How An Insurance Company Leveraged Stand-up Comedians To #StandUpOnTwitter

After the success of the pre-buzz building to D-Day and another contest in phase II with Insane Investments and the spontaneous take a selfie with the stand-up twist, HDFC Life took a huge leap on their #StandUpOnTwitter jump board that was already trending on Twitter and created videos as a reply to the multiple volley of questions.

Objective -

The objective of the campaign as has been in the pre-buzz phase was simply to promote the HDFC Life insurance brand but not in the conventional way. In fact brands have long forgotten the simplistic ways of promoting their brand, there has to be a twist in everything. Picking up on the comic element and tying up with 3 influential comedians they promoted good health through laughter with an aim to generate mass brand recall.

Execution -

The execution had already started offwith pre buzz  to the campaign that worked up its way to the multiple phases of the contest. Post that the big day arrived where all comedians congregated and told tales of the Twitterarties to the Twitterverse, in ofcourse a funny way. HDFC Life did a live streaming of the entire act on Youtube which was shared on Twitter as well. The theme of the stand-up act was “Investments” or rather how people make “Insane Investments” / “Bad Investments”.

Note:In the pre-launch phase itself the contest had trended India no.1 so following up from there was just picking up from where they left off.

The tweets kept coming in with no surprise as a substantial proportion of Twitterverse was in the know of the upcoming HDFC Life #StandUpOnTwitterinitiative.

Here’s what the tweets looked like, falling nothing short of completely whacky.

@HDFCLIFE#StandUpOnTwitter Mutual Fund Investments are subject to market risks ?? Is this Crawford market or DilliHaath market??

— #CelebrateTarakki (@nainzzzz) January 9, 2015

@HDFCLIFE#standupontwitter Can v borrow d printer from RBI

— hdfclife ..biased :/ (@SonaliLuis) January 9, 2015

@HDFCLIFE#standupontwitter are there actually bulls and bears runnin around in d stock market

— hdfclife ..biased :/ (@SonaliLuis) January 9, 2015

And from those here’s a few picks of responses from the list you guys will really like.

On a question about how much liquid to Fixed assets ratioKunalKamra replied. The response was hilarious. No offence to Reliance lovers ;-)

When asked “Does liquid assets really liquid” here’s what he had to say.

And did you know why money does NOT grow on trees? Vivek had the same query. And here’s what @KaruneshTalwar had to say about it.

Smart phone V/s Smart Husband – The question of modern day 2015 life.@KaruneshTalwar

And for those who think twitter contests are played only by contest lovers..Haha! You’ve gotta read this reply by

Why is it called STAND UP comedy? Why? Answer’s AzeemBanatwala

On a question that even the otherwise wise comedians got stumped at, here’s what they had to say.

Post all of the replies the tweeters with the best questions were awarded and that ended the HDFC Life’s massive #StandUpOnTwitter campaign.

Facebook Posts –

From an execution stand point, the campaign was pulled off well and looked like done at ease with a number 1 trend on Twitter on the first day itself.

Positives

As mentioned earlier as well, the fact that an implicit connect was made wherein HDFC Life an insurance company played up on good health through laughter was unique in itself.

The brand leveraged comedians who are the best brand ambassadors to laughter.

Local comedians were used, with a sense of patriotism of some sortand the contest was not only well spread across the 5 days but also had consistency on each of the days leading to the end result.

Closing Thoughts

Though this concept of having comedians reply via videos may be unique the concept of video replies to tweets wasn’t completely fresh and new. In fact other brands too have done it in the past.

That being said, can this be the way ahead for Twitter in the year to come and will we see a spate of video/vines and short story formed content on micro blogs? Usually we’d say let’s wait and watch but in this instance given the pace at which Social Media is moving in 2015, it’s highly possible.

What do you think?