Tag: content marketing

The Crazy Case of a Fool’s Day Campaign

Fool's Day Campaign 2015

It was a week before April, and we had to launch something fun, fake and fast! Last year, we had upped the game by launching a prank auto rickshaw service and this year we had to fake it again. April 1st is a day for pranks all over the trends, and every big and small brand is at the party with their best fake costumes.

The benchmarks from last year’s campaign were set, we had to ride the buzz for this annual ’newsjacking’ activity. The aha moment came about a fake App. The ixigo loo finder. Four days of crazy storyboarding, layouts and changes. Sometimes we stopped just to tell ourselves it was real branding for a fake app! With two days to produce a video, we found a brave volunteer in the team (you’ll know once you see the video). Making it a fun and crisp 30 seconder, from script, shooting and editing, it was crazy 48 hours!

The Game Day

Morning 11.30, we launch the video. Within hours, the feeds got chaotic with all big brands out with their clown hats. And then it started picking up, the video views started climbing and the mentions in blogs started pouring. The CEO even wrote the funniest press release ever! OurLoo Finder app and video were compared with other brand campaigns, including Ola, Google, Uber, Amazon and others.

The difference being, we pulled it off on a shoestring! ;)

Here’s what happened in first 24 hours

Fool's Day Campaign - Day 1

Coverage 1

Coverage 2

50k reach in 5 hours, Newsjacking of the day

Newsjack of the day, when India beat Bangladesh in World Cup cricket quarterfinals
Newsjack of the day, when India beat Bangladesh in World Cup cricket quarterfinals

Nothing better than Newsjacking* cricket in India. India vs Bangladesh, World Cup quarterfinal match was trending all over twitter. Released a snappy little funny photo just when India finished their innings, and it started climbing. It’s all the excitement in first few hours, riding a live event. Compared to all the posts on Facebook in the last week, this one little Newsjack hit the home run (sixer) beating all those posts in reach and engagement. Being topical, riding the news with a creative little newsjacks is now a best practice for viral content marketing.

* Newsjacking is the practice of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story and generating tons of social media coverage and engagement.

Gurgaon Toll Surprise: Story of a Viral Video

Aashish Chopra - Viral Video, Gurgaon Toll Surprise

Every morning on my way to work, I used to dread passing through the bottleneck at the Toll plaza at the Delhi Gurgaon Expressway. Long lineups, chaos and frustration was everyday routine, and coming back in the evening was worse.

An idea had been brewing in my head for many months, about turning this everyday ordeal into a joyous experience.

So I did an experiment. For many days, when my car reached the toll plaza, I paid the toll and also paid for the car behind me. A random act of kindness, buying happiness for a stranger for Rs. 21. One day I learnt the toll plaza was shutting down, on its last day, I thought it would be cool to remember this experience with a happy memory. Took two days off to shoot and edit the video. Credit to my boss at the time for encouraging experimentation and driving action, for which I’m grateful.

Suddenly everything came together, the film workshop I had attended couple of months back, cool little camera gear I had been collecting over months, and my dream of becoming a filmmaker. A low resource filmmaker, making impactful videos for the smartphone generation. I attached three cameras to my angry little Tata Nano, hoping to document my little experiment from all angles. From going back and forth six times, to running out of money and getting permission from Toll plaza authorities to take panoramic shots of the plaza from their offices, it was a full day of a one man film shoot. Took the next day to edit, and shot little sequences, improvisations on my work table. And the end result was a nifty video under three minutes.

From Release to the Radio in 18 hours

I posted the video on YouTube and shared the video on Facebook. The next day around noon, I got a call from a Radio Jockey. My little experiment had gone viral! Phone began to buzz with messages about friends seeing the video on NDTV, IBNlive and Buzzfeed. A simple idea, had hit the stratosphere.

Here’s how far it reached

Slowly many blogs pickup up the video, and today ever after an year, if you Google “Gurgaon Toll Surprise”, first couple search results pages are about this :) For two days since the release, me and my Nano had become a minor celebrity on the roads. People waving, conversations in cafes and signs of thumbs-up from random strangers. What a memory.

The Video

The Learnings

The purpose of the video was to inspire action, and to get maximum traction I released it the day the Toll Plaza officially shut down and it was all over news. Being topical was my first lesson for success in making a video to go viral. But above all the marketing mumbo-jumbo, it firmed my belief in the democratic power of social media. If you have an idea, the world is ready for it. Woody Allen once said

“80% of success is just showing up”; Execution is everything.

Memories in Photos