The Hindu Business Line : Radio Mirchi to drive loyalty with students' club

THE Chennai station of Radio Mirchi, the private FM station, has chosen to reach out to its target listeners, college students, by creating a club for them, thus looking beyond traditional routes such as events and roadshows.

The radio station reckons that the creation of Mirchi Links, as the club is called, has been driven by the need to look beyond the concept of `opportunity to see,' which is linked with product marketing. Instead, the club, whose members will be "ambassadors" of the Mirchi brand, is said to offer an `opportunity to experience.'

"We experimented with a new way to build consciousness," says the Chennai station's Marketing Head, Mr Anand P., who will shortly take over as station head of Radio Mirchi, Kolkata.

College students have to go through a multi-stage selection process, including group discussion and personal interview, to become members of the club. This is to ensure that the member represents what the club stands for — "a 20-year-old who is trendy, witty, outspoken, fun loving, intelligent, flirtatious, smart, comfortable with self, involved in extra-curricular activities and socially aware." Fresh members are taken in every six months, and membership is restricted to first- and second-year students, who will retire once their course is over.

Six months after the launch of the club, its membership is now 65 across 18 colleges. Mr Anand reckons the critical mass to be 120-150 — "you can't have 500 people in such a club."

While the Mirchi Links' members are provided opportunities to participate in various events and programmes for development of soft skills, the radio station says it has "benefited tremendously" by a continuous presence in colleges through its brand ambassadors. "The contests conducted by Mirchi Links members in their respective colleges brings `opportunity to experience' into play by taking the brand experience across to the non-members also," says the radio station.

It gives Mirchi a chance to "keep the finger on the pulse of today's youth, whose tastes and preferences are prone to continuous changes."

Also, the process has given Mirchi a marketing opportunity: a database of college students, and advertisers who want to reach out to this tribe can avail themselves of it.

The idea for a students' club was developed for Chennai, as the idea came out from here, but its success has meant that the concept could be taken nationally, he says.