#ZennyKiPehliDiwali creates strong consumer connect by leveraging WhatsApp

While festivities mark the beginning of a ripe marketing phase, it also calls out for creativity and novelty to stay away from the clutter. Stepping away from habitual contests and content push, ASUS banked on WhatsApp for individual engagement with its consumer throug their beloved mascot – Zenny.

Diwali in particular, has social media flooded with content, ads, videos, and contests. To explore uncharted territories for heightened and continuous engagement ASUS introduced Zenny, the mascot of ZenFone on WhatsApp.

The brand released Zenny’s Indian mobile number through which ZenFans could welcome the adorable character to India.

The idea was to position Zenny as the face of the campaign taking advantage of its familiarity and lovability with Zenfans while embedding the festive spirit in all communications.

#ZennyKiPehliDiwali

Since the introduction of Zenny at the Zen festival in August, it has gained popularity and has been closely associated with ZenFones.

The campaign took fans on a 3 week trip with Zenny visiting India to explore Diwali traditions and engaged them with unique fun tasks throughout the festive season.

The campaign started engaging Zen fans on with Zenny boarding a flight and flaunting his boarding pass to India from the ASUS headquarters in Taipei.

Soon after its arrival in India, Zenny’s Indian mobile number began going abuzz with heartwarming welcome messages.

Zenny’s journey

The campaign was spread out over a series of engagements and contests, beginning with inviting fans to send in videos and pictures on Facebook about their incredible plans to celebrate Diwali and familiarize Zenny with various local flavors of the festival.

In the following week, users were invited to a Zenfie, selfie contest to submit a Zenfie with someone special without whom their Diwali is incomplete.

@ASUSIndia #ZennyKiPehliDiwali diwali to me is eating out with friends who stay far from my city.. a get together pic.twitter.com/ooSuypv3wR

— Arnab Das (@DaasArnab) November 9, 2015

The contest received an overwhelming response from fans, especially on WhatsApp, engagements allowing the brand to create completely organic conversations with fans on a mass scale. The final contest was organized in the week of Diwali, calling out users to share their most important Diwali wish, after which Zenny would chose 3 lucky winners and make their wishes come true.

Post Diwali, ASUS India released an animated video recapturing Zenny’s experience exploring the various traditions of Diwali in different parts of the country. The video highlighted the direct engagement with fans from across India throughout the festive season.

The campaign closed with Zenfans seeing off Zenny at the airport.

Zenny making it big

Leveraging WhatsApp proved to be the strength of the campaign. ASUS received 1500 chats including groups and over 5000 messages including contest entries.

Zenny reached out to 74,91,744 users with a total engagement of 2,39,712 across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Diwali Wali Selfie contest received 400+ entries while the Diwali wish contest received over 600 entries.

ASUS managed to engage ZenFans with a strong brand - fan connect owing to Zenny’s popularity and love. Using WhatsApp added a personal touch, making Zenny a true member of the family.

Using a free medium with the support of other social platforms could be the next big of social media marketing.