Valentines week this year was filled with campaigns of e-commerce companies giving away discounts. In the middle of all the mess we came across an innovative campaign by a news technology company– NewsBytes, with a theme ‘Intelligence is the new sexy’. Pixr8 got in touch with the founders to understand how this worked out!
NewsBytes is a Gurgaon based news technology company, started by Sumedh Chaudhry, Shikha Chaudhry, Romesh Khaddar, and Sripriya Yegneswaran. They call themselves a bunch of geeks who discuss start-ups when relatives talk about marriages, who get excited when they see a 3D printed iPhone case, who have strong opinions about random things they read on Quora and who think they are la-di-da entrepreneurs.
“A lot of entrepreneurs say that you should be able to measure every task you do, that the Facebook is the best medium for any and every campaign, and that freebies should be given at the end of every campaign,” says Sumedh, the IIM Ahmedabad Alumnus.
While they are not doubting any of that, they added a few more things during the implementation of this campaign. “We realized that between gut and data, gut wins,” says Sripriya, an IIMA pass out who worked with Booz and Company before starting up! NewsBytes proceeded with no pre-conceived notions and here is what they did:
• Tuesday, 9th Feb
The team published a blog on ‘6 Indian Apps Every Guy Needs This Valentine’s’ which they decided to deliver through Medium and BuzzFeed. “Since the content was based on the services provided by already known start-ups, it was an instant hit. We used our imagination to present a whole new use case of these brands, which was both quirky and useful, in equal parts. The brands liked it and so did the end readers,” says Sumedh. This helped them plug in NewsBytes along with the known brands.
• Wednesday, 10th Feb
The team came up with an interesting quiz on ‘How Date-Able Are You Actually?’ which was delivered through BuzzFeed. Though perky, nice and funny, a lot of people hesitated to share the results. “There was no bonus point, but we had a great time making it!” says Shikha, who is a Cornell Alumnus.
The next day, the team let the existing content float. It was a great decision. “We were all set for our master-stroke and could not wait for Friday! When you know something in your gut, it is usually right,” says the Cornell Alumnus.
• Friday, 12th Feb
The team came up with a series of posters on ‘If The Brands Had Tinder Profiles’ and delivered it via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. “The results were phenomenal. The notifications were buzzing from every platform, it was music to our ears. Pure bliss!” says Romesh, the IIT Guwahati Alumnus. They started a Twitter hashtag by the name “IfBrandsHadTinderProfile” in the morning and by late afternoon, they were one of the top 20 trends.
The following day, they tried to run the same hashtag again but it didn’t trend. “We learnt that Every campaign has a shelf life!” says Chaudhary.
• Sunday, 14th Feb
For V-day, they conducted real interviews with random people in an upmarket locality in Gurgaon. In order to conclude, the team created a small video on a serious issue with a funny take – ‘Guys are single because there are no women in technology, entrepreneurship, senior management positions and elsewhere’. The content was shared via Facebook and YouTube. The message to their campaign was conveyed well.
“Marketing is not a science, there is no right or wrong. More often than not, the results are highly subjective; something that works for you may not work for me. But, don’t discard an idea without trying it once. Someone said, businesses have just 2 functions – innovation and marketing. I would say, mix the two and do innovative marketing!” Sumedh ends by saying.
Oh did we forget to mention? As a side result of this campaign the number of weekly app downloads grew by whopping 30%!