[Interview] A walk through Vodafone's Social Media Command Center

The pulsing social media world, changes its course every minute. To keep up with this real-time nature of the socialverse, Vodafone India set up a Social Media Command Center (SMCC).

An entity that helps Vodafone, where the brand stands, what are their consumers talking about and what is going on in the social world.

To further understand the working of the Command Center and Vodafone’s overall social media strategy, team Social Samosa decided to visit Vodafone’s SMCC. We conversed with Siddharth Banerjee, EVP Marketing Vodafone India, who walked us through the Social Media Command Center and Vodafone’s social media approach.

As a CMO, what does social media mean to you?

The way we look at social media at Vodafone is to enable us to have a deep, two-way conversation with our consumers. We are able to listen in to what the customers are saying, and what is exciting for our customers, whether its related to the telecom category or things in general. All of this allows us to get an engagement opportunity in a relevant manner, which provides us with a space for relevant conversations, through which we are able to draw inspiration and insights. This in turn enables us to provide them with helpful information and brilliant storytelling for Vodafone India.

Vodafone and IPL go way back, how was this season for the brand? What kind of initiatives did you undertake?

I think for Vodafone, this Cricket season was an important period across April and May, and we were able to engage with our audience in a deep and exciting manner. For this Cricket season, we rested our strategy on three separate pillars. The first one being the ongoing campaign across television and digital channels, #MakeTheMostOfNow. Lots of our consumers have seen the adorable old couple, the Dhananjayans, making the most of now in Goa through a series of heartwarming commercials that we created across the season.

The first thing that we attempted is to engagee with our consumers through our campaign hashtag, #MakeTheMostOfNow. The second pillar of our social media engagement strategy this Cricket season was about the Super Cheer, where the mini ZooZoo army came out with a small jingle and a dance routine that our consumers loved and were seen celebrating it through the digital platform.

The third pillar of our social media marketing strategy was the Vodafone SuperFan, which is our consumer engagement device over the last couple of years, and since this year was the 10^th edition of the Indian Premier League, we dialed it up with SuperWish by the SuperFan. We have brought cricket crazy fans celebrating the beautiful game with us at Vodafone throughout the months of April and May.

You can watch the entire interview below.