About MTS:
MTS or Mobile TeleSystems is a company providing messaging, broadband, data and wireless voice services in India. It is a subdivision of Russian group ‘Sistema’ and provides its services across India. In India, it is headquartered at New Delhi. In the year 2012, it enjoyed more than 16 million customers.
Business Objective of MTS:
During the festive period of Durga Pujo in Kolkata, many pandal organizers try to attract people and serve their commercial purpose. MTS India, strived hard to provide a solid support to the people’s voting for awarding ‘Best Durga Pujo Award in Kolkata’ to the pandals of their choice in the city instead of the usual commercial play at work for the same. MTS India, at this time wanted to be an active part of Durga pujo in Kolkata, a city which has great strategic importance for it commercially, in order to increase its business.
Strategy / Approaches Adopted By MTS:
MTS India launched both offline and online campaign named as ‘The MTS Digital Pujo Awards’ to give a single platform to the people for voting for the pandals which they liked during the competition. It generated profiles of various pujo organizers at its website showcasing all the relevant and interesting details about their pandals in the city. Through this step, people could also locate the best pandal online and could make plans to visit it physically to enjoy the festive season.
The company installed many voting meters called LIKE-O-METERS. These meters were RFID enabled and were successful in generating good response from the public. The people could buy these branded (MTS) RFID bands from various booths set up for the purpose. Since these bands were linked to the facebook accounts, people just needed to flash it against a LIKE-O-METER to vote for their favorite pujo pandal and make it win the city’s best pujo award.
Results Achieved By MTS:
The results obtained by MTS India were quite commendable and are summed up below. The company:
- Sold more than 20,000 RFID bands.
- Awarded more than 8 Million people with MTS Digital Pujo Awards on social media.
- Enjoyed more than 1,67,000 votes ( >1,10,000 through RFID bands, > 40,000 through missed calls & others on website).
- Earned 15% more revenue in the very next month of the campaign.
- 9% hike in post-paid data income.
Since, MTS India gelled with the people so well both online and offline, it could garner such an appreciable response in monetary terms.
Learnings:
Social media is a contemporary platform where a person likes to engage with his fellow beings and experience life in a light-hearted manner. In the present day world, a business can expand its roots naturally by acting smart and relevant on social media. A business that wants to secure a respectable position in the market in the long-term should definitely not miss the opportunities such as the one discussed above to connect with its targeted customers on social media as and when it gets a chance to do so.
The ‘strategy’ and ‘Results’ portions are really good. Business objectives are not very clear. It looks like what the brand has done in Kolkata. What were the achievable objectives formulated by the brand?