Think of online marketing, and social media is the first thing that comes to mind!
But, the rise in the number of people and the increasing amount of time they’ve been spending in online communities today has led a lot of brands to explore community marketing.⚡
ITC Foods Limited, one of the fastest-growing food businesses in India, partnered with Convosight and explored the power of communities to achieve their different marketing objectives. 💯
ITC Foods and its popular brands like Aashirvaad, Bingo, B Natural, Sunfeast, and Yippee, to name a few, have been associated with Convosight since 2020. Together, they’ve worked on multiple community marketing initiatives.
In this blog, we have shed light on five recent community marketing campaigns that helped different ITC brands achieve these objectives:
- Create awareness about a new product
- Establish brand association with a new one
- Increase consideration of an existing product in a specific geography
- Drive engagement and member interest and participation in a contest
ITC Foods Limited worked with Convosight to: identify the most relevant communities, tap into valuable consumer insights, curate a purpose-led marketing strategy, execute the campaign simultaneously across multiple communities, and analyze its impact.
Each of these campaigns concluded successfully, overachieved their targets, and their results were measured across different KPIs like the brand share of voice, brand sentiment and mentions, increase in category conversations, and user-generated content, to name a few.
Let’s look at each of these ITC brands and how they harnessed the power of communities to accomplish their goals.
1. Aashirvaad Organic
Aashirvaad, which recently launched its whole organic range of products, including Atta and Pulses (Chana dal, Toor dal, Moong dal and Urad dal), turned to communities to build their new product category, create its demand, and increase its awareness and consumption.
A total of 58 Facebook groups across parenting, food, nutrition, cooking, and lifestyle categories were curated, with over 2.5 million women and home chefs as their primary audience from six metropolitan areas.
The campaign was divided into 4 phases, and each phase focused on an individual goal.
It was a six-month exercise that started with building awareness for the category and followed by meaningful purpose-led campaigns around the benefits and usage of Aaashirvaad’s organic products.
The campaign was incredibly successful as Aashirvaad Nature’s Superfoods Organic Range managed to increase conversations about organic foods from 1100 to about 48,000 and drive a 99% share of voice in those conversations. The communities witnessed 3361 UGCs, i.e. new conversations (new posts in the communities) started by community members on Aashirvaad organically during the campaign.
2. ITC Care Basket
ITC E-Store, in association with Akshaya Patra Foundation, kicked off the initiative of providing a care basket (containing essentials to provide a nutritious meal) to those affected by the global pandemic.
They used the power of communities to create awareness about their website and the two donation baskets (Rs 500 and Rs 1000 basket), and establish brand association and understanding of the ITC E-store.
The campaign was successfully conducted across 100 Facebook groups with over 3.7 million members. Community admins shared static posts wherein they talked about this initiative, and encouraged members to come forward and donate.
They achieved 6.4K website clicks against the target of 5K. On the other hand, total category conversations went up by 27,441 and brand mentions by 743.
ITC achieved 87.1% positive sentiment and got a lot of appreciation for coming up with an initiative that helps people in trying times.
3. Bingo
Bingo, one of the most savoured crispy potato chips brands, needs no introduction!
To create awareness and drive engagement and participation of customers around their new WhackyFace contest, where they stand a chance to get featured in Bingo hoardings, Bingo decided to rely on communities.
Bingo, along with Convosight, ran a 15-day campaign across 49 Facebook groups with over 1.9 million members.
The campaign successfully created a buzz around the contest, and members proactively participated. 2,400 + UGCs from community members in just 15 days is enough evidence for it!
Additionally, category conversations increased from 44K to 47K, brand mentions went up to 2.6K from merely 8, and brand share of voice increased from 78% to 96%. Not to forget the 96% positive sentiment the brand received!
4. Aashirvaad Gulab Jamun Instant Mix
As we know, Gulab Jamun is one of the most preferred desserts in India’s Northern and Central parts.
Aashirvaad, which recently came up with instant gulab jamun mix, wanted to generate awareness and drive consideration for their product.
They chose communities as a channel as most of their potential customers spend most of their time sharing food recipes there. Last year around Diwali, Aashirvaad and Convosight selected 37 Facebook groups with over 2 million members that had members specifically from southern and western India.
The campaign saw community admins introducing a gulab jamun contest and encouraging members to participate and have fun.
The campaign was well-received among the community members, and the engagement of over 23,600 is enough evidence.
With 99.9% positive sentiment, the brand marked its territory in the instant dessert mix space and saw at least 50% purchase intent conversations.
5. Aashirvaad Atta
Again, Aashirvaad Atta needs no introduction as it’s probably the first name that comes to mind when we talk about packaged atta.
To drive consideration, Aashirvaad decided to tap into communities on the heels of Father’s Day. They used the occasion to expand the brand’s universe with the new entrants in the kitchen, i.e. fathers and younger adults, and build emotional affinity with them.
Along with Convosight, the brand curated a campaign across 188 communities with over 3.5 million members. It started with community admins sharing pictures of their fathers cooking rotis with Aashirvaad select atta. They then encouraged members to do the same.
Interestingly, the campaign saw spontaneous participation from community members and positive organic reviews for the brand. Members described the brand as healthy, full of goodness, nutrients, etc.
12,400 UGCs were received, which was way more than the presumed goal. Additionally, brand mentions increased to 6.9K+, with an average of 3 comments/mentions, and the brand achieved 57% positive reactions.
These are just a few successful community marketing campaign stories of the different brands of ITC Foods Limited. Many other brands too are unleashing the power of communities and making community marketing a part of their marketing mix. 🚀
If your brand still hasn’t explored communities as a channel, it’s high time you do! You can reach out to us, and our community marketing expert will get in touch with you and help you get started. 🙌🏻
Creating value in the lives of others with my content, little by little.✨
Working at Convosight, I do more than just wrangle commas. I’m passionate about innovating new ways to create super valuable and actionable content about Communities and Community Marketing at large, and sharing it with the right audience.
I also happen to manage a global community of power admins on Facebook, and that’s where most of my learnings come from.
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