Today, India has blossomed into a country filled with entrepreneurs and ranks as one of the top countries outside the US with the most number of start-ups in the world. Taking cue from the situation, MTV partnered with online automobile marketplace start-up Droom to launch its first edition of the show MTV Dropout to promote this entrepreneurial spirit in India. The results for the first season are out.
Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder and CEO, Droom was the chief mentor to the participants on the show. We spoke to Agarwal to understand his learnings and how the brand Droom benefitted from this association. Excerpts
Q. Why did Droom choose to tie-up with MTV Dropout? How does the brand positioning of both match?
If you think about youth from searching for a boyfriend or girlfriend, or a life partner, taking admission in a university, buying a house, looking for a home loan, buying a vehicle,
Youth is our main audience and they are taking most of their important decisions through the internet. In past, MTV has created shows such as Roadies that have been a sensation with youth. So, when we got to know about Dropout, we found an opportunity to reach them.
Secondly, entrepreneurism is the new in-thing in the country and with some of the internet giants that have become big, youth are keen to become entrepreneurs.
We thought that this genre and theme will work for us. Since we started Droom, we have run 5 national level TV campaigns, two large digital campaigns, and allocated a sizable digital budget, but out of all the money spent, MTV Dropout was one of the best ROI (return on invest) for our spends.
Q. What is the audience profile of Droom and how are you reaching out to them via MTV Dropout?
Within the 60 million online shoppers in India, we are reaching out to the first 25% and we call these people core online shoppers and they are from the top 25 cities. They are less than 35 year and in the last 6 months and have bought six or more items online. 75% of our users are between 18-35 years. 85% of our users are male and the users we want to go after are the core online shoppers. Now, they may be thinking about buying their first motorcycle or hatchback. The audience we are targeting is the audience that MTV was offering and we saw a match in that.
Q. So, what parameters did you keep in mind to judge the success of this association?
Firstly, the jump in the direct traffic through sources such as our browser or app downloads. Secondly, jump in organic traffic. Third is the brand recall and fourth is the growth in our orders. The last two were our secondary parameters. We are not a product where consumer sees an ad offering discount and the brand witnesses a lot of products sold. Beyond that we did a lot of focus group studies in terms of brand recall, where we reached out to 400 people and asked them if they have heard about Droom (after MTV Dropout started to be aired). Then, we had a lot of anecdotes where we went to a lot of conferences and people started recognising us with MTV Dropout.
Q. How has the association helped Droom?
A lot of time when people come to visit Droom, we have various types of pop-ups. One of the pop-ups asked how did you come to hear about us. In that MTV Dropout started coming up as a source of awareness. We have also tied up with a research company on brand recall of Droom versus companies in the same category such as Car Dekho, Carwale, Quikr and OLX. Our relative score in this category went up quite substantially.
Q. Moving on, how does this association with MTV Dropout breaks the clutter for Droom?
When I started Droom, Quikr and OLX had annual budgets of around Rs 100-150 crore for TVCs and their efforts were amplified with celebrity endorsements. We associated with MTV Dropout along with our new TV commercial, and it worked more effectively than others.
Q. What marketing objective did this association solve for Droom?
The biggest marketing objective was brand association and brand recall. Youth can associate to Droom as a brand and then whenever you are in the market to buy a vehicle, they would consider Droom as one of the top 2 or 3 destinations they would want to go to.
Q. What was your marketing strategy during this association?
We spent over Rs 15 crore for our national TV campaign and MTV Dropout. The national TV campaign included 3 ads that ran for roughly 45 days. It was supported by outdoor hoardings across 7 cities, print and radio ads, plus MTV Dropout sponsorship and the ad credits within that. Next, we had a digital budget which was over Rs 3 crore including YouTube, Voot & Facebook Video that supported the ATL activities.
There were three ads that were created into 30 seconds, 20 seconds and 10 second spots for TV. Then we created 10 seconds and 6 second creatives for digital. The ads on television and digital were not same. However, both were shot in the same settings but had different dialogues for online. We also ran a digital only film 'Bittuji Ki Beemer', a rap song of 3 minutes.
Q. Will Droom be continuing its association for the show next year?
We have been extremely happy with our association with MTV, the ROI has been great and we don't have any reasons not to continue.
Q. Finally, being a judge and mentor for entrepreneurs on the show were there some ideas that perked your interest?
Last year MTV approached us to be a title sponsor for a very famous reality show. We were an inch away from sponsoring it but the deal did not go through. So, this time when MTV approached us, we thought they wanted us to sponsor another show but they wanted me to participate as the main judge in a new show on entrepreneurship. The first two months were only dedicated to my role in the program and there was no sponsorship discussion during that period. But, as we started evaluating my role as a judge, started understanding the program and the target audience and the research, we saw it made so much sense to be the title sponsors.
I was amazed that entrepreneurship is not only limited to Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. I also learnt it was not limited only to one gender and I saw as many female entrepreneurs also. The third was that half the entrepreneurs did not come from a classic or predictable background of coming from IITs or IIMs or having MBAs, some of them were uneducated. People see adversity in India and don't become drug addicts or homeless, they fight back. They may start selling vegetables or frying samosas, but they don't give up. We are inherently an entrepreneurial country.
Source
Comments
Post a Comment