Social Media Campaign Review: Kingfisher’s International Beer day

In a run up to International Beer Day which falls on August 2nd 2013, India’s Premium Beer brand, Kingfisher had come up with a fun campaign. The idea was to engage fans on social media while giving them an opportunity to lead their city to win oodles of Kingfisher Beer. Take a look at this campaign.

Objectives

In a bid to initiate, fuel and sustain conversations with audiences, Kingfisher’s International Beer Day initiative sets out to meet this challenge with a dollop of fun. Seeking to initiate and maintain a high level of interactivity, this Twitter based campaign seeks to ride high on the brand’s 33,000 strong following.

Interaction remains to be the key challenge any brand faces on social media – Kingfisher is perceived as the benchmark in this space with consistently high levels of interactivity. As a result, currently the brand’s Facebook page proudly flaunts more than 6 million fans, making it one of the top 5 brands on Facebook in India. Incidentally, this also makes Kingfisher the 3^rd largest beer brand globally on Facebook!

On the other hand on Twitter, Kingfisher has a fair presence with about 33,000 followers. Though Twitter is a fairly new channel in the social media universe of brands in India, Kingfisher is perceived as a thought leader here and as a brand that listens to consumers, not just talk. This is reinforced by even some of the top global blogs on social media mentioning Kingfisher’s Facebook & Twitter presence individually as amongst the best uses of social media in India by beer brands.

Implementation

The digital contest started on July 27^th and participants had to wait until August 1^st to tweet and fill the beer mug. Consumers and fans alike are urged to pray to the Beer Gods by means of entries on ‘why they would want beer’. Participants could send in tweets with their entries using #DearBeerGod.  Each tweet fills up the specially designed virtual beer mug on Kingfisher’s website by 1ml. The city with the maximum number of tweets in the form of prayers won Kingfisher Beer valued on how much the virtual mug gets filled.

The winning city was announced on August 2^nd and consumers with the best entries from the city had been gratified with the total amount of beer contributed during the week.

Positives

This Twitter based campaign is a bold and innovative move on the part of Kingfisher. Coming up with the concept of praying to the “Beer God” itself is very unique. Making the contest “city” centric instead of individual centric is a good move as well. This steers attention away from people and makes the contest more interesting besides perhaps instilling a sense of pride in each one’s heart with regard to their respective cities.

Watching the virtual mug fill up has the ability to motivate more people to tweet and adds to the virality aspect of the campaign. The site has a dashboard which allows you to see which city is leading.

The brand’s Facebook page has more than 6 million fans, making it one of the top 5 brands on Facebook in India and more significantly the 3^rd largest beer brand globally on Facebook.  Which is why opting to use Twitter as the base for this campaign is a bold move, one that seeks to consolidate and strengthen the brand’s presence on Twitter.

Beer day also had an offline aspect. They invited 25 top contributors from the winning city – Kolkata to enjoy the total amount of beer raised by the country. Besides they also created illustrations out of the best prayers (tweets) which they received from across the country and sent it back to the contributors with some Good Times.

What some beer-heads would do for a 6-pack ;) #GoodTimes @teentakle1212 pic.twitter.com/VbOO3MDYYc

— Kingfisher Beer (@kingfisherworld) August 12, 2013

 

See this #DearKFBeerGod #KolkataLovesBeer @RumanaNazarali thanks to @kingfisherworld 4such wonderful arrangement pic.twitter.com/j0b1Appr8G

— Sayan Halder (@SayanHelder) August 2, 2013

 

Scope for Improvement

The campaign could have been better supplemented with more buzz on Facebook and YouTube.

Conclusion

By opting to use Twitter which is a fairly new channel in the social media universe of brands in India, Kingfisher has once again proved to be a pioneering brand in this space.  With this contest the brand further strengthens its position as a brand that listens to consumers.

A big thumbs up for Kingfisher for turning tweets in to beer.