Why is this work relevant for Creative Data?

For retaining 27% of female customers who usually uninstall our app post-booking, and increasing positive sentiment from 17.5% to 35%. OYO is the go-to brand for unmarried couples in India, a segment that had no place to ‘get a room’ before OYO made it legit by accepting the same city’s IDs and offering convenience with its ubiquity, accessibility and pricing. Unfortunately, this association with couples comes with a strong negative perception of sex (in India). Women shy away from associating with brand OYO even though women make up 45% of our customers. Hurting our potential to grow organically.

Background

February is a popular month among couples across the globe, thanks to Valentine’s day. Unfortunately, in India, this means unmarried couples (or couples who appear unmarried), face an even harder time hanging out together. They often bear the wrath of right-wing protestors who choose to target young couples in the name of moral policing. But India also has OYO — a reliable brand 60% of whose business consists of couple bookings. Over the years, OYO has offered couples the convenience of spending time with their loved ones. The brief was to help drive the change in perception towards the brand to retain our customers.

Describe the Creative idea / data solution (20% of vote)

We had decided to change the narrative and shift the conversation from Sex to Relationships. Women were staying with OYO, returning to OYO (71.8% repeat rate), but didn’t want to be associated with OYO. They continued with OYO despite everything and that formed the genesis of the idea: Relationships are in a long term relationship with OYO. A couple has been with each other for a while. Are they married? Are they dating? This isn’t about defining that. It was simply about their day to day interactions. Moments that reveal little bits about their relationship with each other and indeed with OYO. To help us do that we got a woman who is fiercely independent, lived life on her own terms, could tell you that a relationship is much more than sex, and the world would listen. A much loved, much older woman and her sweet, sweet man.

Describe the data driven strategy (30% of vote)

Women spoke to women. We conducted 1:1 interactions with women that helped us realise that mostly it is the women who drive conversation and take the final decision of the hotel, the location and the date. But while they found the utility of OYO in their life, brand likeability remained a miss. They pointed out the unhappy experiences resulting from the constant eyeing, commenting, and shadiness they had to deal with when staying at an OYO. The brand had also become an easy target for pop culture to create distasteful content around it. In order to even remotely build affection, we needed to address the factors that concerned them — perception. With the campaign we recalled the comfort and peace of mind couples experience in their relationship. A sense of safety and their aspirations come to life and we help them progress their purpose.

Describe the creative use of data, or how the data enhanced the creative output (20% of vote)

Positive sentiment increased to 35.7% in March 2021 as compared to 17.5% in March 2020 — an uplift of 18.2%. Negative sentiment dropped from 24.3% in March 2020 to 13.1% in March 2021. Overall sentiment score has been seeing fundamental improvement with the average shifting closed to 20%. The female audience base has increased by over 60K since March 2020. We increased our female following on social media by over 60K since March 2020. Consideration increased and the last 6 months have seen over 100K solo women travellers stay with us.

List the data driven results (30% of vote)

With over 1lac app downloads every day, there is an equally large number of same-day uninstalls (~48%) of which 80% were women, which almost contributed to 38K daily uninstalls. With the campaign, we reduced the uninstall percentage by 13% (from 80% to 67%). In our booking usage contribution, the highest contributors are unmarried couples (60%), which (majorly) means an equal number of men and women. However, booking made by women was less than 2%. Result: Booking made by women increased by 9%.