About Panasonic
Panasonic was founded in 13th March, 1918 by Konosuke Matsushita, it was formely known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. It is a Japanese Multinational Electronics Corporation headquartered in Kodoma, Osaka, Japan.
Panasonic began making bicycle lamps during year 1927, it was the first product marketed under the brand name National. During World War II the company produced motors, electric irons, vacuum tubes and light fixtures electrical components and appliances. It has around 580 subsidiary companies. In 2009, it acquired its competitor company Sanyo which was founded by Matsushita brother-in-law in 1947.
Panasonic offers electronics and non-electronics products and services. Along with Sony, Hitachi, Canon and Toshiba it became one of the largest Japanese Electronic producer companies. By 2012, Panasonic became world’s fourth largest television manufacturer.
Marketing Goals & Objectives
The main objective of the Panasonic Eluga S was to launch its phone and social media was one of the best platforms to connect with their prospective audience. It increases the visibility of the brand and is easily accessible. Social media increases the brand loyalty and opportunities for the brands to convert their prospective audience into customers. It also provides higher conversion rate in comparison with other marketing platforms.
Panasonic wanted to place its newly launched phone Panasonic Eluga S as an selfie and travelling camera phone. They approached MTV Digital to increase the brand awareness of phone and to place it as a selfie phone in the market. To gain the attention of the customers they came up with the crowd sourcing marketing campaign named “The Great Selfie Challenge”.
Marketing Campaign
Calling for the entries across India, Panasonic started the campaign “The Great Selfie Challenge” with dedicated website setup. Within 3 weeks of campaign they have received more than 1250 Participant entries out of which only 5 were selected for “The Great Selfie Challenge”. The task for all the selected participants was to complete the 7 selfie challenge within 14 days. All the contestants were given a limited budget of 1 Lakh Rupees.
The contestants started their Selfie journey from Mumbai and led across the country to finish their challenge. All the selfies and story video about the selfie were uploaded by all the contestants on the website and published in real time. The campaign winner was evaluated based on maximum number of votes.
During, the end of the journey the contestants got bonus 1 week to promote and boost their voting scores. The contestant who received more votes was the winner of the campaign and won the prize of 1 Lakh Rupees.
The campaign was aired on MTV channel for four weeks which covered their entire journey and story behind their selfie challenge. The campaign gained a lot of popularity among MTV viewers.
Results Achieved
The campaign was huge success and created the buzz over the social media platforms. The challenge trended on Twitter. The reach of The Great Selfie Challenge was huge and it reached out more than 8 million unique users in social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The website received more than 2 million sessions and over 6 million video views. It empowered customers and received tremendous positive social media buzz. The campaign best described as crowd sourcing marketing campaign. It generated engagement among customers and created awareness about the phone Panasonic Eluga S among the audience. The campaign established the phone as a selfie phone in the market and gained a lot of popularity for that.
Learning
Social media is the biggest platform to attract the attention and gain trust of the prospective buyers. It indirectly influences their behaviour of buying the product because when customers trust the brand they perceive the product and service of the brand useful.
Social media marketing is also effective for the word of mouth marketing because the customers those who are engaged with your brand are mostly like to refer it to their family and friends. It is cost effective marketing strategy where the brand can set the preference by choosing the limited audience according to their interests.
Panasonic Eluga S also used the social media platform very effectively. By inviting and allowing the real audience to participate and test the phone while travelling and sharing the selfies with other audience in real time generated lots of engagement on their social media sites. The campaign helped them to educate their customers about the product which helped them gain the trust of their prospective buyers which influenced their purchasing behaviour.
Social media marketing not only generated engagement and buzzes for the brand it also generated leads for the brand. It increased the sale of their product and pulled in unexpected customers through social media shares, referrals and word of mouth marketing. The brand gained the first hand reactions in the form of likes, views, reviews and complaints from the customers which helped them understanding their customer better to provide better customer service in future.
Image Source: Panasonic
