The jury’s task was not an easy one, given that there were 105 submissions this year, across three categories – Best Strategic Programme, Best Short Term Campaign and Best Use of Platform. The jury went through a 3 tier process, the final  being an on-ground jury meet held at NASSCOM office in New Delhi in the first week of August 2011.

Without much ado, here are the final winners!

In the best strategic programme category, there was a fierce competition between Artist Aloud, a platform for independent music and MTV Roadies. While ArtistAloud stood out for an innovative approach to build a platform for independent music, MTV Roadies stood out for its creative engagement and overall impact of the programme. Eventually the former won by a small margin to grab the numero uno position. Max New York Life with its igenius community focused around parenting was widely appreciated by all jury members and won the third position. We will be in touch with you.

In the best short term campaign, Reebok the Butt Revolution was a clear favourite and won the top position followed by Book My Show and Channel [v] in second and third position respectively.

In the Best Use Of a Platform, Fastrack scored the top position for its use of Facebook for its 1 million fans celebration campaign. Idea scored second followed by Kaya Skin Clinic in the third position.

There were two cases that were recommended for a Special Mention by the jury for their outstanding work – MustBol and RangDe.

While Recognition is the sweetest reward, to make the wins even sweeter, winning teams of 1st position and 1st runner-up positions, in all 3 Categories, would be getting a cash prize of Rs. 50,000/- and Rs. 25,000/- respectively. A Certificate would be given to all winners including the second runner’s up.

Many congratulations to all the winners!

Here is what some of our jury members had to say about the initiative -

“The IndiaSocial CaseChallenge – 2 was a fantastic experience. Going through so many case studies was truly a rigorous exercise. I think winners do indicate the cases for best engagement in social media but looking at so many fantastic ideas is a victory of social media marketing in India. There are so many cases other than winners to study and learn from. Some of the NGO ideas are really worth noticing.”- Sandeep Amar, Head- Marketing/Audience/Sales Strategy, Times Internet Limited

“It is amazing to see how quickly the Indian brands are embracing social marketing and the pace at which innovation is happening” – Kalpana Behara, Manager, Online Sales Operations, Facebook

“The IndiaSocial Case Challenge 2 is probably the most comprehensive in evaluating the best Social Media case studies across the country. The organising team made sure that personal biases and inclinations were ruled out during the early stages ensuring a very fair selection process. Congratulations to the winners not only for truly deserving the award, but for setting the precedent for other brands!”- Arun Nair, Director – Digital Marketing and Social Media at Sulekha.com

“It has been a fascinating experience. The case challenge reports showed a ferment of creativity and sensitivity in the use of emerging social media not only by corporates and brand builders but also by non-governmental organisations and small groups for activities that include raising of social awareness and fund raising. Clearly, this is only the beginning of the social media revolution.”- Madhavan Narayanan – Tech Columnist/Associate Editor, Hindustan Times

We would like to thank all our Sponsors and Partners without whose support, such an incredible participation could not have been possible – NM Incite, Mint, Exchange4Media, IMPACT magazine, NASSCOM and Digital Vidya.

A big thank you to all the jury members for their time, insights and efforts and most their enthusiasm. The rich debates and discussions during the jury process actually helped in identifying the final winners.

The winning cases are already up on IndiaSocial. We would soon be uploading the other cases submitted during the CaseChallenge.

For any enquiries, please feel free to reach out to us at casechallenge2@indiasocial.in

There are more exciting updates coming up. Stay Tuned!

Category: Best use of Platform

Winner of Position #1

Title: F*****CK: One Million Fans on Facebook

Share a little about your organisation

Fastrack was launched in 1998 as a sub-brand of Titan. It was spun off and re-launched as an independent brand of watches targeting the urban youth in 2005. Soon after, Fastrack also jumped headlong into the sunglasses business and in the next four years, quickly notched up the title of being the largest sunglasses brand in the country. Always with a motto of reinventing itself, the brand was restless to move on and yet again in 2010,  introduced a trendy line of bags, belts and wallets, to maintain its position as India’s most iconic youth brand, offering a well rounded portfolio of style accessories for the young Indian consumers.

Executive Summary

The essential concept was to celebrate being the first Indian fashion and lifestyle brand to earn a million fans on Facebook. We wanted to bring the celebrations directly to our fans had made it possible, by rewarding them for the achievement. We also wanted to promote our first Exclusive Fastrack Stores which we had started earlier in the year. Thus we announced a one day sale exclusively for our Facebook fans at our Exclusive Fastrack Stores. The whole event was promoted only through our Facebook fan page, through posts and comments. We opened a small micro site for the countdown to the “magic million” figure and sent our selective e-mailers. Essentially, we relied on word-of-mouth to be our main communication tool and the results showed how accurate we were.

On the day of the sale, the flood of fans who turned up for the celebrations was overwhelming. Most stores were sold out in hours, many of them had to manage crowds by lowering shutters and in places the traffic police had to get involved to help us organise crowds! We ended the day with a whopping Rs. 2.75 crores worth of sales, and a lifetime of smiles from happy customers

Nature of the Activity

The primary activity was a celebration of the Fastrack Facebook fan page hitting one million fans, by having a one day flat 50% sale across our channel of Exclusive Fastrack Stores. This also enabled us to achieve our secondary goal of propagating our newly launched network of exclusive Fastrack Stores, since the sale was open exclusively at our retail outlets.

Duration of the said activity. Start date-end date

One day only!

Background

On the 28^th of December, 2010, the Fastrack Fan page hit 1 Million Fans. We were the 1^st Indian fashion and lifestyle brand and overall the 3^rd Indian page to hit this milestone.

The FB sale was a celebration of this feat. While we as a brand were excited about this milestone, we wanted to say a simple ‘Thank You’ to all the loyal Fastrackers who had made it possible, by having a celebratory sale for our Facebook fans across the country.

Objectives

The first objective was a simple and memorable gesture of gratitude, meant to shout out our achievement and reward all our loyal fans who made the one million milestone possible. The secondary objective was to propagate our recently launched network of retail outlets- the Exclusive Fastrack Stores which was achieved by holding the sale solely at the exclusive stores.

Strategy and Planning

Strategy: Taking the Exclusive Fastrack Stores across the nation as our physical point of contact with fans, we invited all our Facebook fans to be present for a ONE DAY ONLY FLAT 50% OFF EXCLUSIVE SALE at all of our exclusive Fastrack stores. This served the dual purpose of extending the celebrations directly to our fans and parallely promoting our exclusive retail chain across the country. The offer was promoted solely through Facebook, namely conventional news feeds and wall posts over a period of a single day only and selective e-mailers were sent out as well. We also built momentum for the D-day by having a countdown microsite,  the details of which are mentioned below.

Hence, we refrained from promoting the offer by any othr means, save word-of-mouth, taking a gamble on the extent of reach, but ensuring that the message went solely to the targeted users. E-mailers were also sent out to those fans, who could be contacted via mail.A few weeks prior to the D-day we also created a micro-site where we gave fans a chance to win free Fastrack products. All they had to do is guess the time when Fastrack would ‘move on’ to a million Facebook Fans. This was a very interactive contest where consumers could predict their time by adjusting the hands on a Fastrack watch. Pls see below, a screen shot of the same.

Central idea: The central idea was to reward all the loyal facebook fans who made the milestone possible while using the opportunity to also promote our recently launched network of exclusive brand stores.

Stakeholders

The primary stakeholders of the brand on our public social platforms (Facebook, and by association, Twitter) were the main target. Strategic and limited communication was undertaken with this objective in mind. Our focus was to use Facebook as a tool, and it proved to be a powerful one.

Parallel to that, we also had launched our own chain of retail outlets, the Exclusive Fastrack Stores in the beginning of 2010, and we wanted to promote our national chain. This was our second stakeholder, and we decided to limit the sale to Exclusive Fastrack Stores only, so as to promote them.

Choice of channel/s

As mentioned, the activity was solely limited to Facebook, and was targeted to be a quite, yet unique celebration of our 1000000 million fans milestone. Apart from 2 posts on our wall the day before, and a one week countdown on our micro-site as illustrated earlier, we elected to send out some cool e-mailers as well(see left). These two were the only points of communication. At the retail level as well, there was NO promotion of the sale at all, we instructed all our store staff to keep the affair under wraps, preferring instead to let word of mouth do all the talking for us. We expected a steady trickle of fans walking into our stores throughout the day (the sale was held on a Sunday)

Implementation

As the month of December started, we realised that we would be hitting the magic number sometime late in the month. So to share the excitement, we opened up a microsite, where we were doing a public countdown which we with our fans through wall posts and updates(details given earlier). The idea was to guess the exact time and date of the right moment, and the lucky winners got rewarded.

The only promotion was through the previously attached creatives (e-mailer, micro site LP and wall post picture) that were developed through a digital agency.  We used simple posters/standees inside stores on the day of the event, not for promotional purpose, but to let fans know that they had reached the right destination.

Impact and Outcome

What happened on the day of the sale will always be remembered in the history of the company. What we had envisioned as a quiet celebration stunned us when we saw the actual turnout at stores. In most cities, the stores were overrun with eager fans much before the opening time, and we had to down shutters several times in the day, just to manage the sheer magnitude of people! In Mumbai, we had to take the assistance of the traffic police to control crowds on the street!

Pls see the numbers that resulted from this one day activity:

1. Over 5000 plays on the micro-site in a week
2. Total MRP sales value – Rs. 2.75 crores
3. In many places, the sale lasted only 7 hours before the store was completely stocked out
4. Most of the stores had to operate with half shutter to control the crowd
5. Smile on people’s faces after they got their brand new Fastrack product

Learnings

At the communication level, the biggest gamble was that we elected word-of-mouth to be our primary puller. What were realised at the end of the day, was that we had managed to harness the power of word-of –mouth and it was indeed a powerful tool.

At the execution level, on the day of the sale, the unexpected flood of people meant that crowd management was the biggest challenge. The entire marketing and retail team pitched in to help and people were deployed across cities on Sunday to enable efficient crown management. The whole team was on-ground, in some places, till late in the night, working with the sales team to make the day a success. Almost 55% of stores however, shut early as the sheer amount of fans ensured that stock was completely sold out, just in a few hours! It felt as if the entire one million fans had decided to be a part of the action!

What next

The event was a one-time campaign, however, the unexpected and overwhelming results made us realise the huge potential that a successful word-of-mouth campaign can have. We are planning to take the effort forward in the current fiscal year as well, for our other milestones as they come.

Testimonials

The biggest testimonial we saw was the sheer magnitude of crowds (see above pic) which was the  scene at every store without fail and the huge sales generated from the almost negligible spends. Here are some comments from fans on Facebook as well:

Neha Tiwari i went twice and got stuffs.,..lol .. in mornin n in eveinin.. so i was able to get 4 things..:)) January 3 at 6:21am

Dipen Mehta We have one Store in Thane (Mumbai) at naupada The crowd was maddening. January 3 at 11:33am

Praveen Sethiya Thnx for this lovely offer   got up my bags , sun glass and watch best new year gift .. ♥January 3 at 12:27pm

Reema Shah ws soo confused wich1 2 buy n wich not … ended up buyin 5watches January 3 at 2:14pm

Neha Tiwari oye.. its true.. der was a flat 50 percent discount.. i jus bot 3 watches, 2 sunglasses.. a bag.. my godd… discount was awesom..:)) hope ppl wud hav shoppd to der fullest today..:)).. FASTRACK u ROCKKKK January 2 at 8:23pm

External Agencies

No. Apart from creatives, the operation was completely developed and executed by the marketing team. It was a small marketing effort which was hijacked by our fans, who turned it into a national celebration.

External Agencies

No. The entire Fastrack team pitched in and, along with the on-ground sales team and the retail managers, we all worked through the Sunday to make it happen.

Suitable Title

“F*****CK: One Million Fans on Facebook”

 Factsheet

Name of the Company – Fastrack

Category- Consumer Products

Case Submitted By: Narmada Deb

Website: www.fastrack.in

One such interesting initiative has been undertaken by the Media2win team by launching a page Brands Going Social that shares the list of Indian brands on Facebook basis the number of fans. As the About page states -

This page lists major Indian brands, their Facebook URL, how many fans they have, how many have increased in the past 1 day, what was the last update by the brand & the date/ time of that update. The data for the fan numbers & last update is pulled real-time through an automated process.

The page maps not only brands that have the largest presence on Facebook but also includes large brands in India that may/may not be active on Social Media.

Here is what we like about the list -

• Clean interface
• Uses technology and human intelligence together creating a fairly robust and importantly relevant list (currently over 200 brands)
• Good filters that allow to search by brand name/ category of business/size of fan base
• Crisp summary of pages into 5 slabs basis the size of fan base (refer table below)

Source: brandsgoingsocial

Interesting to see how only six brands in India are currently over the 300,000 fans/likes figure – Zoozoo, MTV India, Fastrack, Axe Angels Club,  Facebook India and FlipKart.

For the sake of quick analysis, we have segmented these brands into 3 categories – High, Moderate, Yet to be Mainstream.

Skeptics may argue that number of fans may not be the best indicator of a brand’s social media programme. However, it does provide a base to assess the seriousness of intent of a brand in leveraging the space. Creating a strong base may seem easy on the outside but even the most conversational brands are seen employing means other than organic word-of-mouth to build a strong base.

The Media2win team mentions that a similar list on Indian brands on Twitter is on the anvil. Looking forward to the same guys!

Fastrack Fans

This post would focus on the case study submitted by a youth brand. The people, who run the program in this particular case study, are from amongst the college junkies who know what are the new trends and the ‘in-thing.’

The first person has been retained.

Our initiative is focused around the experience we deliver to the fans and both current and potential, driving them toward a better, and more personalized connection with the brand. Having college-interns run this Fastrack initiative has been a great step in being able to speak the language of our customers/fans. The essence of the brand being communicated in real-time and in a manner that is acceptable and easily understood by our customers is our constant thought as we go through daily customer queries, feedback, comments, suggestions & brand announcements.

Stakeholders: Existing and potential consumers

Apertures used: Facebook, Flickr and Youtube

Our main objective was to reach out to all the existing Fastrack customers/fans and allow them a closer interaction with the brand.

• In less than a year we have grown from approximately 2,100 fans on Facebook in April ’09 to over 47,500 fans as of Feb ’10 – that’s a 2262% growth in 10 months!
• Not only has our fan count increased but so have the interactions, going up from about 10-20 a week to almost 700-800. Comments on our posts have touched the 150 mark at times.

One of  the great analysis around the IndiaSocial Case Challenge has been undertaken by Anand Pillai, a  Phd scholar (Marketing) with MDI for the Telecom Circle.

Anandan undertook an analysis of  the similarities and dissimilarities in the social media strategy adopted by the long term winners of the IndiaSocial Case Challenge . In a very comprehensive manner, he has analyzed their social media strategy based on the criteria of – platform selection, stakeholders targeted, activities undergone and the impact measurement.

H ere are some of the overall learnings shared in the post -

Depth and not the breadth of social media platform that matters.

Firms should be prepared to face the negative discussions on social media

Synchronization between the product category and social media platform is very essential

Identifying the presence of right target audience on right social media platform is the key.

Conducting appropriate activities and measuring their impact in the most suitable manner is what matters at the end of the day.

These are the parameters taken into consideration -

Source : Telecom Circle

To read the full post, go here – http://www.telecomcircle.com/2010/04/social-media-success-dawning-in

Source : Telecom Circle

To read the full post, go here – http://www.telecomcircle.com/2010/04/social-media-success-dawning-in-india/

-india/

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Winner of Position #2

Title: Fastrack Fans

Share a little about your organisation

Fastrack is a brand of watches from the house of Titan Industries Ltd which is the market leader in the watches category in India.

Fastrack was launched in 1998 as a sub-brand of Titan. It was spun off as an independent brand of watches targeting the urban youth in 2005. Since then, it has infiltrated the lives of India’s youth with designs that were refreshingly different and affordable. During that time, Fastrack also jumped headlong into the sunglasses business and in the last 4 years has quickly notched up the title of being the largest sunglasses brand in the country.
Fastrack has now pushed past the horizons into newer areas – bags, belts, wallets and wrist bands – as part of its mission to offer the youth everything they need to be cool!

Executive Summary

Moving over from outsourcing our social media initiative to an in-house program has allowed us to engage and really connect with our audience in typical Fastrack fashion and style. Having college-interns run this Fastrack initiative has been a great step in being able to speak the language of our customers/fans. The essence of the brand being communicated in real-time and in a manner that is acceptable and easily understood by our customers is our constant thought as we go through daily customer queries, feedback, comments, suggestions & brand announcements. Our initiative is focused around the experience we deliver to the fans and both current and potential, driving them toward a better, and more personalized connection with the brand.

Background

Fastrack is essentially a youth brand, and what better way to get in touch with our target audience of 15-25 year-olds (SEC A,B) than having a presence on the very platforms that they use daily? Social networking is a big part of today’s youth and we have made it a big part of us, extending all our online initiatives to incorporate our social networks and communities.

With this step forward we worked on tapping the pulse of the youth by answering queries, getting feedback about the brand and our collections and campaigns, engagement, resolving complaints & doubts and interacting with ‘Fastrack Fans’ daily, 24/7.

Approach/ Strategy

Please share details about the initiative stating clearly the strategy, objectives, goals, the duration, resources and budgets allocated.

Fastrack was one of the first brands to use social media to engage with potential and existing consumers. We started with two communities on Facebook and a Twitter account in September 2007. We worked closely with Blogworks to create relevant content and monitor conversations. From April 2009, we decided to get all the work done in-house and worked with college interns to create relevant, engaging and more importantly, unique content – such as origins of the Fastrack logo, behind the scenes working of the brand coupled with innovative contests (myexbox) and campaign/collection updates. The presence of the brand on the digital sphere – both in terms of reach and budgets – has only been getting larger and given the relevance of this medium to our audience (15-25 year olds), we will continue on our way to engage with our audience in as fun, entertaining and rewarding way as we have done so far.

Stakeholders

Which stakeholders did you engage through this initiative and how? How was/ has this initiative been received by them so far?
Our entire social media initiative is geared toward our existing and potential customers. As one of the 1st Indian brands to take on social media in a big way, we have endeavoured to stay ahead in terms of what we do for our fans and the experience we give them. They whole-heartedly embrace this as organic conversations burst onto our communities, fans upload pictures with our products, share our celebrations & store launches and a host of other social media activities.

About the initiative

Share details about your activities, touch-points that you created/ channels you used to reach the stakeholders.

At the beginning we jumpstarted our initiative by linking all our existing properties to the new social media platforms we joined. Facebook, Flickr and Youtube were the first networks added to our consumer outreach. The great response we received pushed us to integrate even more and we created the URL re-direct http://www.fastrack.in/facebook to take fans directly to our fan page. Since its inception, this link has been used across our billboards, take-ones, contest forms, emailers and all offline forms.

A major component of success for this fan page was the use of Facebook social ads to create awareness of the brands presence on Facebook. In the larger picture we have led all our campaigns, both offline and online with social media links on our microsite and landing page, previews on our communities & applications dedicated to display our latest collections. We even create unique profile pictures and tabs on our Facebook fan page for every scheme and campaign.

We then jumped right into Twitter allowing us to connect with fans on a more individual basis, answering queries directly, solving customer issues, giving out store addresses and the like. On the flip side we have also taken offline activities and brought them into the word of social media with a fine example being our Twitter Contest where we asked fans tweet pictures of our billboard signs announcing the launch of our latest Accessories segment.

Impact – Outcome

What was the impact achieved vis-à-vis goals set? How did you measure the impact/ results?

Our main objective was to reach out to all the existing Fastrack customers/fans and allow them a closer interaction with the brand.

• In less than a year we have grown from approximately 2,100 fans on Facebook in April ’09 to over 47,500 fans as of Feb ’10 – that’s a 2262% growth in 10 months!
• Not only has our fan count increased but so have the interactions, going up from about 10-20 a week to almost 700-800. Comments on our posts have touched the 150 mark at times.

Most of our pre and post-analysis is measured through online tools such as the built-in ‘Insights’ for Facebook pages, tweetreach.com and twitteranalyzer.com for our Twitter account. From Insights we can discern the numbers of fans we add per day, the interactions per week, the number of views for pictures (on Facebook & Flickr) and videos. For Twitter we get details such as number of followers online at a time so we can maximise how many people we reach with our messages, and the growth of our follower-base to coincide with campaigns/collections.

Learnings

What were the key learnings? Positive and things to do better; share any challenges you might have faced.
One of the major learnings we got after moving into social media is the requirement for an in-house team member to handle the field. It’s essential that the person in charge of social media for a company is in touch with both the brand and the people it is trying to communicate to. They need to be someone who understands the essence of the brand, yet speaks the language of the fans/followers. Having a portal for answering customer queries, reporting the launch of new stores/collections and even giving previews for the brand is a great way to connect with your fans and this is what we strive to do daily.

Another important learning has been it is good to have a central hub from which most of your activities and updates are localised so as to have a better reach, focus and maximise participation. This is what we have with Facebook being our main platform and centring our communications with the fans on it. On the same Facebook note, it was a good idea to move from Facebook Groups to Facebook Pages where we have a lot more tools to analyse data about fan interactions and additions.

One of the initiatives we need to quickly close is Ecommerce which would be a great avenue for us to delve into, working out linking direct customer queries to sales and closing the loop in terms of connecting online interactions with retail transactions. This would take the social media exposure of Fastrack to reach new levels once we introduce an online retail experience to our fans & followers

What Next

Where is the programme/ initiative now? Where will it go from here?

Currently we’re on Facebook with 5,97,659 fans , Twitter with 2,200+ followers, Mobile community (via SMS GupShup) with 19803+ members and Youtube and Flickr. What we are aiming at is not just the numbers, but engaging better with our fans, be it through Ecommerce, more engaging, insightful content or even linking online interactions to an offline format.

Reasoning

What in your opinion makes your programme/ initiative/ activity a case-study/ best practice case.

What we’ve done best is turn the social media marketing on its head, so that instead of out-sourcing the work, adding another level of direct communication with the brand, we have shed that layer so that we can deal with our fans on a much more personal and real-time basis. To do this we have taken on college interns who walk in the shoes of our TG and talk their lingo. This allows for two things. One, the essence of the brand is better communicated from an in-house person and second, we are able to talk with our customers from the same level as them rather than as a big company. The sheer growth of our communities, the numbers of interactions with the brand and appreciation we have received for our timely responses to queries and updates/previews stands in testimony of this.

Another sizeable chunk of our time goes into gearing our campaigns around our social media communities, whether it be by releasing ads a few days in advance on Youtube/Facebook or putting up an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at our Bikers photo shoot, putting up sketches of our watches before they launch or linking back contests to our communities as done with myEXbox. Working our campaigns this way has allowed us to expose not only ourselves, but our current fans/followers to the other like-minded Fastrack-loving youth out there.

Strategy and Execution

Blogworks – Oct 2007 – Apr 2009

Factsheet

Name of the company: Fastrack

Number of Employees:1001-5000

Category: Brand

Case submitted by: Anshul Nanda, Assistant Brand Manager

Website: www.fastrack.in

There were no cash rewards, no award ceremonies, no festivals… just pure rigour. From the submission form (not for the faint-hearted), to the  judging process that our esteemed panel of judges adopted, it has been about recognising the best social media work in India. We received a total of 37  submissions  of  social media work in India, of which 3 winners each under, Long-term initiatives and Short-term project categories have been selected.

There are several ‘non-winning’ entries that missed by a small margin; the quality of insights and work on these and many other was fantastic and we’d be sharing many of these with you over the next few days and weeks.

Here are the winners!

Long-term Initiatives

Position # 1

Pratham Books – Social Publishing Strategy at Pratham Books (Score – 8.1 : 10)

We’d like to think that we spread the love, so to speak, but realistically, we’re going to have to build a platform sometime soon to engage our community to co-create and do so much more to contribute to the cause of a book in every child’s hands…

Read case-study here.

Position # 2

Fastrack  – Fastrack Fans (Score 7.6 : 10)*

Our initiative is focused around the experience we deliver to the fans and both current and potential, driving them toward a better, and more personalized connection with the brand…

* One of the juges abstained citing conflict of interest.

Read case-study here.

Position # 3

Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt. Ltd. – How the Cleartrip brand travels through social media (Score 7.3 : 10)

Cleartrip has upheld integrity and transparency as foundational values of our brand. Embracing these values has made it incredibly easy for the brand and the organization to have an active social media presence…

Read the case-study here.

Short-term Projects

Position #1

Hindustan Motors – Mitsubishi Cedia – The Great Driving Challenge (Score 7.0 : 10)

Consumer research reiterated that a loyal Cedia owner loved to get behind its wheels and just drive. So when it was time to launch the new Mitsubishi Cedia sports, HML wanted to reach out to their target audience and engage the travel fanatics in conversations around “a long drive”

Read the case-study here.

Position #2

Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation – The Heart Kids Tweetathon – And How Twitter Helps Save Lives (Score – 6.5 : 10)

…even in the midst of a deep recession, the 2010 event held on February 14th, brought in close to $5,000. As the Foundation’s cost to sponsor a child’s operation is around $1,250 the Tweetathon alone will be responsible for healing more than 10 little hearts!

Read case-study here.

Position #3

WWF – Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour (Score 6.3 : 10)

Earth Hour is a global awareness programme by WWF to create awareness on climate change and fight global warming. People participating in the Earth Hour voluntarily choose to switch off their lights of their homes and offices for one hour to make their stand against climate change.

Read the case-study here.

Final Shortlist

The entries that made it to the final phase in the case challenge were –

Long Term Initiative	Short Term Project
Fastrack	Channel V – Using Twitter to create buzz around the relaunch of Channel [V] in August 2009
Hard Rock Café	Hindustan Motors – Mitsubishi Cedia – The Great Driving Challenge – India’s Most Succesful Social Media Campaign.
MTV – NO. 1 Social Brand in India	UBL – Kingfisher Beer
MTV – Best use of Social media: Sony Ericsson MTV Roadies Battleground	Dr.Mani Children Heart Foundation
Pratham Books	KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd – WidUS (Widget designing for University Students)
Breakthrough	WWF India – Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour.
8 Day Academy
Celebrity – Priyanka Chopra
BLANK NOISE
BookMyShow
Tata Docomo
Nokia Email With Ease Campaign
Nokia “Search for N”
NASSCOM
Goanet
Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt. Ltd.

Evaluation Process

• Step 1 – All judges evaluated each entry and categorised them as ‘Keep’ or ‘Drop’
• Step 2 – For any entry which had votes between 2, 3, 4 or 5 ‘Keep’ votes, the judges who had voted for ‘keep’ stated, briefly, why they had voted so
  • If there were 5 votes out of 6, against a case, it was dropped
  • If there were 5 votes out of 6, for a case, it was promoted to Phase 3
  • Only the ones with 2, 3, 4 or keep 5 votes were voted upon again by all
  • A simple majority again decided who got promoted to Step 3

• Step 3 -  All the finalists got another detailed viewing by the judges, who then rated the case studies on a scale of 1-10
• Step 4 – Scores as given by all judges (if a judge was associated with a programme, he/ she would abstain and no scores would be granted), was averaged by the total number of judges who voted and winners selected

The evaluation process ensured that all the judges on the panel reviewed each case study and also evaluated over several phases.

Since the judges did not have access to one another’s scores prior to submission of their own scores, their own evaluation was independent and totally unbiased.

Judges Speak

The final results were arrived after a rigorous evaluation process by the panel. Here is what some of our judges had to say on the case challenge –

When it comes to effective social media usage, we often hear only about success stories in the US. There are wonderful, innovative usage in Indian companies and the IndiaSocial case study challenge has unearthed many such gems by crowdsourcing” – Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging

I hope this encourages social media marketers and agencies to craft strategies that are realistic, achievable, innovative and sustainable, those which effectively engage the community and deliver a delight” – Dina Mehta, Co-Founder & Head of Research, Mosoci

On behalf of allof us at IndiaSocial, I’d like to thank all our judges for putting in their time, effort and rigour to identify the best social media case studies in India. We’d also like to thank impact weekly and exchange4media.com, our partners for the initiative, for their generous support like always

Infact, pick up a copy of impact magazine’s latest issue (on stands tomorrow) which features all winners of the IndiaSocial Case Challenge – 1. Do share your thoughts and comments – it’s an Open invitation.

Cheers