Swiggy Instagram Case Study: How the brand got 1.5L DMs in 10 days

Brand Introduction

Founded in 2014, Swiggy is a food delivery platform with over 75k+ restaurant partners spread across 100+ cities. Every order delivered by Swiggy’s fleet, the largest in India, ensures a host of customer-centric features like lightning fast delivery, no minimum order value, live order tracking, and 24/7 customer support.

Summary

Challenging foodies on Instagram, Swiggy, took the interactive campaigning route. The brand launched a fun-engaging consumer campaign #SwiggyVoiceofHunger, where foodies were invited to recreate the shape of their favorite food using the voice note feature on Instagram!

Problem Statement/Objective

Swiggy wanted to engage with its followers in a never-done-before fashion by going beyond a normal engagement campaign in a fully UGC driven show.

Brief

Creative Idea: Does hunger have a voice? In fact, it does – the roasting of a chicken, the simmering sound made while preparing a dish, the whistle of a pressure cooker, the growls, the screams, rumbles made by our tummies. Swiggy concluded that hunger always had a voice hence, the brand decided to give it a stage that it deserves.

The campaign consisted of 5 challenges – consumers were expected to recreate the shape of a Kebab Skewer, Nacho, Shawarma, Pancakes and more using the voice note feature on Instagram. Whoever completed all 5 challenges stood a chance to win a year’s worth of food vouchers from Swiggy.

Challenges:

Swiggy posted 5 challenges on their Instagram channel:

1. Kebab Skewer
2. Shawarma
3. Fish
4. Nacho
5. 21 Stack Pancake

Execution:

The campaign began with Swiggy putting out a gibberish

bluueeblaahhhbleehhhblueeblahblehblue

Swiggy then sent a follow-up tweet telling them that it was not a typo but it was the #SwiggyVoiceOfHunger Challenge. Over the next 10 days, Swiggy gave India 5 challenges where users had to recreate food shapes using Instagram voice note feature.

Here’s what they had to do to win a year’s worth of FREE food from Swiggy:

1. Check out Swiggy’s Instagram post for that day’s challenge.
2. Recreate that particular challenge by long pressing the microphone button feature on Instagram DM.
3. Make noises/sounds by varying your pitch, loudness of your voice, using different sources of sound etc to recreate the shape of the dish as a waveform.
4. Complete all 5 challenges to win Mega prize.

The brand got influencers such as Srishti and Barkha to participate in the challenge, further enhancing engagement.

Results –

• 1.5 Lakh plus entries in a period of 10 days
• Swiggy’s Instagram follower base increased by 30k
• Brands like

  Here's a nacho on Twitter till @Instagram comes back up! ❤ pic.twitter.com/Em3Rk3nMFq

  — airtel India (@airtelindia) March 1, 2019 Kingfisher&

  Calendar nikaal. Tareekh likh le. 14 din mein kuch bada hone wala hai.

  — Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) March 19, 2019 organically participated in the challenge

Quantitative:

Over a span of 10 days, the #SwiggyVoiceOfHunger challenge garnered around 1.5 lakh+ entries primarily from India. This challenge also crossed borders and Swiggy received a few of them from international countries like Italy, Canada, Japan, US etc. At the peak of the campaign, the challenge was hitting impossible numbers of at least 50 DMs per minute. Guess, the voice of hunger is a common denominator among everyone. Also, Swiggy was able to increase their follower base by 30k via this challenge.

Qualitative

Apart from receiving these humongous number of entries from thousands of users, an event occurred which is every marketer’s nightmare (and dream come true). The fact that this was an internet first challenge about hunger (a relatable emotion for practically everyone!), the response was ravenous enough to break the internet, and crash their Instagram! Not once, not twice but 11 times over the course of the campaign (10 days).

CMO Quotes

Commenting on the success of the campaign, Ashish Lingamneni, AVP Marketing, Swiggy said “Contests are a fun way to engage with and understand the pulse of consumers. The unique nature of this campaign has resonated exceedingly well with foodies across the country, with food lovers voicing their hunger literally at an average of 50+ DMs per minute! We are absolutely delighted to see the #SwiggyVoiceofHunger campaign dominate the consumers’ mindspace. The success of this campaign pushes us to serve our discerning consumers more engaging and delightful content”.