How Mumbai Indians strengthened their social media community during #IPL2016

Social Media Case Study 

Brand

Mumbai Indians

Agency

WATConsult

The 9th Edition of IPL started on April 9th and went on till 29th May. Social presence of the brand was elevated with terms of penetration of content across India. Mumbai Indians as a brand wanted to have a penetration across all their fans using technology as the medium.

Objective

They aimed to keep the fans engaged with every activity of the team, which included giving information about the team progress, sharing live updates on match days, live feeds on social platforms and the website.

With social and digital now a primary source of information and consumption, the brand needed to innovate in terms of domain presence and expertise. Indians wanted to serve the audience with the true taste of cricket with latest information about IPL 2016.

Execution

Execution on the brand was spread across 3 different verticals mainly bifurcated into Technology – Content – Social.

With an objective to provide the people with real time updates about the team’s whereabouts, speed was the key asset. Technology integration got a fresh application and website into the picture, which provided the users with real time score updates along with seamless content generation covering the entire season.

Social was used to propagate and promote the content that was digitally created getting the audience to interact and engage with the brand creating fan loyalty and acquisition.

With a nation obsessed with the game and loyal to their franchises, the idea was to acquire fans that do not belong to Mumbai city. A Strategy was devised which not only helped the fans know about their club but also helps the fans of other franchises updated with the score thus capitalizing on the love for the game in the country.

A microsite was created which not only gave out live score updates of all the matches of the IPL but also gave the users relevant information about their favorite club not only on ground but off the ground as well.

The website was developed and made Live before the start of IPL 09 which provided the users with details and activities of the team and its players. This platform acted as a one stop destination to know everything about the team, the players as well as the support staff.

Image gallery on the platform picked up which included the practice images, transit images as well as celebration images of the team, all this within hours of the vent happening so that the audience never misses out on what their favorite team is up to.

With a motive to give real time updates to the users, they created one section named Match Centre. This would not only give fans real time score update but also provide them with real time images and statistics. Additionally users were also able to access ball by ball commentary and necessary images for MI matches.

They kept a close watch on the happenings of the tournament and the progress of other teams as well and created stories around trending topics and shared match reports after every IPL game.

With a shift in the manner of consuming content from Television and Desktop to mobile devices, they took a decision to be a step closer to our fans through an application.

Along with the website, mobile applications both for iOS and Android were also created which would serve people with information about the team anytime, anywhere with just a click.

The Application played a significant role in keeping the fans much informed and entertained. It allowed the users to follow Live scores of every IPL match, through the match centre which had Live updates along with commentary and scorecard.

Information about the player was easily accessible from this application along with player stats. Match Reports, and content pieces covered every happening on the ground and even off the ground. They used the Application to share player videos and interview articles. The image section was constantly updated with images of players travelling, relaxing, practicing and learning from the masters. Timely notifications were being sent to the users of the application which would notify the users about the scores or any update about the team.

The Application went Live on Android and iOS with more than 25,000+ downloads in the initial 4 weeks of the launch. With the brand goals for the campaign defined, the content execution began with the communication being #DilSeIndian.

#DilSeIndian as the campaign rhymed with Mumbai Indians making it an energetic cheer for the fans, which was leveraged on social.

They invited fans to send in their support for the team and they received over 700 selfies with the #DilSeIndian pose (Fist on the chest). More than 200 videos with fans encouraging the players and acting out the Dil Se Indian step (2 Fist Pumps to the chest and a victory sign)

The campaign began with launching their Facebook frame and allowing fans to show their support by changing their profile picture.

Live Updates of every match kept the fans close to the action. The audience could never miss out on any action during the match courtesy the Live tweeting about every moment of the match. To add on to the tweeting live pictures from the stadium were also shared socially.

Adding to the regular execution, some socially creative updates were also posted time to time. An Instagram Grid layout was created which was a combination of 12 pictures which later turned out into one master creative which will stand out to the one who visits their Instagram page (@mumbaiindians). With the rising love for GIFs on social media to express emotion, Mumbai Indians thought to use the craze for GIFs and depicts various styles of dismissal.

Apart from this they also used the latest Facebook canvas to showcase the match summary which was very well received by the audience. Graphics were created time and again to maintain the sharability and engagement to the mark.

Trending players were used for recreating the buzz about them, which resulted in the growth of engagement. Fans were called out for supporting the team when they entered the final leg of the league stage.

Results

Basis the activity during the IPL season, 6,78,145 Fans were added to the Facebook account, taking the total toll of fans to 10 Million. Twitter followers increased by 1,04,125, and 2,27,191 followers were added on Instagram. Snapchat was leveraged with an average of 4500 views every day.

The reach on Facebook went over 304 Million and a reach of over 30.2 Million accounts on Twitter with over 6 Million impressions. The website received over 316K+ unique users on the site which is over 65% of the population visiting the website.

The users spent an average of 2 mins on the site as we garnered over 1.56 Million page views. The application download tally was over 34 K which resulted to 467K+ application sessions. 1700+ reviews were received by the users out of which 75% were positive.

We hope this social media case study leaves you with thought starters on your next social media campaign, share your thoughts with us here or at team@socialsamosa.com