Results and Effectiveness

For the first time, each song on a radio station had the potential to become a ‘Vodafone caller tune’. Two months into the activity, “Vodafone Mirchi Caller Tune” became a runaway hit with the subscribers. 200% increase in Vodafone revenues from CRBT downloads two months of activity. ROI stood at 400% in terms of value deliverables and business generated. Adding to that was the never quantifiable consumer delight adding to brand delight.

Creative Execution

We partnered with India’s leading radio station – Radio Mirchi, converting it into a virtual CRBT catalogue. Listeners had more than 9500 songs to choose from across 32 markets – every single day! Songs in the Vodafone and station library were matched and a unique number was created. Every time Vodafone subscribers listened to a song – they could download it with just a single number. Radio Jockey mentions, promos and jingles amplified the service by the name of “Vodafone Mirchi Caller Tune”. Virtual characters and the brand ambassador (also a famous Bollywood actor) suggested song downloads. Radio jockeys promoted downloads by prompting listeners before and after each song. The activity reached out to 26 million listeners in two months.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In India, Caller Ring Back Tunes (CRBT) are amongst one of the most subscribed Value Added Services (VAS) with close to 37 million caller tune being downloaded every month across various platforms like – SMS, Voice, IVR and Internet. However, the number of downloads were very low as users had to remember a discrete code to download a tune. This was a cumbersome process thereby limiting the potential of the service. Vodafone had a massive library of 175,000 songs – but less than 3% were being downloaded. Insight: “People like to download their favorite song as soon as they hear it”. Our solution lay in simplifying the download process by creating a single number for each song, hence enabling real time gratification. Radio served as an apt medium for the same.