Indian Ministry of Tourism - 'Reclaim India' a Social Media Campaign

7/31/2019 Indian Ministry of Tourism - 'Reclaim India' a Social Media Campaign

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Social Media Plane-Marketing assignment

Group 12

6/16/2012

Submitted By:

Anirudh Kunjal (PGP-11-103)

Chirag Heda (PGP-11-020)

George Thomas (PGP-11-022)

Rahul Raghunathan (PGP-11-145)

Shanoop Krishnan (PGP-11-069)

Swati Koul (PGP-11-081)



Marketing Goal of the Social Media Strategy

Context

The Ministry of Tourism is concerned that Indians are increasingly likely to vacation and travel

abroad than in India, thus exporting the tourism revenue which could have remained domestic.

Marketing Goal

This Social Media Campaign aims to increase awareness and knowledge of beautiful but lesser

known tourist locations in India through a Word of Mouth movement. An outcome of the same

would be the inclusion of these destinations in the decision-making set of abroad bound tourists.

Social Media Goals

The campaign intends to induce Word of Mouth behaviour on the campaign website and on other

social media platforms. Below are the details of the campaign:

Campaign Name: “Reclaim India”

The “Reclaim India” campaign revolves around users unlocking lesser-known but not less beautiful

locations in India through location based quizzes thereby getting to know more about them. Below

are the essentials of the campaign:

The campaign encourages Indians to unlock tourist locations to free them from a “foreigner

overdose”. To “free” a destination, it has to be “unlocked” by a minimum number of users,

which would be pre-decided by the creators based on expected and desired interest of the

location. To unlock a location, a user has to go answer a simple 10 question quiz on the location

having questions on its culture, history, food, prominent tourist spots and so on. The idea is

to get the user to search to find the answer about the location which would increase his

awareness and inclination to go visit the place.

On successfully completing the quiz, the user can post about it on Facebook, Twitter and

other social media websites. This would result in a posts which could incite other users to

participate such as :

“Raj has successfully unlocked Chintpurni from the foreigners. Join him in Reclaiming India”

The campaign would run on a standalone website www.reclaimindia.com. The home page

would have a big map of the country with key tourist locations being highlighted. The

number of people who have unlocked the city and the number of people required to free

the city would be displayed against each city

In addition to this, there would be pages for different destinations having details about

locations, ways to get there, places to visit & eat etc.

Further, registered users would also have the opportunity to upload photos and videos for

listed locations. There would also be an option to recommend locations to other users.

http://www.reclaimindia.com/






The social media marketing sales funnel below details the concept:

The campaign goals on other internet applications can be defined in terms of WoM behaviour of

those platforms:

Social Media Application Parameter to measure WoM

Blogs Number of references to campaign website on blogs

Number of times a campaign “badge” is displayed on blogs

Twitter Number of retweets

Stumble Upon Number of additional taggers

Facebook Number of reposts/ shares of campaign posts

Frequency of appearance on timeline of friends

YouTube and Flickr Number of embeddings

Number of times republished in other social media and offline

Number of “Likes”

Why is a social media strategy better suited to accomplish the goals?

To induce the behaviour desired in the target group, the attitudes that drive such trends have to

come about organically rather than imposed via a marketing campaign. A social media is best suited

to achieve this objective as it does it faster, cheaper and better method than any other means

possible. The campaign involves users as content creators which enhances credibility and creates a

sense of contribution.

Awareness: The campaign would begin with a TVC having a Pondicherry

fisherman walking through tourist attractions of the city which are all

flocked by foreign tourists. Frustrated, he laments about his city being“taken over” by foreigners and appeals to viewers to go to

www.reclaimindia.com and set his city “free”. 2 more TVCs would be

Interest: The campaign fits into a user’s social life as it encourages him to

spread the word among his colleagues and friends to “Reclaim” the

country. Further the ability to share photos and videos gives a person the

feeling that he is helping others discover locations better.

Action: The campaign would be useful in the user’s social life as

It induces a sense of patriotism giving a person a desired social

identity

One gets the chance of being a “trustworthy friend” or “opinion

leader” when one recommends friends videos of locations






Who is the plan targeted at and why?

We envisage that India is heavily influenced by western culture and is a deep rooted sentiment

among many young audiences that vacationing abroad is a much more pleasing experience than

visiting places in India. Tradition and a feeling of promoting the rich heritage of our country has

taken a backseat and this is the primary reason why travellers end up going abroad for vacations –

with locations of the likes of South East Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand being the

usual destinations since they offer specialized cheap packages for Indian travellers. There is also a

large proportion of travellers who visit Europe. USA is also a favourable destination especially for

families of those who are studying and/or working there. Other locations like Dubai, Maldives, Sri

Lanka, etc form a set of locations that young people and engaged/married couples look to travel.

Over 50% of India’s 1.22B is under the age of 25. Hard numbers are not the only criterion in a

marketing campaign but this hits you in the face and the fact that inevitably a vast majority of the

young population is on social networks; the market segment has tremendous potential.

It so happens that the campaign we have in store was conceptualized keeping in mind the affluent

youth, the upper middle class and upper class who seek to travel abroad for vacations. Another

point to note is that the propagators of viral marketing are primarily in the age bracket we have

identified to target our campaign.

Males and Females in the age bracket of 18-35 years, belonging to socio-economic classes A1,A2 and

B1.

Drilling down to a more granular level for focussed campaigning would be the below TG:

Males and Females in the age bracket of 18-35 years, belonging to socio-economic classes A1,A2 and

B1 , who have travelled abroad either on study or for leisure or own expensive cars or have visited

tourism websites of south east Asian countries or have commented on social media sites for #cheap

#holiday #abroad #honeymoon #Singapore #Malaysia #Thailand #backpack #beach #mountain

#vacation #holiday #trip #getaway

It would also be helpful to note that the segment of individuals aged between 18-24 years of age

play a significant role in influencing the choice of holiday destinations in case of families in the

country.

Another core set of target segment population would be people who have already travelled abroad

for holidays. They could be found out by using the Facebook app – “Cities I’ve been to”.

The campaign will run on a website and integrated with social media platforms like blogs, Facebook,

Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

Approach

The social media marketing campaign will provide value to the target audience in ways of

entertainment, facts & information and bragging rights. These will be discussed in greater detail inthe following sections. Primarily, the campaign will avoid boasting or epitomizing about India and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Classification_(India)
















Conditions under which plan will succeed

The videos that would be put up on platforms like Youtube and Facebook would be vital in capturing

the attention of the social media population. A well-made, humorous video with the right cast would

pique the curiosity of people and encourage them to check out the link provided.

Ensuring that the teaser videos are displayed prominently on all the major social media networks inthe initial phase of the campaign is crucial. The visibility of these videos would in turn determine the

exposure that it would gain from potential viewers. Another significant aspect to be taken care of

would be the timing and rotation of the teaser videos, as it would go a long way in reaching out

effectively to the target group defined.

Once the campaign is successful in leading viewers to the standalone website for the campaign, then

the quality and innovativeness of the game would be the next major factor in the overall success of

the initiative. The underlying idea behind the game would be to engage all site visitors laterally and

keep them hooked on to the concept of reclaiming all major tourist spots in India. The interface

should be simple and easy to use with user friendly navigation features.

Adequate measures would be put in place to ensure that no explicit connection to the Department

of Tourism can be elicited from the teaser videos and the interactive game. This would ensure that

no explicit signalling happens in the course of the campaign, as we would want to want the viewers

to evolve the tone and direction of the discussion on their own. The campaign ought to start in the

lateral space and should remain so.

Conditions under which plan will fail

The campaign’s success will be extremely doubtful in case of a failure in generating and sustaining

the buzz around it in the lateral space. If effective measures for developing and encouraging the

lateral engagement initiatives are not implemented, then it would end up being a major deterrent in

the path to success. If the target audience is not provided with enough means to contribute anddrive the discussion such as contribution of original content of videos, photos and blog entries, this

might hurt the ambitions of the campaign to expand its reach.

Ensuring that the content of the teaser videos as well as the interactive game is innovative and

attractive is essential for the success of the campaign. If the target audience is not able to connect

and relate with the content and tone of the campaign measures, then that would be a sure recipe

for failure. The cast of the teaser videos, the ease of use and visual features of the game are more

features that have to be up to the mark.

Measurements

While measuring the effectiveness of the plan, primary focus will be given to the extent of reach

Reclaim India campaign has been able to generate. It will be based on the volume of people talking

about the campaign and the number of channels used to generate the conversation. Measuring the

social media success depends on the channels used for the social media campaign. The Reclaim India

campaign propagates over different social media viz. facebook, twitter, Pinterest etc. Therefore,

measurement of the impact of the social media campaign depends on the various metrics which are

used across these social networks.

Facebook : The teaser videos that are launched in Facebook can be monitored using metrics like thenumber of shares, likes and comments received. These metrics can be used in turn to check the



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Indian Ministry of Tourism - 'Reclaim India' a Social Media Campaign