Social Media Campaign Review: Kerala Tourism’s Non-Imaginative Great Backwaters Campaign

Brand Name:

Kerala Tourism

Objective:

To attract users to enjoy the natural beauty of God’s own country – Kerala.

Execution:

In what appears to be a simple and obvious campaign format, Kerala Tourism has gone the ‘social media contest’ way to promote its Great Backwaters campaign to take tourists to a vast network of lakes, snake boat races and watch over 200 species of birds.

The campaign is supported by a microsite. Through the site, you could take a virtual tour of Kerala’s natural beauty. The primary promoting source of the campaign is its Twitter handle which has over 19 thousand followers. A frontline image of the campaign is hidden in the microsite.

The image from the aerial photography of the backwaters under the campaign is revealed piece by piece with each tweet on hashtag #GreatBackwaters. The entire image will be revealed once a considerable number of tweets with the hashtag appear.

When the last block was unveiled, this campaign image was shown

The Kerala Tourism is offering souvenirs of the state as prizes to two winners from the tweets every day. The Twitter campaign has recently been replicated on Facebook and Kerala Tourism has also started a blogger outreach campaign.

The campaign has been extended to Kerala Tourism’s officialPinterest account asking people to create a backwater board on their Pinterest profile. In return of tweets and photos, users can earn a free holiday in Kerala. Tourism Kerala is also considering a larger state-wide multimedia campaign along the same theme.

Positives:

Launching a Twitter campaign is a bold effort on the part of a government agency. The campaign has made a straight attempt to recreate Kerala through pictures, most of which are extreme long camera shots.

Improvements:

Kerala Tourism has played it safe to promote a campaign that is presumably of great value. Twitter contests are the most convenient and therefore safe haven for new campaigns which promise ‘exciting prizes’ to ‘lucky winners’.Great Back Waters falls in the same league.

The contest has evidently generated very few remarkable responses and unseen snaps of Kerala’s waters. The messaging and integration of the campaign on other platforms could have been slightly creative to say the least. A new visitor may struggle to fathom what he should be doing, apart from tweeting with hashtag #GreatBackwaters.

The concept of revealing the picture block by block is very common. It was recently used by Vogue Eyewear, Nissan India and Krishh3

Conclusion:

Mention of God (and his country) raises the expectations of anything significantly. Moreover, such a campaign must be dealt with aesthetically and a sense of creativity.

As tourism encompasses many dimensions including people, nature, travel, food, romance, comfort, both the content and the context of the campaign could have been clearer to attract more eyeballs and engage users.

What do you think about Kerala Tourism's campaign? Share your suggestions in the comments below or drop us a mail. We'd love to hear what you think.