Social Media Strategy Review: Surf Excel

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.

From Lalitaji’s advertisement- “Surf ki kharidari mein hi samajdari hai!” in the late 1970’s to present advertisement -“Daag Acche Hai!” Surf Excel has had a very long and successful journey. The positioning of the brand hasn’t changed much over the years but the present appeal of the brand has a much more emotional touch to it. Besides the advertisements on the idiot-box the brand is quite active on social media platforms as well. The brand has decent presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Surf Excel on Facebook

The Facebook page of Surf Excel highlights the relationship shared between a mother and her child. The content on the page is in-line with the television advertisements and the tagline which says “Daag Acche Hai!”. All the posts on their Facebook page had decent levels of engagement. One of the major positives of their Facebook page was that besides giving information on their products, the engagement level was increased by giving most of the posts an emotional appeal. This communication strategy of the brand has been consistent in form of TVCs as well.

The following post is more focused towards the emotional bond which mothers share with their children during their learning phase.

Few of the posts were related to complementary goods like washing machine. So in a way attempts were made to increase engagement levels by providing information about related products.

There were a couple of Facebook posts which gave information about the contest which they were running across social media channels and the same were integrated across all the channels. The contest increased engagement levels and also had a good response on all the social media channels.

A look at the enagement stats of Surf Excel shows that the brand is able to get decent engagement numbers despite the recent downfall in the post reach thanks to the algorithm change.

A lot of engagement is in the form of wall posts which makes it the engagement all the more interesting. The daily engagement numbers are wavering and needs to be stabilized, however. They also need to focus more on making people comment on their updates than just liking them.

The following image depicts the type of sentiments the Facebook page receives from its audience. As seen in the image the percentage of negative sentiments is just 2.58% which is extremely good when you have a massive fan base.

The major positive in the case of the brand’s Facebook page was that all the posts were targeted towards females and mothers which is the desired target segment of the brand.

Surf Excel on Twitter

The twitter handle of Surf Excel has used various hashstags like #StainGang , #Daagachhehai, #DirtIsGood, #Mommies, #SoakNoMore, #SurfexcelMatic, #LaundryTips etc to increase the overall engagement on their twitter handle. Besides this there were few tweets which were a part of the campaign they were running across their social media channels.

The brand has attempted at cross branding which is a great way of increasing reach among another brands users.

Recently, the brand ran a contest named #PlaySafe capitalizing on the festival of Holi. The contest was a basic photo contest, inviting images of kids and adding another hash-tag, #KidsToday. Since mothers are passionate about their children, this contest received a lot of responses.

However, such campaigns do not succeed in the long run. They are short term marketing strategies which might or might not work for the brand.

Another microsite has been created naming it #KidsToday, which is directed at parents and serves as a helpful guide in terms of parenthood, childhood videos and tips to do laundry etc.

Taking the Daag Achhe Hai communication forward, the brand has also created fun images.

As seen in the above images the mentions received, along with the mentions sent and tweets is quite less. This indicates that the twitter page of Surf Excel fails to connect with its audience. The number of retweets is 0 which also indicates that the audience didn’t find any tweets which were put up by the brand engaging or worthy enough to share with their followers.

Therefore, surf excel needs to revamp its marketing strategies on Twitter.

Thus unlike its Facebook page the twitter handle of surf Excel failed to engage with its audience and the engagement level of the brand on twitter is extremely low.

Comparison with Competitor

The biggest and the fiercest competitor of Surf Excel in India is Ariel, which claims to be the world’s leading detergent and epitomizes ‘stain removal’. Introduced in India in 1991, Ariel has continuously led other detergents in product innovation.

Facebook:-

The fan post engagement details of the two brands also depicts that Surf Excel is more engaging than Ariel on Facebook. The number of post & likes on Surf Excel’s Facebook pages is also greater as compared to Ariel.

The above pie chart shows the relative share of engagement of Surf Excel and Ariel Facebook pages. The engagement of Surf Excel is greater than that of Ariel by 20.22%.

The above pie chart shows the relative share of Facebook fans of the two brands.

Ariel recently roped in Rituparna Sengupta, Sakshi Tanwar, Raveena Tandon and Madhoo for integrated marketing campaign “Largest Laundry Lesson” which had used social media in an efficient manner. The campaign was integrated across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This increased engagement levels for the brand.

Conclusion

The overall presence of Surf Excel on social media is quite decent. It should think of some innovative and engaging ways to interact and involve its audience through Twitter. Twitter should be used to engage with the audience. Since the bottom-line of all the promotions and advertisements of the brand is the love and care in the relationship of a mother and her child the brand should capitalize on the same on the micro blogging site as well.

As the brand’s target audience are women, it should follow more women and try to engage with them. A strategy should be made to use twitter as a medium to increase its customer base as well. The brand should also try to leverage other social media channels as well and then try to integrate its marketing efforts on all those mediums.

Expert View

Surf Excel is making decent use of Facebook but then, decent is not enough. They need to think beyond regular updates and out-dated engagement methods if they want to stand out from its competitors.

Moreover, Surf Excel’s strategy falls flat on its face on the micro-blogging website, Twitter. The brand could employ more engaging content for the platform. They need to set their basics right and then build upon it by ideating out of the box initiatives that appeal to their target audience.

It is a well-known fact that loyalty programs if designed well, can take the brand name miles ahead. A good loyalty program that is well integrated with their social media properties can help them convert their fans into loyal customers and possibly evangelists.

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

Analytics Support: Simplify360