About Sahara Star
Sahara India Pariwar is one of the largest business conglomerate in India with an annual turnover of more than INR 73,000 Crores. One of their businesses is Sahara Hospitality and among them is Sahara Star – a leading business and luxury hotel in Mumbai. Erstwhile, the property was under the brand Centaur Airport Hotel and belonged to Batra Hospitality Private Limited.
The Sahara India Pariwar acquired the Centaur Airport Hotel in October 2002 for Rs. 115 Crores. They transformed the 1970’s stylish architecture into the 21st century consumer experience. One of the prime reason for acquisition was the proximity to the Mumbai Domestic Airport, which served as a perfect destination for business as well as leisure travelers.
Sahara Star’s Business Objectives
The Valentine Day celebration is increasing in India especially in urban cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. The enthusiasm of celebration is seen more in youths who consider this as a perfect day for expressing their love to their beloved. So Sahara Star thought of having an innovative Valentine Day celebration among the target audiences like people in serious relationships and newly engaged couples through social media. This would not only make this day special for the target audiences but also create long term association with the brand.
Approach Adopted By Sahara Star
To help in achieving the objective, Sahara Star hired the services of Brandlogist – a new age marketing consultancy. The agency recommended them with a multi-pronged approach.
#EvergreenLove: A hashtag with creative expression was developed and extensively used on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Appropriate designs were made and posted by Sahara Star on their Twitter channel and Facebook page. On Twitter, the responses were on real-time basis that helped to sustain the interest and spread the message across the target audiences. On Facebook, ads showcasing Sahara Star’s promotional offers, packages and discounts for Valentine eve were created and targeted to the right audiences.
Food and poetry just made it a perfect recipe for right expression of love. Sahara Star defined their move from monologue to dialogue by engaging the target audiences to contribute to the brand’s reach and scope.
Results Achieved By Sahara Star
The impact was huge. On Twitter, Sahara Star managed to reach out to a prime group of influencers leaving a long lasting impression as well as garnering a reach of 1,12,100 with 576 links getting clicked and 1.59,543 timeline deliveries through prime influencer audience with 87% of the tweets being conversational. The reach also helped to address the gender diversity with almost 40% contribution from females and 60% contribution from males in the age bracket of 25 – 34 years. The client was also able to connect with 55% of new contacts which can be seen as a huge increase in the potential customers.
The campaign also managed to garner the attention of Influential bloggers on foodies, poetry and literature. Examples of tweets from tweetple like Shamita Singha who is a model, host and wine expert; Ghaati Ninja who is a writer of Morbid and Krytie Saxena who is a trained chef and a food researcher were seen. Their involvement substantiated the effort and created a ripple effect to spread the message amongst the masses at large on social media platforms.
The agency managed to hold on to the excitement through follow-up competitions and contest. This ensured that the momentum did not die in a day but this celebration of love was part of discussion for a further period.
Learnings
A right mix of creativity, new age media and effective execution helped Sahara Star to engage, enrich and enhance the experience of the target audiences and thereby have an everlasting support for the brand.
In true sense, Sahara Star chose a proper distribution channel to deliver unified messages to the target audience by means of #EvergreenLove hashtag. This in turn helped them to quantify the marketing campaigns of the business.
