The Campaign

The big idea: “would you risk your business for the cost of a cup of tea?” The teacup is omnipresent in the Sri Lankan office. It is universal for any office to serve a cup of tea, twice a day, to the employees. The cost is so negligible that no one would consider stopping tea as a means of cost-cutting. The teacup presented a nice way to put the cost in context: the cost of a regular cup of tea served in a typical Sri Lankan office was around 25 LKR, the same as Microsoft Office 365 per day. Would they risk their business by using untrusted software to save the cost of a cup of tea? The video raised awareness on data leakage as well, by silently asking, “If a spilled cup of tea can ruin your day, how would it be to spill all your confidential business data?”

Creative Execution

The idea was put into video format, with a teacup superimposed on a CD. The imagery was targeted at bringing the comparison alive in a way that was sure to arrest attention of viewers. Knowing from past experience that most video abandons happen before 25% of video runtime, we made sure that we communicated the price comparison within the first nine seconds. In addition, all the key points were delivered before 18 seconds (50% runtime). Clicking on the video pre-roll got the user on to a landing page where they could submit their contact details. Alternatively, they could give a missed call to a predefined number. By making sure that the effort required on their part was minimal as possible, we removed every possible barrier from the lead generation process. The video was run on Google (as YouTube pre-roll), Facebook, and LinkedIn, from February to March 2016.

During the two months the campaign ran, Microsoft Sri Lanka promo website acquired 19,942 users, out of which 17,090 (86%) were new users. Out of these users, 423 inquiries were generated within the 8 weeks the campaign was run. Video campaign on Facebook reached 438,199 people with a total view-count of 223,295 (average view rate over 35%); over 36% of people watched 25% of the total video length (which means they reached the price comparison point), and over 9% watched the entire video. On LinkedIn, the content with the video link had 28,742 impressions, 389 engagements, 259 clicks and 130 social actions (mainly positive comments). On YouTube, the video was viewed over 25,000 times. Out of this, more than 41% of the people watched 25% of the total video length (i.e. reached the price comparison point), while 12% watched the entire video length.

According to preliminary studies, an estimated number of 7,500 SMBs are there in Sri Lanka. The opportunity lay in the fact that more than 2,500 of these could be reached through digital platforms. As per our preliminary studies, Digital was the platform on which most of the key decision makers could be reached cost-effectively. Furthermore, the product itself was Digital. Our target group was CEOs, owners, senior staff in IT, procurement, finance and admin/HR. Video was the ideal choice, because we had a story to tell. It had to be short in order to fit into the attention span of a busy executive. (The final video was just 35s long). Facebook was chosen as the main medium because it had more than 53% penetration among the internet users in Sri Lanka. Also, YouTube and LinkedIn were chosen as supporting media: YouTube for pre-roll, LinkedIn to reach the CXOs.