Kingfisher's #KFBeerlympics Campaign delivers Sales, Engagement & Promotion for the Brand

Social Media is one platform where users always tend to incline towards activities that are simple, yet innovative. Kingfisher’s #KFBeerlympics campaign reminds me of the phrase 'Beauty lies in Simplicity.' 
You know what else reminds me of the same?
Success on Social Media.

#KFBeerlympics is the age old Beer chugging competition that we have all witnessed during parties, informal meet ups, bars; except that Kingfisher decided to execute this on a much bigger level--they took it national. A brilliant concept, achieved with a simple approach, wins my heart at every stage of the campaign.

During the month of August, Kingfisher began promoting #KFBeerlympics among its Twitter followers. The campaign was seeded on a microsite, germinated on Twitter, with Facebook being used to support and promote the campaign ultimately driving traffic back to the microsite. The objective of the campaign is to promote Kingfisher Premium Great Indian Octoberfest 2013 at Bangalore.

Kingfisher has also created a teaser video for the campaign.

City vs City Syndrome

Kingfisher chose seven cities and immediately whetted the feelings of localism among its Twitter followers. The users' curiousity was incited and everyone wanted to know why the brand was asking for suggestions to name their individual cities. The city vs city syndrome provokes the competitive spirit within Indians to rise, and Kingfisher used this simple technique as a foundation for its campaign.

The seven cities were listed on the microsite along with the three names that were picked among user suggestions and were opened up for voting. Users were redirected to the microsite to pick a name for their city that they felt captured the essence of their city, as well as something they related to.

The microsite has a very simple layout, with the city teams and rules clearly listed out. The schedule along with the participating pubs have been clearly mentioned.

Hash-tag Crowdsourced

Another dazzling way of taking the campaign ahead lies in the way the hashtags were created and used through their Twitter account. The name of the cities were turned into hashtags, which made crowdsourcing hashtags and making followers a part of their creation.   

Gradually, the names with maximum votes were chosen and announced along with individual logos created for each city. Delhi was #DelhiChugstars, Mumbai was called #MumbaiBrewsaders, Kolkata renamed #KolkataBrewNights, Pune was termed #PunePubCrawlers, Hyderabad came to be known as #HyderabadHighFlyers, Chennai was called #ChennaiChuggers and finally, Bangalore used #BangaloreBarrels.

Strong Branding

This activity has attracted immense loyalty and participants can be expected to play along till the end of the campaign. The fact that a brand like Kingfisher which is a market leader, is using the digital platform so effectively in spite of its popularity, should awaken brands that believe Social Media is too insignificant for their branding.

Kingfisher’s tagline King of Good Times thoroughly comes across during the length of the campaign. A beer chugging competition definitely offers users a good time in their city, at a pub near their homes. It also connects them with other users across the country with a sense of competition. Not only do the users have a good time offline while playing the competition but also online, before and after they take part in the competition. This online/offline integration can be a little challenging owing to the number of tie ups involved and the scale of the campaign, but Kingfisher must be lauded for being able to pull it off very well.

With the Mumbai and Delhi rounds being over, Kingfisher tweeted their scores, and once again got other followers excited to beat their score.

Powerful business targets: Sales + Promotion + Engagement achieved

Through this campaign, the main objective of promoting The Great Octoberfest 2013 has been achieved. The winners of each city will perform at the final competition at the Bangalore event.

The second sales objective is achieved through this campaign since the participants have to either buy five pints or a pitcher to be eligible to play the game.

The third objective which is engagement on Twitter is of course easily achieved with #KFBeerlympics being the center of conversation among the 35,000 followers of the brand.

I am going to assume that all of this has been achieved, with extremely cost effective marketing spent.

Conclusion

It must be remembered that apart from #KFBeerlympics, Kingfisher is executing other original innovative work on Social Media too. The recent success of Kingfisher Strong Backstage is a very good example.

Brands should incorporate the basics of this campaign, starting from the effective use of hashtags, to the replication of brand image and achieving business goals, and most importantly, connecting with their audience like Kingfisher using the city vs city syndrome.