During its IPL campaign, its strongest social media campaign in recent months, Yes Bank had aimed at increasing brand visibility and adding followers while running contests and generating conversations to increase viewer participation in the IPL and beyond the game. The goal of the campaign was to establish the bank as a brand that supports and promotes sports culture in India, and connect the brand with IPL.
By the end of the campaign, the brand had increased its follower base on Twitter by 52 per cent after more than 400 tweets attracted 10,107 favourites, 30,500 replies and 16,620 retweets. The campaign was also named by Social Samosa as one of the Top 5 IPL campaigns.
The campaign was designed in such a way that it revolved around the Yes Bank property called ‘Yes Bank Maximum’, the maximum interest rate provided on savings accounts. The campaign consistently underlined the idea of maximum interest rates and communicated it repeatedly to the brand’s audience.
Carried out in two stages, pre-IPL and during IPL, Yes Bank ran a number of Twitter contests. Between Battle of Fans and trivia contests to the Yes Bank Maximum Daily Contest, among others, and the brand’s sponsorship deal – every time a cricketer hit a six, the brand would live-tweet it, rebranding the top score as ‘Yes Bank Maximum’, the bank reports it had fans of IPL and its own followers hooked. During the campaign “Yes Bank Maximums” became synonymous with the term “six”.
During the campaign, a website – www.yesbankmax.in – was created, which included match schedules with a downloadable calendar, a flash-based game, Twitter and Facebook feeds from the bank, videos of post-match presentation of the Yes Bank Maximum award and quizzes. Visitors could register themselves through their social media account and for every interaction on the website, they earned ‘runs’ and won prizes.
The bank feels that with Twitter becoming synonymous with the “second screen” for TV audiences, especially during sporting events, the IPL opportunity served the brand well combined with its content and gamification efforts resulting in more than 35,000 fans registering and over 1.5 lakh hits on the website in a span of just over 40 days. JJ