Social Media Campaign Review : Revlon India Designs #ChoicesByRevlon Campaign Around the 'Choices' that Women Make

Introduction

In December 2013, Revlon India launched a 13-month long online campaign to celebrate the 'choices' a woman makes. Spreading across social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, it aimed towards achieving its objectives by picking up 13 themes from a woman's life and creating a 'journey of Self Expression' for her.

Execution

The campaign began with Revlon India focusing on the choices that women make in 'Relationships'. While on Facebook, this was initiated using an application, on Twitter, however, they conducted a chat with a relationship expert to address queries and concerns.

On Facebook

The Facebook application began by asking a few questions about relationships.

Depending upon the answers chosen, one was then given a 'look' on the basis of how they approached relationships.

After being given the appropriate look, the application then came up with the appropriate products and steps to adopt that look. Yes, all that mental labour was to get appropriate make-up tips!

One could also choose to share their look on Facebook and twitter.

Or 'join the conversation' through a section that identified tweets with #everlasting and #ChoicesByRevlon and showed them in a feed. Only, all of them didn't seem to be for Revlon.

Don't like the look Revlon has chosen for you? Explore the others (and collectively experience an adjective overdose).

On Twitter

For the Choices by Revlon campaign, Twitter was less about promotion and more about interaction. They linked the audience with a relationship expert on the platform and asked her to answer relationship queries from RevlonIndia 'sTwitter handle. The activity ran with an #AskRevlon hashtag. This activity was in sync with Revlon's usual approach to use a Key Opinion Leader target strategy (and they said so themselves) wherein they initiated experts and leaders to come on board and create content.

The brand was also seen making other attempts at engagement through questions that invoked a response from the audience, such as these:

Positives

As a campaign, it was well designed. More over, the focus on Revlon's ColorStay range was well placed - not making it the centre of attraction yet keeping it visible enough to sell the product. While the Facebook app was in fact a little distant and over the top, activities such as the Twitter Chat worked towards the brand's benefit and lived up to the theme Revlon seemed to be focusing on.

The campaign being a 13-month long programme, a lot more is expected to be in store, including several other attempts at engagement. With frequent cover photo changes on Facebook with reference to the campaign, the importance Revlon seems to be trying to portray here is rather obvious.

Moreover, there has been careful planning and commitment towards the campaign from the brand's end with extreme love for the term #everlasting. For Revlon sees everything on the Facebook page ranging from beauty to Christmas joy to friendship and love as - #Everlasting.

Scope for Improvement

Somewhere between the different activities, the main focus of the campaign wavers at times. #ChoicesByRevlon is the highlight, right? Focus on that. Moreover, having an app that that grabs #everlasting in tweets to create a feed, doesn't mean that everything that is tagged 'everlasting' is about Revlon or a relationship. Maybe it is a bug or an idea gone wrong.

Moreover, while this is something that has already been mentioned, the fact that the Facebook application works in a rather distant manner is something that I would like to reiterate. I understand that this is supposed to be a fun activity, but no four questions can judge anyone's personality. The brand is making an attempt at something serious with something trivial. Perhaps, the low number of likes in the app (yes, the heart ones) and the extremely small number of tweets with the hashtag #ChoicesByRevlon, are reflective of the 'it is not working out' nature of the campaign. Moreover, majority of the tweets they did manage to get with #ChoicesByRevlon, were through a giveaway contest on a fashion blog. *Hashtag spam alert*

Conclusion

When a brand has to indulge in external giveaways to get tweets with a certain hashtag, things are not right. Revlon comes with an established branding and when such a brand comes up with a campaign spanning more than a year, you expect more. While Revlon has made some right choices when working on #ChoicesByRevlon, there are plenty that are not so right. It is time they rectified the issues and replaced them with ones that truly engage a customer's interest. After all, we know that automation works only upto a certain level (read Facebook app) and nothing beats human interaction, even if it is via a Twitter handle.