The Campaign

In these markets it isn’t the purchasing power that poses as a challenge, it is the infrastructure. 33% of India experiences daily power cuts for upto 10 hours. Imagine owning the best LCD television but not being able to watch anything because there is no electricity for 10 hours a day. How ironic for a population that loves Bollywood. Low literacy levels add to the challenge. Brands in these markets not only have to compete with infrastructure adversities but with each other to gain an opportunity to communicate with the consumers. With limited accessibility to television, print and radio, creating mass reach was an uphill task for brands. Finding a way to connect with this entertainment starved audience was crucial to HUL.

Results

The objective: Hindustan Unilever aimed to find a way to communicate with consumers in media dark markets. Our ambition for Hindustan Unilever was to make it a part of consumer’s lives, by weaving in the brands in everyday culture and conversation, thereby creating penetration and top of mind awareness for HUL’s mass consumer brands. The strategy: In a media first for India, we created a coup between the telecom operator, the content provider and the marketer to create the first ever always on, on demand, free to the consumer, branded entertainment channel. Kan Khajura Tesan is an always on mobile entertainment radio channel in which the entertainment content is interspersed with Hindustan Unilever communication. KKT (Kan Khajura Tesan) literally translates to ‘ear worm radio channel’. A name that spells out the intent with which it was created. We came up with sticky, highly memorable branding identity, creating a catchy jingle, an appealing mnemonic and a very easy to remember number – 1800 3000 0123! The promotional message makes the process of connecting with the channel crystal clear; “Missed Call Lagaao, Muft Manoranjan Pao” translating to “Give Us a Missed Call and Get Free Entertainment!” Once the consumers got a call back from KKT they could access 20 minutes of entertainment content which is updated on a weekly basis. The 20 minutes are divided into 17 minutes of content and 3 minutes of HUL advertisements. “Outbound Dialers promoted the activity” “Made it personal through Radio Jockey delivering Content” “Latest Movie Content at the forefront” “Local & regional content” “Intelligent and ever learning” The consumer interactions with KKT are translated into data which is used to identify content consumption patterns and thereby deliver customized content.

We realised that the only thing that serves as a means of entertainment for this audience is their mobile phone. Which they use to listen to songs and watch movie clips. While traditional mass reach media like television and radio were plagued by infrastructure deficiencies like power cuts, mobile phones had an absolute reach of 86%. The platform was a clear winner when it came to adoption and was already being used to consume movie and Bollywood content.

“Single largest media channel in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand” In just 5 months of the idea coming alive, we got more than what we had set out to - Over 8 Million subscribers in two states (as of March 2014). The subscriber base has now crossed 14 million. Over 1800 new users are added to the base every hour. The project eventually aims to reach 100 million users in India’s media dark hinterlands. KKT covers 60% of the non – TV households in these states. The content has proven to be a hit with a Total Usage of 300 Million minutes till date. On 2nd July 2014, KKT received a record 1.1 million missed calls. The campaign also delivered over 62 Million brand impressions (till March 2014). 103 million have been delivered till date. Increase in Spont Awareness for all three brands associated – o Wheel – 20% – o Ponds White Beauty – 56% – o Close Up – 39% High Recall for key communication messages across brands All of this at 4 cents cost per contact.