Social Media Campaign Review: Yes Bank Maximum Contest

Yes Bank – India’s 4th largest private sector bank is one of the official partners of Pepsi IPL T20 2013. In order to create buzz and engage with their audiences on social media, they have initiated a “Predict & Win” contest with primary focus on Facebook. If you are a hardcore IPL fan and love to participate in debates and discussions over which player is doing well and which teams deserves to go to the final, then YES Bank’s #Maximumcontest is meant for you.

Objective:

The main objective of the contest is to keep the cricket fanatics clued-in to every IPL match and thus give them a reason to come back and play the contest again. Yes Bank has also very neatly added a brand connect with their new Yes Bank Maximum offer of 7% interest rate on savings accounts. The aim therefore is to promote their brand offerings and celebrate their association with IPL – the most popular topic of the season.

Execution:

The campaign is based on a simple insight of that, 'Before every match, fans anticipate the result and vouch for their favourite players'.

A Facebook application on Yes Bank’s page hosts the contest. The user has to 'Like the page to access the registration page.
In cricket, the maximum anyone can score in a single ball is a “SIX” and that is what the contest is all about. To enter the contest fans have to visit the application before every IPL match and answer one simple question; “Which player according to them will hit the #Maximum sixes today”. Post the prediction, the user has to enter his details and submit his entry. Exclusive Yes Bank merchandise is up for grabs with total 2 prizes to be won with every match. The users have to be careful with the timings as the entries submitted only before the start of every match will be considered, that is, for the 1st match, before 4 pm and for the 2nd match, before 8 pm.

Positives:

The concept, though not unique, serves the purpose of keeping the audiences engaged with the latest trend of the season. What I liked is their content strategy during the contest promotion. The focus is not just on promoting the app and generating maximum entries but also to genuinely interact with the fans and create conversations around cricket.

What I also liked is that Yes Bank has managed to created a subtle brand connect along with the contest and not just ride on the wave of popularity that IPL has to offer.

Scope of Improvement:

The brand could have focused a little bit more on the interactivity of the application. For a not-so-cricket-avid fan like me, I would have no clue about the new players in the team except for the popular ones. It could have great if the app had a scrollable list of players and a check box to select them on the basis of their records. A gallery unit and share button would have also made the app more social in nature. Lastly one of the observations was that the registration page does not pull the users name or email id. It’s not really a major issue but small things like these can make your users life easy.

Overall, the contest is simple and serves the purpose of building topical chatter on social media but a dash of interactivity would have been great!