When was the last time a brand played Holi with you? Well, Berger Paints India has now claimed the honor of doing that first.
On Holi, if you were one of the select few chosen by Berger Paints India and you opened your twitter account, you would have seen your profile pic, but this time with your face smeared with colors. A line above the photo would have read ‘Buraa na maano… holi hai!’
A cheeky move, but one that was met with surprise and applause.
We spoke to the agency behind the activity, HGS Interactive, to understand the thinking behind the activity.
“There was a time when agencies used to take the time to make beautiful creative for festive occasions. Today, it has become just a ‘hygiene’ element, which is usually executed by the junior executives. We wanted to take one big leap, and make it exciting and personal again,” said Prashant Poddar - Creative and Strategy at HGS Interactive.
The hard work behind it involved shortlisting twitteratis, creating custom ‘Holi profile pictures’ for each and every one, and sending it to each of these individuals—all in a time span of four hours.
And the money? While brands traditionally push festive campaigns with heavy media spends, Berger Paints India aimed for an activity that’s exactly like the ideal holi colour—organic.
All of this paid off for the brand. The campaign achieved a reach of almost 800,000 and more than 15 million impressions.
And also saw some of the users even pick it up and use it as their own profile picture!
While the activity was held only on Twitter, the brand also saw some of the enthusiasm spill out onto other platforms, with no additional incentives or push by the brand.
This is an interesting way for a brand to engage with the audiences on social media. Riding high on a truly organic campaign is always risky, but personalization topped up with some quirk can sometimes do a lot more than expected for the brand.
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