative

Initially, we started searching for positive news via various other media and put them up on our site. As we grew, we diversified into original coverage of our own and since then we’ve grown from strength to strength. An able use of all social media channels (twitter, facebook etc) has seen our popularity rise quickly. We were recently invited at the IIM-A’s Entrepreneurship summit too to give a talk about The Better India.

Impact – Outcome

Impact, for us as of now, is to reach out to as many readers as possible. We started with zero readership less than 2 years ago and now our site is read by close to 15000 visitors every month. Additionally, around a 1000 people subscribe to our newsletters.

Learnings

One learning – if you have an idea, go out there and execute it. Don’t spend too much time on planning. Your idea will evolve on its own, you just need to listen to it regularly and adapt everything around it.

What Next

As of now it is a 4 member team reporting positive news 1-2 times every week. In the near future, we plan to start an internship program for all students (including journalism students) who can get an exposure in the field of positive journalism by working with us.

Reasoning

There is no single other site that has achieved what we have done so far. We’ve been around for 2 years now (and that in itself speaks of our dedication to this initiative).

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Testimonials

Recently, we had published an article about an organization called Blind with Camera – visually impaired pursuing photography. To this article, we received the following comment:

This information was really thought provoking. I have no words to express the joy that I had while reading through this article. While I share similar kind of visual problem and always had a great passion towards photography, this probably got me the wings for that passion. Thanks a million for this article. – Sowmya.

It is testimonials of this kind that makes our effort worthwhile. Also, our site has hundreds of comments from various people appreciating our work.

Factsheet

Name of the company: The Better India
Number of Employees: 1-10
Category: Other
Case submitted by: Dhimant Parekh, Co-Founder
Website: http://www.thebetterindia.com

Category – Long term initiative

Title-Peace Portal Network

Share a little about your organisation

Peace Portal is a not-for-profit private association (non-governmental) dedicated to project networking of sustainable solutions by bringing together faith groups, non-profits, and for-profits with solutions for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We produce the annual UN Day of Peace 24 hour global broadcast in coordination with Pathways To Peace & Unity foundation, and host the Local Currency Council conferences.

Executive Summary

We develop sustainable solutions to today’s economic and ecological challenges. We provide our Members, Strategic Alliance Partners, and business relations with tools, training, and relationships to successfully meet their goals.

Our purpose is to ease the global transition from the declining Industrial Age socio-economic model based on competitive commerce and use of natural resources, to a new Information Age model based on knowledge and collaboration.

Background

In the beginning, Ministers of of an Inter-Faith Fellowship were discussing the effects of the Information Age on the youth of today, especially the negative effects that violent battle based Virtual Worlds was having on their minds.

What could be done?

You can’t force the kids not to use the computer, they’ll need cyberspace tools and knowledge if they wish to succeed in the rapidly approaching Information Age knowledge market; they need to be comfortable with computers, not inundated and desensitized by them.

The best answer seemed to be to offer a non-violent alternative where the users (youth and adults alike) could be given a framework wherein they would be thinking and relating to each other as equal Digital Souls, in a fun co-creative Virtual platform. With partners we decided to create a Virtual Universe as a place where we could provide contexts for interacting, communicating, and educating. It is our intent to example universal principles of life without dis-agreeing with the names we give to these principles, who taught them, and/or other diversions from actually “embracing the principles” that lead to cooperative sustainable solutions.

Honesty, security, love, basic rights, and truth are universal principles of all religions and cultures; these principles provide a common thread to all of humanity, without prejudice to belief systems. Under the common banner of achieving the 8 Millennium Development Goals we have been building websites, online communities, and assisting in the development of information age commerce models which culminate in our yearly 25 hour UN Peace Day Global Broadcast Event.

Our portfolio of projects can be explored at www.freedigitalsystem.com, it includes our sites which include; www.peaceportal.mobi, www.peaceday.tv, www.localcurrencycouncil.org, www.foodfreedom.us, www.peacemusicproject.org, and others.

Approach/ Strategy

Our objectives are to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and more (things not included in the MDGs) through project networking of practical solutions to the challenges facing humanity.

Stakeholders

We engage all stakeholders, although our emphasis is on the development of emerging markets out of poverty through the leveraging of environmental and information technologies. Specific focus, although not exclusive, is on engaging sustainable information commerce models where value is based on human creativity and knowledge instead of use of natural resources; where someone can shoot a lion video instead of a lion for it’s skin and still provide for their family.

About the initiative

Our activities are educational and practical, we broadcast the 2st ever 24 hour UN Peace Day Internet event in 2009 and are following up this year with an even bigger event that has brought more partners together. We have also designed economic models adopted by for-profit companies that support our work. A portfolio of the educational and outreach sites we have created is located at www.freedigitalsystem.com ~ it provides links to multiple sites that address food, economics, human rights, and the wholistic range of inter-connected sectors required to create a better more just and sustainable world.

Impact – Outcome

We reached over 2 million people with our first Peace Day Broadcast, have reached countless others through our generally silent sponsorship of events, and allowed many people to find a new means of earning a living online (without using natural resources) as a result of our work with corporate entities such as www.getzooks.biz, www.epaycafe.com, and others.

Learnings

The greatest challenges are in getting organizations to work together without feeling threatened, to adopt the newly accepted model of “co-opetition”. We have learned, too trust the process, and keep being faithful to principles.

What Next

We will continue to provide educational outereach, on March 6th we are doing a global Community Currency Conference, on September 17-21st we will be broadcasting again the UN Day of Peace Event on our www.peaceday.tv channel, and we are hosting a unique unencumbered global currency system to shortly launch at www.epaycafe.com in association with our non-violent virtual worlds at www.projectrestoration.com and www.freedigitaluniverse.com. Collectively, all of these websites make-up a single holistic system called the GATE, Global Autonomous Transmitting Extranet, dedicated to the sovereignty (freedom) of all living beings on the planet.

Reasoning

Most peacebuilders and activist work in ways that decrease the effects of the problem, not the cause, which is the industrial age economic model based on competition. We work not as revolutionaries (we are not revolting), we work towards evolving to something better, a new age (the Information Age) by balancing and leveraging the new tools humanity now has at it’s disposal.

Credits Strategy

Kevin Kerber, Stephen Fantl, Pathways To Peace, Unity Foundation, World Community Service Center, Energy Village, Light of Life Society

Credits Execution

GetZooks, Unity Foundation, Kevin Kerber, Stephen Fantl, Valerie Gamache, Kyra Storojev, Susanna Meyer

Testimonials

You are ahead of your time, and just may save the world from it’s own ignorance. Jack Casarez

Thank you for your peace building efforts, it is much appreciated. Bill McCarthy, Director of Unity Foundation

Factsheet

Name of the Company:Peace Portal Mutual Benefit Association
Number of Employees:1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Stephen Fantl, Executive Director
Website: http://freedigitalsystem.com

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Paper Preeti Visits the World

Share a little about your organisation

Since 2000, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society has been improving the lives of girls in rural India. Its mission is to uplift and empower girls from the poorest sections of society by providing free education and vocational training and creating a new generation of self-reliant and educated girls who will break the cycle of poverty in the region.

Executive Summary

The Paper Preeti Project was begun as a way for students at Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School to learn about the world outside of their village in Uttar Pradesh India. 25 girls were selected to create Paper Preeti versions of themselves (small drawings of themsleves) – these versions were then sent to friends & supporters of Pardada Pardadi throughout the world.

Background

Inspired by the popular children’s book, Flat Stanely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley#Synopsis), about a boy who wakes up flat as a pancake one morning and decides to use his flat shape to his advantage by easily traveling the world.

We are always looking for ways to learn about the world outside their village and to keep them engaged and excited about education.

Approach/ Strategy

• We began the project in April 2009 and it is ongoing. With an initial batch of 24 students, we have had tremendous response.
• When a person receives a Paper Preeti in the mail, they are instructed to take a photo of the girl somewhere and then upload the photo themsleves on our Flickr page. So far, we have received 47 photos.
• We will continue with this project as time permits

Stakeholders

• We reached out to our extensive network of friends and supporters through our website, newsletter, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to tell them about this initiative.
• We asked people interested in receiving the Paper Preeti to send us their address, and upon receiving, mailed them their unique Paper Preeti.

About the initiative

As a busy NGO, we designed our initiative to be easily executed but with big benefits. Once we had selected the 24 students to participate, we simply needed them to draw themselves. Secondly, we used all our marketing channels to tell the world about the project and ask for volunteers to receive the Paper Preeti.

Here is an example of how we used all our communication channels to advertise this initiative:
On our website: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/PaperPreeti.html

Our newsletter: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/May2009newsletter.html

Impact – Outcome

We measured our success in three ways:

1. By the excitement generated by the students to learn about different parts of the world through their Paper Preeti, and their increased passion for education.
2. Through the number of photos uploaded by recipients of Paper Preeti. The current number photos are 47.
3. Through general awareness for the work we are doing by the number of emails we have received in support.

Learnings

We learned that Paper Preeti was a very good educational tool, as well as a wonderful way to tell the world about the work we are doing in a corner of the world often ignored.

Our biggest challenge is keeping the momentum going for the receivers of the Paper Preeti. In our digital age, people are less accustomed to handling physical mail and tend to let their Paper Preeti sit on their desk for weeks.

What Next

We will be evaluating the program after one year (in April 2010) and discussing launching the next batch of Paper Preeti’s into the world.

Reasoning

• Not only is our initiative a wonderful tool for us to excite our students about education and learning about the outside world, but it turned into a fabulous tool to discuss the importance of attention for the girl child in rural India.
• You see, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) is based in the village of Anupshahar, in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This area is one of India’ poorest. It is infamous for being crime-ridden. Moreover, it is one of the least-educated and least-literate sections of India.
• PPES was founded by Virender (Sam) Singh, a retired head of DuPont South Asia. Sam grew up in Anupshahar; although he left many years ago, he moved back in 1999 to use his success for the benefit of the people he left behind.
• Sam knew that to break the cycle of poverty, he had to first focus on improving the quality of life for the weakest members of this society: rural female children. Since they’re often neglected and uneducated, they’re forever dependent on male family members for their livelihood.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: World Toilet Organization
Number of Employees: 1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Jenny Steeves
Website: http://worldtoilet.org/

India Social Case Challenge – Edition 1

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Nokia Email With Ease Campaign

Share a little about your organisation

Bloggers’ Mind is a three-year-old company, dedicated to Social Media analytics and buzz marketing. It is a 25 member team with offices in US, Delhi and Mumbai. Bloggers’ Mind supports Nokia India in furthering their company objectives and rolling out Social Media campaigns and strategic initiatives.

Executive Summary

Email with ease campaign was launched in April 2009. The KRAs were to:

• Handhold mobile users in setting up their emails in 3 simple steps
• Educate them about the fact that mobile emails are easy to set up and they can do it themselves and
• Clear perceptions around email configuration and the fact that it can only be handled by IT Heads/geeks, increase adoption. A holistic consumer education and advocacy program was launched that reached out to over 10,09,822 active online consumers and helped increase adoption significantly.

Background

Nokia was primarily associated with mobile devices and attracting users towards email solutions was a challenge.

At the same time, there was a compelling need for people to access email on the move as it helped people work smarter. An in-depth consumer behavior study was conducted online that helped derive that the major bottleneck was its complexity to set up. The common user was perplexed with the way email needed to be configured and relied on their organization IT Heads for help.

Approach/ Strategy

• Build thought leadership for Nokia in the mobile email segment
• Drive wider adoption amongst both advanced and aspiring users
• Increase awareness on Mobile Email and its benefits
• Establish the fact that it’s easy to set up mobile email

Stakeholders

Establish thought leadership for Nokia in mobile email

Build a community

• Step 1: Create a pull for early adopters (awareness)
• Step 2: Build advocates (credibility)
• Step 3: Trigger adoption (conversion)

Counter negative perceptions around mobile email, change consumer mindsets

• Launch an education program
• Create awareness features and benefits
• Develop a platform which can be used to address email related queries

Build conviction around ease of use in setting up mobile email

• Trigger conversations
• Ease of use, benefits
• E75 as a preferred option
• Tap into a wide segment of mobile users across Social Media touch points

Duration:April 2009 till date.

The campaign was initiated in April with the launch of E75 (Nokia’s business device) and was later merged into Nokia E72, the latest business device from Nokia, thus ensuring a long term approach and optimization.

Resources:

An expert panel with 8 specialists on email, 4 buzz specialists and campaign lead.

About the initiative

The stakeholders engaged with were:

1. Business executives
2. Entrepreneurs and SMEs and
3. Senior/top management executives.

The initiative was very well received amongst professionals from different walks of life, individual entrepreneurs and business professionals.

1. Capture the audience and build a communication channel: Capture a large audience via an interactive online widget that allows consumers to submit their queries and get expert tips.
2. Influence and engage through an interesting two way dialogue: Launched a dedicated community for Eseries and other S60 users to interact and generate conversations around email on mobile
3. Build a panel of experts to generate credibility: Created a panel of experts aimed at addressing and resolving consumer queries established trust amongst consumers looking for a solution.
4. Spread WOM through influencer relations: Seeded the E75 amongst influential Bloggers to experience and demonstrate the benefits of email on the go, how to use NMS and set up corporate emails.

Impact – Outcome

• Generated over 26,709 conversations, 12,987 comments and impacted over 8,72,8000 consumers over a period of 3 months
• Facebook and Twitter pages attracted over 3,000 fans and generated over 10,098 conversations.
• Averaging 4092 + conversations per month
• 16,098 direct conversations triggered around Nokia Messaging and setting up corporate emails
• Developed an Indian mobile email community with over 13,000+ members, generating over 2500+ conversations
• The online help widget generated over 3000+ queries, over 2000 tips have been shared with consumers helping them resolve their issues
• Over 3000 profiles captured, close to 1000 consumers have acknowledged that the tips shared have allowed them to resolve their issues

Learnings

• Adopt long-term strategies and build campaigns that are sustainable
• Reach out to consumers and provide them a platform to speak up, share their problems
• Shape opinions via specialist guidance and build consumer confidence
• Understand the pain points of consumers at multiple levels and help them graduate to the next level.
• Be patient, rewards come in time. Look at long-term goals than short term.

What Next

Take the campaign to the next level and leverage on the current user based.

• Use the power of influence and awareness to build advocacy and spread the word across a larger audience.
• Drive higher adoption and activations for Nokia Messaging (email solutions).
• Broadbase the campaign to younger generations, middle management/students

Reasoning

This is a best example of a Social Media case, wherein a practical statement was identified, steps were taken to address the pain points and the efforts were measured at every step to ascertain the impact of the campaign. This ties in a few fundamentals of Social Media very well, that are:

• Identify and engage
• Convert and advocate
• Measure the influence.

Credits – Strategy

Self

Credits – Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: Bloggers’ Mind
Number of Employees: 11-50
Category: Technology
Case submitted by: Songita Verma; Founder and CEO
Website: http://bloggersmind.com

Category – Long term initiative

Title-Communicating progressively

Share a little about your organisation

Institute of Rural Research and Development (IRRAD) is an initiative of S.M. Sehgal Foundation established as a Trust in 1999 to envision rural people across India motivated and empowered to make their lives more secure and prosperous through better education, health, improved skills, and supportive governance. Mewat, one of the most backward districts of Haryana, India is inhabited by Meo Muslims, who have remained backward despite being in proximity to the millennium city of Gurgaon.

Executive Summary

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family. Kofi Annan

Asymmetry of information is the essence of poverty — that is why people are poor. One way to address this is to feed them with information. Lack of access to information is the chief reason behind backward communities.

Not knowing about their rights, the rural communities are unable to access services, plan for their areas, or choose from options to tackle certain problems. As a result of which, the poor remain at a disadvantage and this also adds to their vulnerability.

Quick-fix solutions, one-size-fits-all, central directive approaches fail when applied to complex human and social problems. Poverty with self-reinforcing dynamics has to be treated with accuracy, consistency and reliability of the information content, processes and systems.

Background

Information can help transcend socio economic and cultural barriers. World as a global village has strong underpinnings of information. IRRAD’s initiative is inspired by the able leadership of a forward looking visionary and an action-oriented implementer, Dr. Suri Sehgal who always had a dream to change the tattered sketch of rural India, an India which has around 600,000 villages with many unmet needs of human life such as social equality, justice and path to vertical mobility.

IRRAD’s mission is to implement Integrated Sustainable Village Development (ISVD) in select village clusters, through its four Centers, Program Implementation, Capacity Building, Rural Research and Policy, Governance and Advocacy has propelled the organization to deploy social media for development of marginalized communities.

Approach/ Strategy

Development communication is a field of activity that is a mixture of disciplines: it is part science, in that it draws heavily on social and behavioral sciences, psychology, and diffusion theory; it is part art, in that draws on the talents and skills involved in media production; and it is part craft in that it uses a wide variety of aids and technical equipment.

This, plus the fact that development communication should cut across and intermingle with all sectors concerned with rural development if it is to yield its full potential, means that there is no one organizational location for development communication that is valid for every situation.

The three domains of social media furthered through solutions deployed all across the organization which strengthen ISVD are:

• Content or Knowledge creation stage: IRRAD’s Programs Implementation and Capacity Building Center form the pivot around which the content generation for the grassroots, and for internal as well as external audiences happens. Trainings and direct implementation of programs at the grassroots create a lot of knowledge. The soft areas like attitudinal change, receptivity, participation form the basis for further research and the hard areas come out as facts that are used as starting points for various issue based studies that probe deeper into the problem and devise appropriate solutions.
• Process or Knowledge synthesis stage: Knowledge synthesis happens through rural research center at IRRAD who constantly search for social and economic strategies for combating poverty. This begins by studying the socio-demographic profile of the community before any interventions are done, assessing impact of programs, determining key indicators of progress, monitoring and evaluation of impacts both at micro and macro levels. The synthesis involves collecting new data and giving the already generated content a shape and form which can be shared by the external audiences through studies, academic papers, and statistical data.
• System or Knowledge dissemination stage: The Policy, Governance and Advocacy center at IRRAD creates a platform to empower rural communities and sensitize policy makers. It works for the dissemination of the knowledge created at the grassroots by preparing a skill pool of trained people who can affect good rural governance. It lends a voice to the marginalized such that they understand existing policies and demand their entitlements.

Stakeholders

There is a general feeling among the donors that in the not-for-profit sector there is a lot of wastage and lack of accountability. Also the communities whom the not-for-profit sector works for are also skeptical initially. The organization thus has to walk the tightrope in order to create a fine balance between the two. IRRAD has tried to do justice to both by applying good business principles to achieve results for the organization. In order to create a multiplier effect of the development interventions, IRRAD formulated an integrated model for sustainable development of the villages called ISVD.
The key issues of trust building, non-availability and inconsistent information are addressed through four centers at IRRAD which specifically follow the knowledge dynamics. According to William Pollard, “Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”

To put forth a concerted effort to provide accurate, consistent and reliable information to our stakeholders, IRRAD uses a number of mediums to share information. Few of the information dissemination tools used by IRRAD are:

• Publications like Annual Reports, newsletters-Vikas Patrika (printed newsletter in the local language)
• Electronic
• Website, an e-newsletter called IRRAD Connect
• Information Education Communication (IEC) materials
• Posters, Training Manuals, Recknors, project information models, charts.
• Case Studies
• Videos, before after change photos.
• Awareness Rallies
• Presence in mass media
• Facilitating feedback
• Seminars and workshops
• Street theatre

About the initiative

Tools for grassroots:

• Vikas Patrika: A development quarterly which highlights the stories of change and important developments at the grassroots.
• ICTs for development:

1. Mobile telephony for the Project Implementation Team has abridged the gap between the core team and the field team.
2. Computer literacy at the grassroots for rural youth

• IEC Materials: Information-Education-Communication, the multi pronged approach to development has been instituted all across the programs. Each new intervention is introduced through proper groundwork, supplying project literature to the beneficiaries and preparing promotional material to ensure multiplier effect of the information.
• Trainings and meetings: Effective tools to empower people. Trainings are an integral part of the development dynamics. IRRAD lays special emphasis on training grassroots people and build their capacities in such a way that they catalyze, plan and manage their own agenda for change.
• Exposure visits and demonstrations: Building on the premise of Seeing is believing, the beneficiaries are taken on exposure visits to see for themselves the impacts of interventions and subsequently adopt the same in their households. Demonstrations are set up at community centers to showcase the possible impacts that interventions could have.
• Resource and Training Centers: Farmers Resource centers provide accurate and timely information to farmers relating to agricultural practices, seeds, cropping patters.
• Life Skills education centers: These centers train adolescents on how to make informed choices for a better future by giving them basic reading and writing and stitching and embroidery skills.

A holistic framework: Cross cutting issues relating to information dissemination leading to transparency and credibility are also served through the four centers of IRRAD.

• Trainings: for village champions, social scientists, volunteers, and other NGOs.

1. Scope: The scope of trainings spans through a wide spectrum of subjects ranging from Trainings of Village Champions on ISVD, ToTs on NREGA, RTI, research methodologies, documentation, gender sensitization, water management technologies like bio sand filters, recharge wells, roof water harvesting, Training of health volunteers, instructors at Life Skills Education centers to vocational training of youth in computers, electronics, mobile phone repairs.
2. Approach: Sincere efforts are made to make the trainings participatory and open feedback is encouraged from the trainees, which is again ploughed back into making the trainings more effective in future.

• Project Implementation at grassroots based on Integrated Sustainable Village Development (ISVD)

1. Scope: ISVD has five programs ensuring holistic development of a village viz. water management, income enhancement, life skills education, rural health and alternative energy.
2. Approach: All the five programs are backed by Community Mobilization which begins by listening to the villagers, encouraging them to take initiative. A bottoms up approach is followed and all interventions are affected by blending traditional knowledge with technological innovation. A detailed blueprint is discussed to suit the local needs subsequently. Once the buy in from the community is ensured, the community comes forward to contribute either in cash or kind in the project.

• Rural Research: undertakes research and injects innovation into ISVD

1. Scope: Assessing impact of ISVD programs, determining key indicators of progress, and monitoring them regularly and analyzing the socio-economic and demographic indicators that influence rural development and poverty, at both micro (household/village) and macro (state and national) levels. It promotes action research with a people centered approach.

2. Approach: Constant search for social and economic strategies for combating poverty at the grassroots level that are both creative and feasible. These strategies are backed by authentic data collection from the field which is pilot tested in the first phase to incorporate corrective action if any, verification of the data thus collected and interpreting the same for formulation and effective implementation of development programs.

• Policy, Governance and Advocacy: a leading information resource for policy makers, based on hands-on experience, for wider impact.

1. Scope: To affect good governance at the grassroots, the policy center conducts trainings to prepare future leaders in the community who are aware of their rights and can get access to those entitlements.
2. Approach: Participatory, task driven. The trainees are given time bound tasks to actually get things done at the village level by engaging in dialogue with the government representatives, create awareness in the community and build capacities of fellow villagers such that things happen to change.

Impact – Outcome

With a strong belief in integrated models of rural development, IRRAD’s ISVD model impacts 17 villages through water management, income enhancement, education, health and alternative energy. As a result of these interventions, 32000 people in the villages across Mewat are on the path of becoming self sufficient. Water harvesting structures (30 check dams, 24 recharge wells, 20 new wells, 17 roof water harvesting units) have quenched the thirst of many villagers; 2526 farmers gained better access to inputs, support and markets; 2000 girls who had never seen the inside of a classroom graduated from skill centers and access to better health services have given a new lease of life to the apathy in the villages.

Implementing an enterprise-wide social media architecture that cuts across all issues can go a long way in building visibility for the organization and unleash opportunities. Other related social media deployment benefits are:

• Forming rewarding and mutually beneficial partnerships
• Attracting additional resources for expansion of project
• Catalyzing new initiatives that scale up the established model to new area
• Meeting organizations objectives
• Monitoring, verifying, and correcting information errors to sustain the flow of information
• Enhancing security and control

We quote the website as an example to know the measurable outreach of the medium:
Time period of reference: June 14- July 14, 2009
Visits: 98
Page views: 545
Pages/visit: 5.56
Average time on site: 4.04 min
New Visits: 89.80%
Bounce Rate: 28.57%
Traffic Sources Overview:

• Search Engines 61.00 (62.24%)
• Direct Traffic 26.00 (26.53%
• Referring Sites 11.00 (11.22%)

Most viewed pages: About Us, Team, Work locations

Learnings

Tradition of Tolerance
Meos of Mewat depict a tale of sheer neglect. The inhabitants, mostly the Meo tribals are agriculturalists and have distinct ethnic and socio-cultural features. Though the Meos had converted to Islam during the Tughlak dynasty in the 14th century, they have preserved many social and cultural traits of the Hindu kshatriyas. Historically, the region has been subject to many invasions and plundering. It has remained one of the ‘most under-developed regions’ of India; even though it is located within the prosperous state of Haryana. Mewat represents some of the lowest social indices whether infant mortality, literacy, male-female sex ratio, or development indices, such as, availability of clean water, physical or electronic connectivity, etc.
All the historic upheavals led the community devoid of even the basic amenities and the dignity and quality of life guaranteed by the Indian constitution. When we started out to work in the villages, initially four, we were clear that we would be catalysts for programs for which the government has the primary responsibility, such as, curative health and education.

Second, for our own programs, we thought it is important to prioritize based on what the community wants, mobilize the community and involve them in the implementation of the programs.
The challenges faced by IRRAD while implementing social media tools passed us through a set of learnings, which made us look back and take recourse or amend our existing approach. Any development intervention can be a success only when the community believes in it and is capacitated to sustain and take it forward. Social media can play a convincing role in building favorable rapport with the community members such that they come forward and extend their supporting hand to all development interventions.

Situation Analysis and Communication Research
No communication activities can be expected to succeed without a prior understanding of how the people to be affected by a project perceive their own problems and the development options being proposed, what they aspire to, how they obtain and exchange information, which media sources and interpersonal channels enjoy the most credibility, and so on.

Such information may already be available when a project is being formulated, but if not, it will need to be obtained, for it is this information which determines many of the features of a communication plan, including the message design, the most appropriate media and channels to use, and how and when to use them. Part of the research may consist of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) survey regarding the innovations being proposed by the project.

What matters and what doesn’t: When IRRAD began its work in 1999, its team had rather naively considered focusing only on agricultural improvements and population issues. However, after talking to villagers, it quickly realized that the farmers and their families faced myriad problems. First and foremost, they were desperate for water. In some villages the female literacy was only 2%. In one typical village, only two out of 200 households had toilets. The average woman had seven children with hardly any healthcare facilities…and the list goes on and on. The above issues gave a completely different picture of the needs in the society and accordingly the social media strategy underwent a change.

What Next

IRRAD will continue to strengthen the ideals of information integrity and empower the village communities by providing them with information that can create awareness and further their well-being in society. The gap between “India” and “Bharat” can be bridged by effective information inclusion of people at the bottom of the pyramid.

Reasoning

No single medium is better than any other. Circumstances and the requirements of the development project dictate which should be used. Audience research concerning what media the people have access to and which enjoy credibility, and what is actually available or could be realistically established, greatly influence the choice. However, it should be remembered that a message arriving in a slightly different form and through different channels has the most impact in helping people towards behavioral change. Hence, multi-media approaches are usually the most effective.
It should be stressed, however, that behavioral change is seldom the result of exposure to media alone; most people require face-to-face discussion with someone more knowledgeable or experienced than themselves before they can make their own judgment and try an innovation. In effect, any information received has to be absorbed and evaluated for its usefulness and appropriateness in the recipients’ circumstances before they will act on it. Discussion is an essential element in this process.

The main features and steps of implementing social media activity, which makes the initiative unique are:

• Communication process for participatory planning
• Identifying the target audience in each program
• Setting Objectives for the attitude and behavior necessary from each audience
• Audience analysis
• Communication plan for each target audience
• Message design
• Training of field agents –Interpersonal Communication
• Ongoing monitoring and evaluation
• The information resulting from the monitoring is fed back into the implementation.
• Induction about the foundation to the new joiners for the better productivity

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self and external

Testimonials

Awards and Partnerships:
Finalist for Excellence in Information Integrity 2009 by Information Integrity Council’; ‘Distinguished Water NGO 2009-10 Revival of Rural Water Resources by UNESCO and Water Digest’; ‘Best Water NGO 2008-09 in Revival of Rural Water Resources’; ‘Best Water NGO 2007-2008 in Water Harvesting’, Award by Water Digest and UNESCO; premium organization for undertaking water resource management in Mewat, by Mewat Development Agency, 2008; Pinnacle NRI Award 2007, by NRI Institute; member-2007, CII National Committee on Industry NGO partnerships; Golden Peacock Award Finalist, by Institute of Directors, 2006; Samaj Gaurav Samman, National Award 2006, by Manav Dharm Mission; awarded a Consultative Status with United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), ongoing since 2005; member of Clinton Global Initiative, ongoing since 2005; fellows of Jamshetji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity since 2005; implementing member of UNDP and the Government of In dia’s Endogenous Tourism Program since 2005; member of Credibility Alliance, ongoing since 2005; Bharat Samman Award 2005, NRI Institute; member of IndianNGO.com, ongoing since 2005; recognition for implementing the ‘better life options program’ for adolescent girls in India, by Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), 2005; member of ICRISAT Hybrid Parent Research Consortia on Pearl Millet, Sorghum and Pigeon Pea ongoing since 2004; designated organization of the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), Anand since 2004; founder member of India Development Coalition of America (IDCA), 2003.

IRRAD’s reviews on Great Nonprofits

Factsheet

Name of the company:Institute of Rural Research and Development
Number of Employees:101-200
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Arti Manchanda, Communication Associate
Website: http://www.irrad.org

India Social Case Challenge – Edition 1

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title-Sapno Ko Chali Chooney: A College Intervention Programme for Women Empowerment

Share a little about your organisation

Jagran Pehel is a part of Shri Puran Chandra Gupta Smarak Trust a non-profit making charitable trust of the Jagran group which is highly committed to social upliftment. It is also the CSR initiative of Jagran Prakashan Ltd., one of the leading media conglomerates in India, with a proven track record of contributing to social development through mass awareness and advocacy campaigns. Pehel, by utilising one of the largest media plexus in the country, is actively involved in awareness generation, advocacy and promotion of social development through innovative means of mass communication.

We partner with multilateral/bilateral agencies, Government and Non Government Organisations to create synergistic effects by building upon the existing strategic approaches of ours and our partners. Our endeavour is to improve the quality of human life by designing and implementing programs that achieve high levels of community education, self-efficiency and positive behavioral change.

Executive Summary

Sapnon Ko Chali Chhoone (SKCC) is a joint initiative of Pehel, UNFPA and Bihar State Women’s Development Corporation, to empower young women enrolled in colleges of Bihar. The programme covered more than 50000 girls in 21 colleges of 6 districts of Bihar. The aim was to build capacities of young women, resulting in women empowerment and reduction of gender disparity in the state.

During the course of six months, 50 talented girls were selected through various competitions and observations as local champions to whom we call “champions of change”. Leadership building cum felicitation workshop organized for these 50 girls, who will further be nurtured as the local champions of change in the phase II of the project.

Background

Our strategic intervention was targeted at 20 girl’s colleges across 6 districts (Ara, Bhagalpur, Gaya, Jehanabad, Muzaffarpur and Patna) of Bihar. The program has the following objectives:

• To promote awareness on gender equity amongst the students and faculty of girls colleges in Bihar (especially girls and women)
• To provide a platform for girls studying at the target colleges to enable them to make strong statements based on their perspectives, experiences and expectations related to gender equality and rights (especially for girls and women)
• To improvise and sustain a process of dialogue and cross-sensitization between girl students of the target colleges and opinion makers in the media
• To provide emerging advocates amongst the students many opportunities to share their views on gender equality and rights with the community at large, and motivate them to be strong change agents in society.

Approach/ Strategy

The project strategy included identifying and enlisting participation of 21 girl’s colleges across 6 districts of Bihar. The selection of colleges and districts was made strategically, depending on socio-demographic indicators and logistical convenience. About two teachers were nominated as nodal officers in every college, who were given the responsibility to support the project within that college. In the process, SKCC aimed at developing the capacities of nodal teachers and institutionalize gender issues in the college activities for sustainability.

Another strategy was to create linkages and involve local stakeholders, like government departments, media and NGOs which could bring them closer to the felt needs and aspirations of girls, while also provide girls with much needed support services and handholding support at the local level.

Finally, strategic selection of discussion themes, resource persons and IEC material was done to promote the objectives of the project. Selected girls were recognized as local champions among media so that they, their parents and peers are encouraged and provide them with continuous support.

The project was for duration of 9 months (6 months, extended to 9) and was implemented by a project management team, especially recruited for this purpose. A total budget of about 59 lakhs was spent, mainly on manpower and coordination. Print space and media support was contributed by JPL.

Stakeholders

Various stakeholders of the program include participating organization (Jagran Pehel, BSWDC and UNFPA), selected colleges, students, teachers, parents, local NGOs, GOs and other agencies working towards women empowerment.

Each of these stakeholders were contacted and visited. Finally a preparatory workshop was organized where roles and responsibilities were discussed and divided and a shared clarity over project strategy and IEC was decided. The project received enthusiastic support from all the stakeholders, many of which participated as resource persons, helped in coordination or implementation at college levels. Many agencies put informative stalls in gender fair, and some of them even came forward to provided support services and handholding opportunities to the selected girls.

About the initiative

1. Enlisting of colleges for the project: From the six districts chosen from the state, 20 colleges were shortlisted for the project, keeping in mind that they were women’s colleges except in few cases. In the process of events, one more college in Patna district was added and it was a good example of amalgamation of boys and girls groups together. Thereafter, individual visit to each college was made to seek support collect relevant information. Nodal officers were selected form amongst the faculty members and a calendar of events was prepared in consultation with them.

2. Orientation workshop for Project management team: An orientation of program management team was organized in July 2009. It was attended by UNFPA, JIMMC representative, Project Management Team SKCC Jagran Pehel team and representatives of I Next and Dainik Jagran from the intervention districts of the project. The idea was to provide management team with basic understanding of gender issues in Indian scenario, the program purpose, implementation process and roles and responsibilities of the members of management team.

3. Orientation cum preparatory workshop of stakeholders of SKCC project: was organized in august 2009. The second workshop saw participation from girls of targeted colleges, selected faculty members (nodal teachers), representatives from concerned government departments: Rural Development, Social Welfare, Human Resource Department, Panchayati Raj Institution, Bihar Education Project, Women Development Corporation, resource persons and CSOs. The first day of the workshop constituted of talks, panel discussion and film show on various themes relating to gender. On the second day, girls were introduced to the program, its activities and format.

4. Gender Fair and competition in the colleges: The two days event was organized in all the 21 colleges, with day one focused on information generation through stalls, AVs, discourses with girls and day two for the essay and poster competitions.

5. Evaluation of competition: The students who participated in the competitions their essay and posters were judged at three levels by the experts and based on that the winners were selected.

6. State level Felicitation of girls: The two days workshop on building the leadership skills of girls and state level felicitation of selected champions of change was done in Patna. Future plans regarding hand-holding support and internship exposure were developed.

Impact – Outcome

In terms of outreach, the project reached:

• 4 universities, 21 colleges, 4 government departments 6 districts.
• 44 nodal teachers, 11 political representatives including Chief Minister, Bihar and Dy. Chief Minister, 3 Vice Chancellors, 14 IAS officers, 4 IPS officers, 39 NGOs, 89 resource persons, 3 Editors In Charge and dozens of journalists from Jagran Next and other newspapers and celebrities like Mahesh Bhatt, Nafisa Ali.
• 50,000 girls reached, of whom 17, 317 registered and as 8,977 participated competition and 50 selected as Champions of Change.
• A cadre of 50 promising young female students was identified and developed as local champions.

Qualitatively, the project provided a platform for girls to express themselves, provided them with much needed opportunity structures and recognized them.

The issues related to gender based discrimination got highlighted in the media and role models for many other girls and parents were recognized. In addition to these, project developed the capacities of stakeholders like teachers, colleges, NGOs etc.

Learnings

The first phase of SKCC provided a unique insight into the experiences and feelings of young girls: how they synthesize facts, deal with harshness of reality, how they negotiate with this reality, and how they relate to incidents that might have taken place elsewhere. This has helped in understanding and appreciating the triggers that can motivate them to be Champions of Change in the community.

The only major challenge faced was the lack of infrastructural facilities in some of the rural colleges , particularly due to higher participation than expected. However, this was solved through active engagement of nodal officers and students themselves.

What Next

Jagran Pehel is currently planning phase II of SKCC in Bihar, where the project will be scaled up to 12 districts and 50 colleges with the support of Bihar Government. Apart from this, we will continue to work with selected champions form phase I by involving girls in community development where they can engage with social issues.

In the second phase, we aim at intensified engagement with the selected champions of change from the phase one, and, also, scale up the program to cover more districts, colleges and students. In a few co-ed colleges of the first phase, it was observed that boys too are ready and willing to talk about gender issues. Therefore, in this phase we will also seek the enlistment of boys in co-ed colleges and provide them with an orientation to gender issues.

Jagran Pehel is also trying the same program to replicate in Uttar Pradesh, with a focus on population stabilization and gender.

Reasoning

SKCC can be termed as best practice case study as it encouraged girls to be the change they want to see. It not only recognized the selected champions of change and increased their sense of self worth, but also encouraged their parents, peers and college faculty to promote women empowerment. The project was unique in terms of the linkages it created between various stakeholders, and continued to enjoy their support till the end. Also, the project had a realistic element of sustainability incorporated in it, where the existing clubs, association and groups in college and teachers were systematically involved to institutionalize such activities.

Credits Strategy

UNFPA and Jagran Pehel

Credits Execution

UNFPA, Jagran Pehel, BSWDC and JPL

Testimonials

Sapnon Ko Chali Chhoney is of course an excellent approach for fulfillment of dreams of girls. Your effect in our college is praiseworthy. Not only girls, even boys were excited and got benefited from your program. – Principal, A.N. College, Patna

I feel great pleasure to acknowledge Jagran Pehel for “ Sapnon ko Chali Chhooney” project, will play a key role in the direction of Women’s Empowerment in the state of Bihar. S.K.M College, Jehanabad became highly motivated in attending this event.
- Dr. Sanjay KumarPRINCIPAL (S.K Mahila College)

I was really pleased to see that Jagran Pehel had organised such a project which motivates the college girls to enhance their talent and given them a stage to show it your idea of publishing about different girls who have done exceptionally good in some specific field inspite of all odds was also a topic to be regarded.- Mr. J. Mishra
Teacher
Sharda Jhunjhunwala Mahila College

Factsheet

Name of the company: Jagran Pehel
Number of Employees: 11 to 50
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Anand Madhab, National Head, Jagran Pehel
Website: http://www.jagranpehel.in

Category – Long term initiative

Title-FundACause: A Case Study on the Role of Social Media in Charitable Giving

Share a little about your organisation

‘FundACause’ is an attempt to connect individuals and organisations in India seeking money (for events, medical treatments, education, etc.) with those who might be interested in helping. It does this through Twitter and a blog on Posterous.

Information on funds available for non-government organisations (NGOs) and educational scholarships is also documented on http://twitter.com/FundACause.

Executive Summary

FundACause is a unique platform that posts a wide variety of financial aid appeals – from individuals, NGOs, and corporates on Twitter, a blog, and some online groups. It also makes available information on educational scholarships and grants as well as funds offered to NGOs and individuals. Over ten months, FundACause has contributed in creating a new culture of giving by showcasing a wide range of options that exist for anyone who is interested in making a difference in someone’s life.

Background

When I started FundACause (FAC) ten months ago, the purpose was simply to share some of the mails related to financial appeals, which I received from time to time, on a forum where people could get to know about them and if possible, help in any way.

Over time, I realised that FAC fulfils several needs, or rather, fills many gaps:

• No service in India – online or offline – documents the financial requirements of individuals as well as corporates and non-profit organisations at one place. (Organisations such as GiveIndia and Karmayog understandably have strict criteria for NGOs they list on their site or e-group, which, though, in effect, limits the number of people whose needs can be addressed.)
• FAC not only lists an appeal but also tries to personally connect the requesting organisation or individual with potential sponsors or donors. (Two sample tweets: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Sponsors)
• To the best of my knowledge, no website provides information on people and organisations willing to offer financial support to those in need as well as scholarships and grants. (Sample tweets: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Donors) (Karmayog has a section that displays a few donor organisations but the donor list and their contact details are not updated.)
• No newspaper or Twitter page collates tweets from celebrities – actors, sportspeople, journalists, politicians, etc. – about the social issues or NGOs they engage with.
• FAC also makes a conscious effort to share with celebrities how they can use Twitter (or other social media) to enlist more supporters for the causes they believe in or are actively working towards. (Sample tweets: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Celebrities)
• Finally, FAC also compiles articles and blog posts that might be able to promote giving and offer insights on human behaviour vis-à-vis giving. (Sample tweets: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Articles)

Approach/ Strategy

Every time I receive a mail (from e-groups and friends, mostly) or a tweet that asks for money, I post it on Twitter and my blog.

I try and include those who can help (either by retweeting or by donating money) on that tweet.

A few times, I have searched Twitter to find people or companies that are in the same city or in a related field so I can include them on the tweet.

Each tweet takes me between 1 and 5 minutes to post.

No budgets or resources have been allocated for this activity. There are no tangible expenses other than internet costs.

Stakeholders

I have reached out to NGOs, corporates, celebrities, and other people on Twitter by sharing with them some of the ways in which they can do their bit to make the world a happier, healthier place to live in.

1) Through the FAC blog, NGOs can:

• learn about work being done by other NGOs
• view the manner in which they are soliciting contributions (the kind of proposal or appeal they are making), thus, take tips on how to improve their communication material
• get their own needs circulated to a wider audience that they perhaps didn’t have access to otherwise
• collaborate with other NGOs doing similar work, or even guide other NGOs on various aspects of their functioning (for example, inform NGO X that it doesn’t necessarily need to scout for donors to buy computers since they are offered gratis by a couple of organisations)

2) Through the blog, companies that sponsor events have an option of supporting organisations that work with the disadvantaged by sponsoring NGO events or magazines.

The FAC blog can also be utilised by companies to choose new CSR projects as it lists the needs of 549 people (various kinds of NGOs and individuals) across the country.

3) FAC has also been engaging with very many celebrities by:

• sharing relevant tweets by them on the FAC Twitter page, thus making it easier for NGOs on Twitter to connect with celebrities who seem to be moved by the cause they’re working on
• giving the celebrities specific information on how they can get more people (their ‘followers’ on Twitter) to support the NGO/cause

4) To everybody else on Twitter, the FAC page gives a variety of options regarding how one can reach out to someone in need. FAC has posted needs of all the GiveIndia-certified NGOs (around 220) that have undergone rigorous due diligence, as well as detailed, moving appeals from parents who seek help to pay for their child’s medical treatment or school fees.

Those people who are hesitant about making monetary contributions because of concerns about misappropriation of funds now know that they have the option of directly paying the patients’ hospital bills, or buying text books or food grains for those in need.

Assistance can be extended in non-monetary ways as well, as one reader did by roping in a doctor friend who was willing to waive off his surgery fees for a patient she read about on the FAC page.

At the very least, people on Twitter can get involved by learning about others’ needs (by following the Twitter handle and/or blog) and retweeting them with the belief or hope that help can come in from anywhere. As it probably must for many of the listed cases!

5) FAC also covered community events such as relief work for cyclone Aila victims, the Mumbai Marathon, Twestival, and the Joy of Giving Week (JGW) by compiling information on (almost) all the fund-seekers.

How has this initiative been received by these stakeholders?

A few people and NGOs have been offered financial help by the readers; many more have been offered visibility through retweets. As far as celebrities go, a few of them have retweeted the FAC tweets or asked their ‘followers’ to visit the FAC Twitter page or the blog. However, a large number of the celebrities that FAC has tweeted has not enlisted support of their ‘followers’ by sharing with them information and links that were made available through FAC.

About the initiative

Out of the 1116 tweets on the FAC page, 549 are financial assistance requests, 50 offer funds or scholarships, 17 are articles on giving, and a bulk of the remaining 500 are messages that were sent to those who tweeted about getting involved with social change.

On the blog, the financial assistance appeals have been classified under the labels Education, Health, Nutrition, Salaries, Events, Housing, Living Expenses, Films, Energy Generation, and Miscellaneous.

I have tried to spread the word about some of the funds-related tweets by posting them on the Karmayog e-group, NGOPost, a few other online groups, and sharing them with friends.

Also, FAC has proactively reached out to other organisations in the country that receive appeals for help (Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, United Way, etc.) with an offer to circulate those appeals. Local supplements of two national dailies and an MTV host have also been mailed to gauge their openness to disseminating the FAC data.

Impact – Outcome

• I believe that FAC has been able to show people that if there is motivation to help an individual or an organisation, other things can easily be taken care of.
• FAC on Twitter has 433 ‘followers’ and the blog has been viewed 17,401 times.
• Several tweets from FAC have been retweeted. (Sample retweets of a recent tweet: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Retweets)
• I have also (compiled and) shared through FAC some useful lists on Twitter: blood donors in India, mental health helplines, volunteers available in Bombay, animal adoption blogs, websites that facilitate the giving and receiving of stuff for free, NGOs working on child sexual abuse, those that need computers, etc.
• While ensuring that those in need of funds do, in fact, receive funds through my tweet or blog post was not a goal that I had set (after all, supporting NGOs that attempt to ameliorate the lives of the not-as-privileged needs to be a community-driven effort), I was pleasantly surprised to learn that 7 to 9 of those seeking help received financial aid. (See the comment on http://tinyurl.com/FAC-FundsReceived for an example.)
• It is plausible that a few more people may have been helped but the donor did not want it to be known that s/he is making a donation and hence, FAC wasn’t made aware of the donation.
• Also, some might have learnt about the need through retweets of or emails from other people. Hence, it is difficult to get data on donors who might have directly connected with the beneficiaries.

Aside from these factors, it is difficult to know the exact nature of impact the FAC tweets might be having since not everyone who uses information accessed online provides feedback to the source of that information.

Learnings

What I have learnt from people’s tweets to me and FollowFriday recommendations is that many people are very appreciative of FAC. Since not too many are making optimum use of the FAC tweets, though, I could perhaps think about or find out if there’s anything that can be done at my end to be more effective. For instance, FAC could perhaps convey the various ways in which it could be used to those readers who might see it solely as a platform to offer financial help.

I’ve also realised that for Twitter to change the landscape of modern philanthropy in India, the value of charitable giving needs to get integrated into everyday living. The power of Twitter may lie in its ability to spread information like wildfire but for that to happen, a lot more needs to be done by a lot more people.

I have also learnt that to be successful and sustainable, innovative approaches to philanthropy need to create value for donors and recipients, as well as for society.

I also realised that public figures have a long way to go before they can harness the power of Twitter to talk about issues they seem to care about. A huge number of them (re)tweeted about 1411 tigers; as many tweet about praying for victims of natural and man-made calamities as well as need for blood for medical treatment but only one or two retweeted the link to the two NGOs doing tiger conservation work or the comprehensive database of blood donors in India.

Some of these potentially influential people also don’t (re)tweet links to NGOs they ran for at the Mumbai Marathon, or even NGOs started by their seemingly close friends or themselves.

Since many of these NGOs are not yet savvy with social media, it seems that they may not have offered ideas on how their supporters can help them generate awareness and donations through social media.

Some specific learnings have been related to technology, such as using http:// instead of www on the links to make them clickable on Seesmic, Twitterfox, etc.

A mistake made early on resulted in some waste of time for me and difficulty in accessing the details of the financial aid appeals for my readers. Since I didn’t want to create a blog then, I would download the documents on the desktop and upload them to receive a URL that can be tweeted. All those who read those tweets would need to download the file to read the financial appeal details. Had the website I used to upload files (FileQube) not stopped functioning, I might have continued to be ‘inefficient’.

Since I am pretty private about my life (although I did upload a display picture a week ago!), using a medium as public as Twitter was a bit challenging. As was submitting my entry for this Case Challenge. And knowing that one or more people will read some or all of what I have written (some of which might even seem cocky-ish) does not make it easier!

What Next

FAC on twitter today is possibly in its best phase so far. It has ceased to be just a source of seemingly repetitive funding appeals. By responding to tweets related to volunteering, giving, feminism, etc., FAC looks more vibrant and has a wider use.

FAC is very open to exploring possibilties of how it can help more people more often. This could involve:

• checking with more newspapers or radio channels about their willingness to carry some of the information posted on FAC
• ideating on or starting an ‘Indian Giving League/Give-a-thon’-type initiative that could involve IPLers or celebrities on Twitter to mobilise their readers to give (more)
• helping a company design its CSR activities

Reasoning

What makes FundACause a best practice case has partly been answered by the responses to the question on background/need.

FAC makes it possible for us to know about several people’s stories and their living conditions and therein lies its significance. Some of these stories are accessible to people only through FAC and not through any other public forum. This is because the two websites that receive such mails but are unable to act on them have been sending them to FAC since the past few months.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Testimonials

FAC was nominated by people on Twitter for the indianwomensocmedia hashtag created by Gautam Ghosh.

View those tweets and read the article on FAC that appeared in JAM magazine and on bombayinspires.com at http://tinyurl.com/FAC-RecognitionInMedia

Some compliments that FAC has received: http://tinyurl.com/FAC-Testimonials

Factsheet

Name of the company: FundACause

Category: Other

Case submitted by: Chandni Parekh

Website: http://twitter.com/FundACause

Category-Long-term Initiatives

Title- Social media marketing for Mahindra Homestays

Share a little about your organisation

Mahindra Homestays is a unique Indian accommodation network. Launched in 2008, and initially targeting the UK and Indian tourist markets, it brings together a large number of premium family homes that have quality guest rooms.

The unique selling point of a Mahindra Homestay is that travellers receive an original experience in each one, and a more authentic, rewarding and ‘real’ experience of India than they might otherwise get in a hotel.

Executive Summary

Mahindra Homestays has quickly established itself as a digitally-literate, self-assured and colourful brand that relishes dialogue and collaboration with its audience. Through innovative blog content and social media initiatives we have built the necessary foundations for any travel brand looking for success in the modern online marketing environment.

Background

Once it was an exception to find a brand involved in social media. Now it is an expectation.

People want to find products and services using the familiar tools of their online travels: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to name a few.

They want to talk with brands, discover information and explore a relationship. For brands, this is a powerful opportunity.

The obvious benefit of being involved in social media is exposure: directly, it’s a chance to market and create sales, sometimes immediate, sometimes years later – a way of capturing and developing an audience; indirectly, it’s a way of improving and building on search engine rankings.

For a new brand launching in India and in the UK we wanted to explore the exciting opportunities available to us through social media marketing.

Approach/ Strategy

Although the time and resources across different social media has varied throughout the initiative we have chosen to work under six guiding principles and we feel these values have aided our success.

• Be honest – we act responsibly and truthfully when representing our brand in social media
• Be interesting – we ensure we communicate worthwhile, engaging messages that people enjoy
• Be open – we communicate in an open, collaborative and sharing way with the people who engage with us
• Be dynamic – we strive to demonstrate innovation, originality, enthusiasm and a clear sense of purpose in communications
• Be committed – we are dedicated to keeping our activity regular, timely and relevant
• Be strategic – we plan and execute communications intelligently for maximum results

We’ve applied these principles across all the Mahindra Homestays social networks.

a) The India Travel Blog
We created a branded blog on the website, designed to draw traffic and ultimately send it to the main site. We developed content strategically to appeal to different target audiences and niches, from yoga lovers to dog owners interested in pet-friendly accommodation.

We used keyword techniques to capture search traffic on certain useful terms – particularly longtail keywords where we saw an opportunity to get plenty of success. And we used lively editorial to communicate the brand in an interesting way and encourage dialogue.

Our output over six months has included: 30 highly popular things-to-do articles covering key locations; features on Indian culture, history and traditions; stunning Indian photography collections; video tours of properties; original competitions and offers; and we have recently started podcasting. The blog receives 3,000 visitors a month.

b) Facebook
Strong social media assets create confidence among customers, especially in an unfamiliar brand and new product. We created an attractive Facebook page with intelligent use of apps and features and we set about finding our audience. With conversation and user-centric initiatives such as our Photo of the Month contest we have grown to 1,400 active fans. We use the Facebook page to seed our blog content, answer customer enquiries and push fans to the main site at any relevant opportunity.

c) Twitter
For us, being on Twitter was not simply a matter of following the trend. Early on we saw an opportunity to use Twitter in a powerful way to find our audience as they are making accommodation decisions. We developed a Twitter page which we use in much the same way as Facebook, to seed links to the Mahindra Homestays website and respond to discussion. But we also use it to build relationships with travel journalists, bloggers and travellers across the world. Our approach is proactive; time is spent, for example, searching for current conversations about ‘hotels in India’ or ‘flights to India’. When appropriate we step into discussions with useful and timely contributions.

d) YouTube
Our 13 videos featuring host-led tours of accommodation as well as a short Kerala travelogue from some well-regarded UK travel writers have brought over 9,500 views on YouTube. Mahindra Homestays videos dominate the search results on the leading keyword term ‘India homestays’.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders we engaged through the initiative were our homestay owners who are delighted that we have provided this platform to engage with their visitors and prospective customers.

Video has provided a great opportunity for the homestay owners to engage with the initiative, through a profile their property, giving viewers the opportunity to get a real insight into the homestay experience and get a taste of the hosts’ personality and the sort of hospitality they might receive.

About the initiative

Having created publically accessible channels for communication they are able to participate directly via Twitter and FaceBook.

We are in regular contact with homestay owners via email and telephone to provide regular updates about the initiative and how they can get involved.

Impact – Outcome

A) Blog: Traffic to our blog has been increasing steadily since launch and currently with over 3,000 visits per month. Almost half of this traffic has come via natural search engine rankings. With a new brand and targeting a new market (UK) we have been able to build brand awareness early on in the travel research process. For example, those searching for things to do amongst Indian destinations have a strong change of being exposed to the Mahindra Homestays brand. By offering useful destination content within a friendly community such as the blog enables us to reach our audience. We use Analytics on the blog which is fully customised to help us to measure the effectiveness of the blog.

Although all blog visitors are being exposed to the brand (we avoid selling on the blog) a key aim is for visitors to then explore the main Mahindra Homestays website. Currently 10-20% of all blog visitors navigate to the main site and are more engaged that other types of referrals. For example, a blog visitor spends 50% more time on the site and visits 35% more pages. We’re also delighted that blog visits lead directly to online bookings.

B) Twitter: It is harder to measure direct results with Twitter. We limit our time on Twitter to a four to six hours each month.

• Our links to new blog content have been retweeted by a number of high profile followers (such as Times Travel in the UK) that provides peaks in traffic.
• PR coverage – We do use Twitter to communicate with the travel trade. One follower had a request for accommodation coverage in Delhi and we were able to act upon this.
• Facebook: Each month we review the Insights stats that Facebook provides along with information provided through Google Analytics. One year on we’ve had 30,000 visits to our fan page.

A year after the launch we asked our fans whether they would be more likely to choose a Mahindra Homestay when travelling in India compared to 12 months ago and all responses were positive.

Learnings

Social media (along with search) marketing has become a key part of our online marketing strategy. We are relaunching the main Mahindra Homestays website later in and 2010 and we plan to better integrate our social media activity. For example, on http://www.mahindrahomestays.com/ we simply have buttons linking out to our blog, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. The new website will include:
• Facebook fan box to show site visitors our presence
• Latest tweets from our Twitter stream
• Embedded YouTube videos
• RSS feeds from our blog

This tighter integration will go some way to show our website visitors the different platforms and communities outside the main website that will build stronger positive engagements with the brand.

Time spent on social media must be weighed up with results achieved and we strive to balance our resources across the different networks depending on which generates the best results.

What Next

We will continue to build our social media activity around the blog and look to integrate this activity more closely onto the main site when it is relaunched. Our aim is to continue to build the blog as a resource for travellers and to strengthen the community.

Reasoning

• It meets our business objectives to build awareness of a new brand across different country markets.
• We’ve seen steady sustained growth amongst our community networks (3000 blog visitors/month, +1400 Facebook fans, +700 Twitter followers).
• Our initiative supports the community goals and encourages member interaction.
• We’ve utilised media depending on demographics and community needs. This includes videos, guest articles, image galleries, podcasts and competitions.
• Our approach is long term but allows us to maintain agility throughout.
• We have clearly defined goals and practices in place to assess whether these are met.

Credits Strategy

Dot Tourism (http://dottourism.com) is digital branding and online marketing specialist in the travel sector.

Credits Execution

Dot Tourism (http://dottourism.com) is digital branding and online marketing specialist in the travel sector.

Testimonials

Mahindra Homestays was recently announced winner of Wanderlust magazine’s Eureka – Travel Innovation award. We feel that the social media marketing initiatives have been a key factor in building awareness of the brand.

Our initiative was profiled in The Hindu Business Line – Septemer 2009.

Factsheet

Name of the company: Mahindra Homestay
Number of Employees: 11 to 50
Category: For Profit corporation
Case submitted by: Japa Ghosh-Head of Marketing
Website: http://www.mahindrahomestays.com

Category: Short-term Initiatives

Title : Samsung Mobile MTV Gang Next

Share a little about your organisation

Viacom 18 Media Pvt. Ltd. is a 50/50 joint venture operation in India between Viacom Inc. NYSE: VIA, VIA.B, world’s leading entertainment content company, and the Network18 Group, one of India’s leading full play media conglomerates with interests in television, internet, filmed entertainment, mobile content & allied businesses. Viacom 18 Media Pvt. Ltd. includes the vibrant youth brand – MTV.

Executive Summary

Samsung Mobile MTV Gang Next is youth engagement platform for 50 handpicked gangs all over the country to prove their mettle as MTV and Samsung Mobile ambassadors on their campuses.

Our attempt was to decipher the opinions of the newly web-based teens about their idea of “Cool Quotient” & how social networking platform impacts their day-to-day activities.

As a process, we selected an eclectic mix of individuals from different colleges across key metros i.e. 10 gangs of 5 members each across 5 metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore & Pune comprising of 250 students in totality.

Winner gang gets a chance to attend the FIFA World cup in South Africa.

Since today’s generation is willing to experiment with new media, we were able to expand Gang Next’s reach and synchronize it well across geographies for it to become an extensive, innovative and cutting-edge platform.

Background

Youth today expects more interactivity and interconnectivity across various online mediums & through this college war initiative we could successfully build an aspirational value around the chosen ones so that he/she can influence his peer group.
This activity set off with Viacom18 as the MTV generation of youth is always on, interactive and constantly with friends. MTV is viewed as a continuum of entertainment, information and communication & this new program is a ground breaking approach to encourage college wars & support the gangs those are the personal favorites. Consequently it also helped us decode youth social interactions & in turn helped us to gain a holistic view of the core target audience.

Approach/ Strategy

Besides having a dedicated online destination, we also used a social networking framework that applies sophisticated techniques to address the mini ambassadors under one platform. These student ambassador’s fan pages are all linked to the umbrella-page of Gang Next, now consisting of more than 30 thousand consumers across the parent fan page and Gang fan pages. Our lead sponsor Samsung Mobile’s objective was to enhance brand affinity and promote the new product “Samsung Corby”.

Seasonality is key: Launched during college fests & ensure word of mouth support.
It consisted of national advertising, on-ground activations & engagement programs.

A key aspect of the process, as determined at the outset of the project was to mitigate complexities and ensure a user centric design approach.

Duration: 5 months (Nov 2009 to Mar 2010)

Media approach for an effective outreach to college gangs:

• On-ground was used interesting as postering and activations in Colleges to create awareness
• This then led into Gang auditions in colleges across the 5 cities
• Internet remains the most used media amongst the age group of 16-24 as it enables a very precise reach of the target group
• TV remains the secondary media ensuring coverage of the target and a maximum visibility among all target groups with a minimum occasion to see for each message.
• Reach out to the active groups/ fan base through Facebook targeting.

Budget allocated: 1cr.

Stakeholders

Core audience is the Indian college goers & these specially selected gangs have been pampered with Samsung Corby phones, branded gift vouchers; Mp3 players helping them set a strong emphasis on keeping up with the setting trends.

These gangs have helped us deliver a unique, consistent and a powerful communicative resolution that encourages a move towards being the best gang nationally via their commitment & enthusiasm towards this platform.

About the initiative

An integrated online campaign that used functional marketing elements during the call for entries phase.

Television: Builds brand awareness with strong National presence

Radio: RJ promotions for 3 weeks

Online:

• CPA campaign to ensure participation from key metros during the auditions phase
• Desktop targeting in 5 cities through CLINCK marketing campaign
• Facebook promotions: Targeted active fans

On ground Activity:

• 2 rounds of college postering across 5 cities
• Café Coffee day promotions through danglers & tent cards across 10 outlets per city
• MTV VJ visits in colleges

2 distinct web waves to support key Gang Next moments throughout the season:

• Online Destination ( www.mtvindia.com/gangnext)
• Facebook Fan Page which is linked to the 50 shortlisted gangs

Educational marketing elements during the Gang Next season

• The Gang Next website content is constantly updated and enriched. It hosts many innovative features such as uploading their tasks.
• “Fun Stuff” zone provides customized college wallpapers
• Campus Next section: An interactive space where the gangs can discuss about casual things related to their college.

Emotional marketing elements during the Gang Next season

• Gratify the winners with Samsung mobile handsets, Mp3 players, gift vouchers…et al
• Provided branded merchandise like T-shits, sippers, bands, bags etc. in order that they are easily noticeable and distinguished from the rest of the college peers.
• Organize a Gangs Day out: Meet and greet with the gangs & take them out for a movie screening followed by lunch.

Impact – Outcome

Emotional marketing elements during the Gang Next season

• Gratify the winners with Samsung mobile handsets, Mp3 players, gift vouchers…et al
• Provided branded merchandise like T-shits, sippers, bands, bags etc. in order that they are easily noticeable and distinguished from the rest of the college peers.
• Organize a Gangs Day out: Meet and greet with the gangs & take them out for a movie screening followed by lunch.

Learnings

It’s our constant endeavor to entertain and empower, be very responsive to their queries and needs, and engage them in quick-win task based competitions.

Ensured that the marketing campaign should have functional, educational and emotional components built in to successfully target & engage youth.
Challenges: Youth marketing is more dynamic and caters to short attention spans; hence we formulated mini tasks for fun that the gangs performed as soon as their key task finished.

What Next

We have announced 4 tasks & currently devising the finale task which will be publicized as a City task instead of individual task assignments.

A focus on a city task is captivating, but more efficacious is the advocacy of thought about their dynamic significance of representing their respective town/cities & winning the mega grat. of attending the FIFA World Cup in South Africa

In the forthcoming season, we intend to then nominate this winner gang to be a part of our judges panel.

Reasoning

1. First of its kind initiative with a 360 degree experience
2. Able to establish a strong youth connect in the 1st season itself
3. Every moment during this activity was about sharing news, shooting via their Samsung Corby mobile phones & uploading tasks online in the dedicated microsite & on the dedicated fan page on Facebook; this proves that existence without cell phones means lost connection
4. College goers are increasingly using their handsets to connect to the Internet and we have facilitated this cause.
5. We are in the process of creating aspiration amongst the college goers to be a part of this program
6. We advantageously identified concentrations of potential crowd in the college campus who are more than willingly to take Gang Next to the next level & broadcast intense youth connect nationally.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: Viacom 18 Media Pvt. Ltd.
Number of Employees: 5000+
Category: Media house
Case submitted by: Sharda Mandal; Manager – Digital
Website: www.viacom18.com