Social Media Strategy Review: Bingo!

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s entire social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

When the first round of Bingo! ads were aired on television they surprised the audience, in a positive way. The entertainment value of those ads was high, and people actually waited for the ads during the ad breaks. This was in the pre-social-media era. From the time social media became a powerful force, a lot has changed in people's perception and the things that engage them. Has Bingo! been successful in repeating the success of TVC on social media, in terms of engagement? Is it as famous on social media as its ads were on television? These are the things I am going to analyze in this social media strategy review.

Audience Analysis of Bingo!

Bingo! is a snacks brand full of masti, liked by people from all age groups. The brand has a very-high fun quotient, and it has established its positioning with its TVCs. You can see in the image below that everyone from a 13-year old to a 40+ adult likes Bingo!, though the brand is followed more by male than females on social media (see the second image below).

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Overall Strategy

Bingo! has positioned itself as a snack for fun-time, and as a brand that brings fun to life even in the dullest hour, an impression that people seem to agree with. The brand has decided to carry this fun image of themselves to social media. Having fun, entertaining users, and placing the brand in a friendly setting forms the main social media strategy of the brand. How far it has gone with this strategy and how successful the brand has been is the subject of this study.

Bingo! on Facebook

The brand has 4.4 million fans on Facebook, and although per-post engagement of the brand is good, the overall engagement has not been high enough in the last 30 days (see the images below).

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

In terms of the content, the brand has done a remarkable job. The social media team of Bingo! has successfully included everyday situations like train delays and waiting for movies, and caricatured them in a very friendly manner, providing comic relief to the audience at the same time (see the two images below). The brand's mantra has always been to add a sense of masti to the dullest situations, and their Facebook posts clearly indicate how true they are to their mantra.

The brand has used current news items and recent happenings in India in a humorous way to entertain its audience and include the brand amid the conversation. In India, a snack brand is not worth its salt, if it has not brought cricket and Bollywood into a conversation, and Bingo has ensured that they do a wonderful job here as well. It has rightly appropriated cricket and Bollywood to bring the product in the discussion without diluting its own image or taking away attention from the things that matter. Observe the following two images and look how naturally the brand has included itself in the conversation.

The sentiments revolvingaround Bingo! are not excessively skewed towards any side. The emotions expressed in posts are very balanced; If 39.58% hold a negative view of the brand, 29.24% hold a positive view, and 31.18% held a neutral stance.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Bingo! on Twitter

Bingo is not active on Twitter. Although it has an adequately designed profile and it is promoted from the about section of the Facebook info page (mentioned in a way so as to keep it visible on the timeline), there is nothing happening on Twitter.

As you can see in the image below, the tweets are not only days apart, but on occasions they are months apart (see the image below). On one occasion, there was an 8 month gap between two tweets. The first one was done on September 15, 2012 and the next on May 14, 2013 (see towards the bottom of the below image).

Comparison with competitor

As a brand, Lay's is undoubtedly bigger than Bingo!, but that reputation has not helped the brand outdo Bingo! on Facebook. The studied brand is bigger than its competitors, and as the second screenshot suggests, posts on Bingo!'s wall are more engaging than those of Lay's.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Unlike Bingo! who have devised a unique way of placing its product within everyday situations in a funny way, Lays wants to be the center of the conversation. There is nothing wrong with it except the fact that the content needed to support this kind of positioning is not visible on social media. Compare the two images below and see the difference in tone and you will understand why Bingo! is more popular on social media than Lay's.

Bingo! Elsewhere

Bingo! also has a YouTube channel where it has uploaded some of its clips, and television commercials, but the activity level on YouTube is also similar to that on Twitter. Nothing has gone up the channel in more than six months.

Conclusion

Bingo! has done a wonderful job on Facebook, but that is about it. The brand is not at all active on Twitter and YouTube. For a brand like Bingo! Twitter holds a lot of opportunity. It should not let this go, and formulate an engagement plan as early as it can. It has done a better job than its competitors, but instead of just focusing solely on one channel, it should broaden its horizon a little.

Expert View:

Its amazing how much dearth of creativity is on a page for a brand whose name has the tagline “Mad Angles”. There is a huge opportunity for Bingo to find a mad angle to everything and make it a viral property in a way similar to Amul, which does a wonderful job with its spoofs on current affairs. But what Bingo has limited itself to is associating current affairs with its chips, which is a good, but not particularly a great strategy.

Let us for a minute consider the Mad Angles concept on Twitter, and look at the possibilities the campaign could have. It looks like a very good opportunity to get it trending, with users jumping on the bandwagon and sharing their own mad angles. This concept can be applied to movie review, politics, gossip or even sports.

It just seems like the brand is either wanting to play too safe or doesn't believe in the power of social media.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Social Media Agency.

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360