Results and Effectiveness

CRBT downloads from old songs went up by whopping 433%. More than 11,000 letters of appreciation were received from listeners across the country. Listeners from a small town in India invited the hosts of the show for their wedding demonstrating the strong emotional bond between Vodafone Music Station and the listeners. An estimated 62 million people were reached and which makes us believe that this is probably the world’s largest viral campaign. The seed that we called Vodafone Music Station has transformed itself into a self sustained tree.

Creative Execution

We identified All India Radio (AIR) with reach across India in 24 Languages and 146 dialects to launch “Vodafone Music Station” a conversation based show with CRBT functionality integrated within. This platform helped in creating awareness of old song library and also formed an opportunity to educate the consumer about download process. The format of the show was kept simple and relatable. Two next door characters, “Swar” (musical note) and “Shruti” (hearing ability) were created as the protagonists of the show. During their light hearted talk, they played songs from Vodafone’s old song CRBT library on themes like love, festivals, culture and seasons. With each song, they also mentioned process for downloading these songs as CRBTs. The mention was seamlessly integrated in the show not letting it affect the entertainment quotient. Vodafone Music Station has been on air for over 224 days now across 67 stations in 6 different languages.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

A successful viral campaign is when you sow a seed of the campaign and water it just once. The transformation of the seed into a sprawling tree is self sustained. Vodafone India owns Call Back Ring Tones (CRBTs) library of over 175,000 old songs. This library was untouched as commercial success came largely from new songs. Consumer research suggested that the people from smaller towns and the rural parts of India have high affinity for old songs. This indicated a latent opportunity to monetize and generate revenue. The barriers blocking the revenue route were Low media reach, Complexity of download process, Lack of exposure of the old songs library You hum the songs you hear. This trait of human behavior became our insight, i.e. when people hear songs, they hum them and songs they hum are likely to be downloaded as CRBTs. When other people call you, this behavior recurs.