The Campaign

It had been a year since Motorola came back to the India market. Motorola tasked us with rebuilding its brand, making its smartphones relevant, driving sales and regaining trust in the brand. In just one year, we achieved something most brands off-the-pace of innovation only dream of: we got people excited about the brand, hugely increased market share, and regained credibility in a market that is cluttered with many national and international smartphone players. Now it was time to launch yet another exceptional device, the new Moto E, a great budget phone offering premium features. We crafted a PR campaign, introducing the new Moto E in an innovative way, creating maximum visibility & driving sales for the product. We took the consumer tech marketing paradigm and deposed it, in favour of a daring and never tried before campaign. As the device was the only smartphone under INR 10,000 that offered premium specs, we wanted to position it as the device with which one can #ChoosetoStart his smartphone journey. In India, where a large part of the population still uses feature phones, we successfully positioned the Moto E as the only device that brings that promise to life for an enormous population of new users– enabling them to start new experiences, capture and share them in ways that were never possible before. The #ChoosetoStart campaign was amplified across PR, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Demo’s at the event generating conversations not just in India, but across the globe.

The Brief

Before creating our PR strategy, we analysed discussions and conversations around the previous generations of Moto E. The objective was to conceptualise a campaign that brought out the USPs of new Moto E to life and created enough buzz pre and post the product announcement, thereby, engaging customers and driving sales. Based on this, we wanted to position the new Moto E as the device with which one can #ChoosetoStart his smartphone journey.

Results

Within an hour of the announcement, we received more than 40 positive online articles. To date, this has secured 2.5 million impressions overall. The final number stood at 408 articles across print and online. This amounts to around 6 billion media impressions in total. With this activity, we managed to reach out to around 83.5 million readers and garnered an AVE of1.2 Cr. On social, we reached out to over 2,00,000 fans today during the launch, with conversations around #ChooseToStart building up from pre-launch to today, garnering 2.6 million impressions and reaching out to 722k accounts on Twitter. The gratification programme was globally covered by the media with 32 program enablers, and over 46,62,034 plus impressions. And the phone went on to become a blockbuster in its price range.

Execution

Moto E was launched doing a ‘Press Conference in a Box’ which was linked to a microsite where media could live stream the launch event. We did reviews, blogger engagement and influencer programmes to generate conversations on the #ChoosetoStart campaign. To sustain the buzz around our campaign and use up the opened reviewed media devices, we initiated a gratification programme to gratify a feature phone user with a Moto E device. We selected few journalists to become enablers & start someone’s smartphone journey. An experience tour was initiated in key regional markets in India. Being a budget phone, it was important to reach masses. We wanted to communicate our message on customer experience post sales and the fact that Moto E is a great way to #ChooseToStart someone’s smartphone journey. On social, a three-tier approach was conceptualized for 1-1 engagement for pre-event quirky product teasers for supporting the #ChooseToStart campaign

The Situation

With a large number of feature phone users in the country, almost every smartphone brand was launching products to lure this customer base. The dynamic Indian smartphone market has been thriving and innovating at the speed of light, providing endless choices to consumers. Thus it became important to have a strong central idea behind our communications strategy for the new Moto E that could be amplified across all our PR and social assets.

The Strategy

Despite the price and product specifications getting leaked way ahead of the launch, it was important to ensure that the India launch does not get overshadowed by the already speculative stories doing the rounds. Thus, we created a platform with a more powerful message – choose to start your smartphone journey with Moto E. The idea was to position Moto E as the only device that brings that promise to life for an enormous population of new users– enabling them to start new experiences, capture and share them in ways that were never possible before. The #ChoosetoStart campaign was amplified across PR, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Demo’s at the event generating conversations not just in India, but across the globe.