Social Media Strategy Review: Bournvita

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

Bournvita is one of the most popular protein health drink brands for kids. We know that their advertisements feature kids with a desire to grow taller (and stronger) and beat the 'Complan boy'. But with a large consumer base that is not really present in the social media space (in this case, the kids), what is it that they bring about in their social media strategy? Are they reaching out to the parents instead, or is the brand a little lost? We try to figure it out in this review.

Audience Analysis

The audience that the brand has managed to attract is mostly young with a huge percentage falling in the 21- 30 years age bracket. There is, however, a greater buzz observed among the male audience in comparison to the female audience.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Although the 40+ bracket is a minority in the audience share, the majority of the negative sentiment for the brand has been observed to be arising from that segment.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Overall Strategy

Bournvita's social media strategy on Facebook and Twitter is largely campaign centric with a weaker idea of engagement at the large scale. Most of it also resonates with their branding and marketing taking place on offline portals, including print and broadcast.

Bournvita on Facebook

On Facebook, the larger idea of social media activity centres mostly around campaigns. Bournvita does not use the platform aggressively or even on a regular basis. However, there has been observations of peak activity at times and perennial absence at others. During the duration of analysis, the brand engaged in a #BVTGoodHabits campaign. Even earlier, the Bournvita page was seen to have been brimming with campaigns such as 'Shabaash Mom' and 'Baat Badhao, Aadat Banao'.

There are also interesting original creatives that they post about health and nourishment. These go down well with the audience, yet are not hard selling. But I would say it’s a great example of quality engagement.

While they focus on branding with the logo and making the product visible in all creatives that they post, the frequency of their updates is at loggerheads with the norm. Moreover, when it comes to customer feedback and queries, while there is an acknowledgement of the negative comments whereas the positive feedback usually goes unanswered.

Bournvita’s strategy is also in sync with their offline campaigns such as an advertisement featuring a boxer - one that became rather popular as soon as the campaign went on air. The brand in this case used a special cover photo to highlight the same.

Previous contests include an engagement activity around Krishh (after all, no one promoted Bournvita better than Koi Mil Gaya) and a Shabaash Mom campaign with Kajol. It also highlights the way the brand has been extending the star power that existed in their overall branding on social media as well.

What is wrong here? There are 132k fans but only 412 people are talking about the page. Clearly, something is wrong. One reason people are not talking about you, can be that you are not talking enough. This can be observed from the last post, that had gone up on 13th December, which shows an apparent problem in the handling of their page.

Such periods of inactivity are not new to the brand. Even during the months of October and September the page was on hiatus.

Bournvita on Twitter

The recognition of the positive feedback that Bournvita lacks on Facebook, is made up for in Twitter. Apart from that, the strategy is pretty much the same - campaign centric with an addition to being an extension to their offline media activity.

Interestingly, the #BVTGoodHabits campaign was conducted separately on Facebook and Twitter and winners for both the platforms were announced separately. On Twitter, the contest received a better response and I believe the engagement involved here was one to be thankful for.

Other than that, the television advertisement that grew to become a popular and such appreciated phenomenon, created conversations on Facebook, with the Bournvita Twitter handle retweeting all the praises.

Non - campaign duration did see a dip in the frequency of tweets with Bournvita doing a sudden disappearing act on Twitter as well.

Bournvita on YouTube

As of now, Bournvita has not used YouTube to its optimum potential. It is being used merely as a portal for their existing Television advertisements. There is no creativity there. Do they have a good set of views? Obviously, they are having a fairly decent amount of views due to the fantastic ads that they have. But, so far, there has been nothing out of the ordinary that they are doing on the platform.

Bournvita on Google+

With no activity, no followers and no engagement, Bournvita is simply present on Google+. They haven't linked their website nor have they claimed a custom URL. Please bring some action on the platform, Bournvita!

Comparison with competitor

One of the major competitors of Bournvita happens to be Complan. Luckily, though Bournvita has been paying much attention to social media, Complan is even worse in that respect.

Firstly, ‘Complan for growth’ is present only on Facebook. Secondly, apart from the display picture and the cover (and maybe the description) nothing on the page is remotely connected to their branding.

There are posts such as these, that don't bring out the essence of Complan in any possible way:

This lax attitude towards social media is apparent when we analyse Complan’s statistics with those of Bournvita. Bournvita, though erratic in its frequency of posts, still manages to create conversations about the product. Complan, on the other hand, portrays an image which makes it appear like it does not want to indulge in social media.

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Source: Simplify360 – A Social Media Analytics Tool

More over, the absolute ignorance of feedback, be it positive or negative is another weak point in Complan’s approach to Social media. They might have likes, but they surely don’t have content.

Conclusion

Bournvita’s strength in their social media strategy is the way they put forward their branding, their tagline of ‘Tayaari Jeet Ki’ and the creation and promotion of original content. Another thing that I noticed is a minor identity crisis. While they are Cadbury Bournvita on Facebook and YouTube, they go with being Bournvita India on Twitter. Although it is a minor element against the larger picture, they should ideally stick to one online identity while working with SEO and branding.

Their weakness, on the other hand, is the amount of social media activity that they engage in. Social media is a continuous process and one that you need to work on constantly. You cannot have periods of high activity followed by those of complete absence. If you want to create and engage in conversations about your brand, you need to constantly talk. Bournvita has a positive branding at present - thanks to their well made commercial. But are they using that to their advantage? Maybe not.

Expert View

Bournvita is a clear case of great potential but average implementation. It’s a great brand with a great lineage and some awesome campaigns on television right now and yet one hears or sees very little of its social media campaigns going viral.

Bournvita on social media seems to be reaping the benefits of the mainline positioning without making any out of the box efforts to leverage the same and bring about some excellent results.

Given the huge number of kids and parents active online today, social media could be a key platform for Bournvita to connect these two audiences but it doesn’t make an effort, through campaigns, contests etc. to do so.

Overall it is a great opportunity left out by average usage of social media.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Digital & Social Media Agency.

Analytics support: Simplify360