TCS challenges audience with #Cipher to increase engagement

Brand

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Agency

CogMat

TCS IT Wiz, a knowledge Initiative started back in 1999, is an inter-school IT Quiz in India for students of class 8-12. The quiz aims to build awareness and emphasize the importance of IT skills and enable students to look at technology through a new perspective.

#Cipher, an activity built around cryptography was popular among IT Wiz participants. Participants use cryptography to encrypt questions based on technology, and must decrypt these #Ciphers to get the right answer. A series of #Ciphers were hosted, each leading to the next, over the span of the TCS IT Wiz season and #Cipher was hosted based on Facebook and Twitter.

Objective

TCS IT Wiz started gaining popularity on social media from 2013 onwards. In 2014, it was noticed that this engagement was mainly in spikes primarily during the days of the 15- 16 regional on-ground quiz events. It was important to build engagement on the properties throughout six month period of the activity, after the first TCS IT Wiz event of the year kicks off in July, till the Grand Finale in December

Firstly, they aimed at increasing the engagement and interaction rate during the off-season (lull in the on-ground quiz calendar) by 35%. Further, their motive was also to increase the participation during off-peak periods (lull in the on-ground quiz calendar) by 10-15%.

Execution

The task of engaging intelligent and focused audience like students requires a solution that needs to match their intellect and hold their attention span. It not only needs to be a focused but also keep iterating to offer something new. Thus, #Cipher was born.

#Cipher was a six month long series of puzzles, encrypted questions, and problems were conducted over the TCS IT Wiz social media properties which required the skill of mathematics, lateral thinking, computational and IT knowledge. The hunt and clues were predominantly technology based. They had ciphers as anchors, hence all the questions were basically in code. This meant that to even access the question the participant had to wrack their brains. Upon solving the cipher, the user would get a question and hence the person who correctly and quickly answered this question, would be a winner.

They had ciphers as anchors, hence all the questions were basically in code. This meant that to even access the question the participant had to rack their brains. Upon solving the cipher, the user would get a question and hence the person who correctly and quickly answered this question, would be a winner.

The #Cipher campaign relied on using unique ways to engage with participants and keep building the momentum of the contest.

On Facebook, #Cipher used the keyword-blocking feature, wherein  participants could only answer questions by sending their entries as personal messages, as opposed to posting them publicly, thus keeping their answers a secret.

Similarly, on Twitter, participants were asked to send their entries via Direct Messages, utilising the platform’s new open DM feature. This ensured that someone who entered on #Cipher number 11 would also be sufficiently challenged to solve #Cipher number.

The activity started in June for pre-season “buzz creation” and continued through to the finals, with special emphasis and higher posting frequency during the periods between the TCS IT Wiz quizzes at different cities. This served the purpose of continued engagement even during the quieter weeks of the scheduled season. As an added advantage, it also engaged the relevant target audiences in the cities that the road-show did not travel to.

Result

The content proved to be engaging and contextually relevant, as seen by its organic reach for some posts where the reach has been as high as 10% each.

On Twitter, the activity garnered an engagement of 22135 with an increase by 328%, their followers also increased by 149% with a total of 5594 followers, total mentions increased by 278% which summed up to 20600 and finally an amplification in impressions by 126% was witnessed with a total of 751400 impressions at the end.

@TCSITWiz #Cipher
Yeaaah solved em all??
Wishing to win

— Krish Thakkar (@krixz6339) November 29, 2015

#cipher was really twisty and challenging....grt questioner ... #tcsitwiz

— sharath chandra (@sharath_gsc) November 17, 2015

On Facebook, fans were improved to 20552 that is by 297%, the campaign reached a total of 359968 which was a rise by 317%, the campaign also received a total engagement by 22135 with an increase by 327%.

It was observed that by creating an activity that challenges the audience (that was already highly tech savvy) created long lasting and committed engagement over a period of time.