The Campaign

We wished to make poetry more accessible to the blind, but converting thousands of poems to braille would be time consuming and tedious. Moreover, not all blind people might be able to read them. But there was one simple solution - create an audio library of poems, where they hear the words instead of reading them! Two questions remained, and it was in the discovery of the answers that the campaign truly came together - How do we get people involved? By crowd sourcing the poems. Users could record a poem chosen from a pre-selected list, or even their own – all on our campaign website! These poems were then optimized for the Daisy reader, and made accessible to the blind. How do we reach out to them? By asking them to ‘Pay With Their Voice’. For every poem recorded, they would receive a gift voucher from e-commerce giant eBay!

Creative Execution

On October 5th, 2015, the campaign was launched across all major digital platforms. For the next ten days, the call to join the movement and ‘Pay with your voice’ became the talk of the town. Facebook: An album was created to promote ‘Pay with your voice’, and uploaded on the Facebook pages of both eBay and Omron. Twitter: A number of influencers on Twitter were brought into the fold, to tweet about the campaign and spread the word. The hashtag #PayWithYourVoice was popularized on this platform. Websites: A banner with the key campaign creative was placed on the eBay India homepage, which has a significant footfall, and increased our reach manifold. This banner was also placed on the home of the campaign- yourvoicetheirworld.com PR: We activated numerous PR channels, and articles about the campaign were published. What’s more, the campaign also generated in unpaid PR.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The campaign quickly became a talking point on social media, with popular celebrities joining in. With a total of 118 million impressions, more than 3.4 million people were reached in just a few days. The campaign trended at No. 1 on Twitter in India for three days straight, and at the No. 3 spot globally, with over 13,000 tweets using the campaign #. Within the campaign duration, we got over 25,400 unique website visits. While most other campaigns ask for ‘likes’ and ‘shares’, we asked users to give us something much more important- their time. And they didn’t disappoint – in a short span of 10 days, 3,992 poems were recorded, with an average user spending at least 5 minutes on the site! Each one of these poems is a testament to the fact that it’s not only the big gestures that change someone’s world - sometimes just a voice

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

This is a unique campaign which utilised the presence of a young, urban middle class audience on e-commerce websites and tapped into their desire to do something good for the society. As a promotion for creating India’s largest audio-library of poetry, it made online shoppers spend good amount of time on the campaign website and associated channels.

We chose to talk to the young, urban middle class, which was waking up to the idea of doing good for society. However, when it came to the visually impaired, most people wanted to help but were not sure how. This also happens to be the class that is most frequent on e-commerce websites, and is willing to interact with brands on their social media platforms. ‘Digital natives’, they are open to new ways of using the medium. For these reasons, we decided to partner with eBay and tap into its 3 million plus fan base on Facebook and Twitter. We asked this community to record poetry for the visually impaired, and in return, get an eBay gift voucher. As for the recordings, they were shared with the National Association of the Blind, so that they could be made accessible to the visually impaired.