Social Media Campaign Review: Parle G launches The Future Genius Activation on Social Media

Parle products, one of the oldest and most reputed manufacturers in FMGC sector has extended its digital campaign for its flagship brand ParleG. The campaign is focused to bring out the genius in a child and helps parents to understand their philosophy.

Objective

Parle G is attempting to reach out to parents and kids and engage them in an online activity to reinstate the brand philosophy. The campaign is an opportunity to interact with the core target group to build a strong relationship between the brand and them.

Execution

Parle G launched a microsite thefuturegenius.com/ and roped in Ruskin Bond, a famous writer for the site. The micro site contains a couple of sections namely Genius Gyaan, Parents Quotient and Diary of a Genius. The main section Bond with Ruskin contains stories by him in a blog format. A mother blogger has been roped in to fill in the Parents Quotient section and she blogs about subjects related to parenting. The Diary of a Genius is written by a child who pens down his experiences in school. Other activities on the site include quizzes and contests.

On the Facebook page of the brand, the cover is designed to direct kids to play the Curious Quiz contest on the micro site. An application has been designed too.

They post updates on various topics written on the blog such as counseling, writing skills, gratitude and importance of money are being promoted as highlighted images.

Interactive posts are being posted with the hash-tag #Geniuses. These include questions, did you knows, trivia, caption writing and quotes.

On Twitter, the brand is posting similar content as Facebook. Other than the same content, the brand is conversing with Twitter users by tagging them and asking them to visit the site.

Earlier, in late 2012 the brand was promoting the site through a hash-tag #IfIWereAParent on Twitter and combined it with Youtube.

Various videos of annoying habits kids showcase were uploaded on the Youtube channel of the brand and parents were asked how would they react when they saw their kids doing the same. The answers were to be given on Twitter.

Positives

Ruskin Bond is the perfect person to represent the platform with since he strikes an instant chord with kids and is extremely popular among them. Branded content on Facebook is attracting a lot of engagement on the posts. Each post is well designed and is complemented with effective content. The frequency of posting is regular, on an average of 2 posts a day.

The application on Facebook has Fan gate. This is important since it offers exclusive content for their fans. User generated content (parents blog entries as well as videos in the genius hub) is a great way to engage users.

They are not just marketing "buy-my-biscuits", instead they are using blogs to add value to the society and they are subtly branding themselves. It is not just content that works, it is content, which adds value to the society that does the magic.

Parle G is effectively targeting parents since parents are the ones who take buying decisions. Supplementing traditional media with Digital media, enhances the impact of the campaign. And their branding is consistent everywhere! The curious quiz contest will help in gaining actionable insights.

The Twitter handle of the brand Parle G is named after the digital activation @TheGeniusHub which is impressive. Probably a new handle has been created after Parle G decided to dip in the social world. Same goes for the Youtube channel.

Scope for Improvement

Instead of spamming users on Twitter the brand can launch fun contest for parents. Other activities can be conducted to increase interaction by creating a unique brand hash-tag. An activity in late December 2012 was started with Youtube videos and Twitter hash-tag #IfIWereAParent but the Youtube video had no call for action. A link to the Twitter account with the hash-tag to reply could have been shown at the end of the video. However, this activity was 6 months back and no other activity has been taken up since then.

Live Twitter chats can be conducted with Ruskin Bond and other bloggers. This will help increase visibility of the micro site as well as help increase followers on the brand account.

The application on Facebook has a great scope for becoming interesting. It currently directs the user to the website but the application itself can have an interesting activity to attract kids on the platform. The application can also help the activity go viral, maximizing the microsite reach.

The brand should work on revising the Youtube channel design.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, I really liked the whole campaign! The micro site is an interesting initiative by the brand. However the brand needs to elevate the social media activities if they want to increase traffic on the site through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.