Results and Effectiveness

Half the videos on YouTube don’t even get to 500 views. Only 0.33% reach the million mark. Within two days of its launch, the anthem gained a million views on YouTube – the fastest ever in India! In 10 weeks since launch on 7th February 2012, the anthem had excess of 5.5 million views - equivalent to 1/10th of India’s (then total) internet audience base! Boost brand mentions grew 145 times compared to last 6-month-average and sales volumes increased 48% in Feb, 9% in March 2012 - an overall Q1 growth of 15%.

Creative Execution

Boost partnered Dhanush – the artist who had recently created waves with his musical debut – to sing the anthem. And instead of following the norm of using network television to gain reach, we launched the anthem on YouTube – India’s 7th biggest ‘channel’. The video link was first shared on Twitter – social medium of choice for brand influencers and a platform for breaking news. Soon, highly-active social media influencers – film celebrities, news anchors, the cricketing fraternity etc. – shared the video, commented on it and made it a trending conversation topic across cities in India and abroad. Next, we leveraged Facebook – the social platform with a critical-mass of audiences to provide impetus to viewership by sharing the content with their friends. We influenced cricket communities, the numerous Sachin, Dhanush and other film celebrities’ fan-clubs to host the video link – which fans and visitors shared further.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In the category of health food drinks, where rational claims rule, Boost has stood out for targeting competitively spirited kids with its promise of ‘winning energy’, delivered through sports icons – none bigger than Sachin Tendulkar. But its share of conversations in the ‘sports’ space has been limited given huge investments in sports by other brands like Pepsi and Vodafone and strong sports heritage of brands like Nike. The challenge was to bring Boost back into the sporting chatter. So when Sachin approached cricket’s biggest milestone - his 100th century, we found an opportunity to drive positive word-of-mouth for Boost. In the democratized social media environment, audiences seek out and share content that they like. Using this insight, we created an anthem saluting Sachin’s two decade-long career. But the tough task for branded content is to deliver advertising like value.