Mumbai Indians with innovation in its DNA, has been at the forefront of digital engagement with its fans since inception. The team's fans are largely comprised of Millenials and Gen Z making it a digitally native fan base. Tapping in to the needs of its fans, MI delivers a one of a kind 360*digital user experience to them.
The team launched its Snapchat handle MI_Paltan and made its presence felt on this unique platform with an innovative Christmas campaign called MI Blue Santa. Gozoop, Mumbai Indians' social media agency, conceptualized and executed this campaign from start to finish. The campaign announced the entry of this iconic cricket team on Snapchat, which allowed the brand to communicate and connect with Millenials on social media in an unprecedented way. The MI Blue Santa was introduced to MI's fans and interacted with them at many iconic locations throughout Mumbai, and all interactions between Santa and the fans were broadcast live on Snapchat.
This activation focused on engaging and delighting "The Paltan" (as MI addresses its fans) with on ground contests that tested their cricket knowledge and gave them a chance to win iconic MI merchandise. Gozoop is the first Indian agency to have explored an offline-online activity of such magnitude on an emerging platform like Snapchat.
While the campaign's primary focus was Snapchat, Gozoop created multi-platform opportunities to bolster online engagement with contests running simultaneously on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. A testament to the success of the campaign on these platters was that #MIBlueSanta trended in Mumbai on Twitter. With this multi-pronged approach, the campaign managed to reach out to a large number of people within a short period of time.
Mumbai Indians & Gozoop explored unchartered territory with their Christmas campaign, namely the MI Blue Santa. This was the very first time an Indian agency executed a city wide offline-online Snapchat campaign for a sporting brand that resulted in quantifiable engagement with its target audience.
Objective
The objective of the campaign was to launch Mumbai Indians' presence on Snapchat (MI_Paltan) with a bang, increase its following on social media and connect with its younger fans. This required a campaign that was engaging, relevant and interactive.
Strategy
As the IPL off-season coincided with Christmas, MIBlueSanta proved to be a great opportunity to re-kindle the love of the Paltan, with Christmas as the driving factor of the campaign.
With Snapchat being an emerging social media platform in India, most of its users are millennials. Executing this campaign on Snapchat allowed MI to capitalize on this specific user base. Why Snapchat? Because it is a brilliant visual medium that offers multitudes of ways to connect with people. Also, the self destructing nature of the communication means the fans don't feel spammed. MIBlueSanta gave the MI fans an unusual user experience with fun stories.
Furthermore, with mobile being the new frontier for digital communication, the fact that users were connected to Snapchat on their phones all through the day and even on the go made it the perfect platform for this campaign.
Execution
The campaign was simultaneously executed offline and online. A Santa dressed in blue roamed the city, stopping at places that were vital to the history of cricket in Mumbai. He then asked the fans, questions based on cricket, which they had to answer correctly to win MI goodies.
Snapchat was cleverly used to document the journey of the MI Blue Santa, and to reach out to the Paltan instantaneously.
The popular locations included places like Azad Maidan, Shivaji Park, Dadkar Maidan, Ruia College and Poddar College, which are venues known to have witnessed the rise of Indian cricket heroes who eventually made it to the big leagues.
Hints of Santa's location were dropped across social media platforms and he would check in at locations across Mumbai to inform the Paltan where he is.
Outcome:
Snapchat
No. of stories: 48
My story minutes: 5 min 30 sec
Avg. views on each story in 24 hrs: 1,000
Approx. total number of views: 48,000
Total no. of Tweets: 7,266
TL deliveries: 82,075,032
Contributors: 744
Reach: 1,102,304
Mumbai Trend on Twitter.
Why it worked:
Mumbai Indians have approximately 2,000 friends on Snapchat but what's impressive is that over 70% of their friends open snaps and view them in their entirety, proving the content of the snaps is exactly what their target market wants to see.
Another reason – Exclusive content sent directly to fans- which is timely and tied to a specific event- fits the platform and users' expectations. With every snap, MI kept the followers guessing, so that each time the followers went on to open a snap, it had 100% of their attention.
