The Campaign

Doublemint wanted to continue with its global communication ‘building meaningful connections by starting something fresh’ for its launch in India. We came-up with a campaign idea which would help the brand build connections with its youth audience in a fresh &interesting manner. This lead to the India’s first crowd-sourced book: #StartSomethingFresh, a crowd-sourced e-Book authored by a renowned romance writer & millions of his fans. We roped in India’s heart-throb romance-novel writer Durjoy Datta to write an 11 liner story, asking his fans to complete the book by uploading a picture relevant to each line. Durjoy was chosen for his popularity as a romance writer (which aligned well with Doublemint’s communication theme of a young couple’s romance journey) &his significant digital presence – 0.85 Mn fans on FB and 0.7 Mn followers on Twitter. Social channels is where we could both reach and engage youth audiences with our brand's idea.

Creative Execution

The activity started with concept revealing on social-platforms with a teaser post asking audience to predict the name of Durjoy’s next book. After this, 1line of the book was released every day for 11days on Durjoy’s & Doublemint’s social-platforms prompting users to participate. The best picture representing each line was chosen to create the physical copy of this crowd-sourced book with the tile ‘Doublemint #StartSomethingFresh by Durjoy Datta & His Fans’ and were handed out to winners personally signed by the author at a PR event. The digital content idea was supported with a mass media campaign with a short film shot on the brand theme of ‘Start Something Fresh’. We also gave consumers a chance to share their own #StartSomethingFresh stories on the brand website. We gave these stories life by creating a visual strips of these stories in a carousal format and then promoted this content.

• More than 900 pictures uploaded • Facebook- We reached 5.7 mn audiences with an engagement rate of more than 10%, 2X above any regular campaign • Twitter- 1.3 million impressions with engagement rate of 3.4%, double industry benchmarks • Video views - 22.3 Mn across Facebook & YouTube • The YouTube commercial garnered over 10 Mn earned views. • Platforms like Quora saw fans writing 500+ words describing why the Doublemint communication was best in class. • In the phase 2 of the campaign, we got close to 90 #StartSomethingFresh stories from the audience • Business metrics - Sales % increased 67% increase in 3 months • Campaign metrics - Social media impressions: 85 Mn. impressions in 55 days - Social media fans: 49K Facebook page followers in 55 days - Social media conversations: 7.2K conversations in 55 days - Tweets: Twitter Reach of 2 Mn. in 55 days

#StartSomethingFresh was a campaign where we had to reach the youth &resonate with them such that they feel connected with Doublemint &created pull for the brand at store. Regular campaigns wouldn’t cut ice with the TG, whose attention span was less than 8seconds. We gave this campaign, a local flavor through an engaging digital content idea which led to India’s first crowd sourced romance picture-book co-created with India’s most popular romance writer, Durjoy Datta. For 11days, Durjoy’s fans uploaded pictures relevant to the line using his social handles. The best photos were published to create a romance picture-book called #StartSomethingFresh

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The objective was a simple one – launch Doublemint in the cluttered confectionery market in India, engage the Indian youth with the brand’s global positioning of #StartSomethingFresh &create consumer pull in the retail push market. BUT, you’re up against another global player who has deep rooted distribution strength and even deeper media pockets. Also we’re talking to an audience who’s being wooed by literally every other brand in the country. To make our job even tougher, the youth in India had really short attention span i.e. 8 seconds. Our extensive research &knowledge of the Indian youth revealed a few truths: they didn’t connect with brands unless the brand was present on platforms which they related to, with content they relate to. They lived their lives online through their mobiles &pictures were the new story-telling-tool. A mobile-first digital strategy activated via social-platforms like Facebook thus became the cornerstone of our campaign.