The D-Day has arrived and now IPL is just 1 day away. At EC the team is working round the clock to engage audiences online on two of our biggest cricket related properties; castrolcricket.com and royalchallengers.com. Royal Challengers is now running entirely on social media and has reached an inflection point with daily sign-ups breaking all records through the lifetime of the site.

As all of you know getting people to pass the sign-up barrier is one of the most difficult task for website designers. Let me share with you the performance on our sign-up page (for royalchallengers); one look at the stats below, and you will agree that they are mind blowing.





There can be several reasons behind the amazingly low bounce rate of <5% - but here are some compelling ones that I feel merit observation:


a) Social media led referral traffic is of very good quality (specially when they are originate spam-free); thus the context is well set in mind of visitor.

b) Design of sign-up page is simple and without any frills.



c) The social buzz about the website has spread offline, and people are visiting website based on references of friends; again context is well set.

d) Unlike other IPL teams, RCB website is active with real people (fans, players, coach and celebrity). The currency of communication seems genuine, and fans just love associating with a brand that is thriving.


We expect the crowds to soar as IPL 2010 unfolds. Stay tuned for more updates.

Today, once more, we saw a sure sign that Twitter usage in India is on a sharp upward climb.

Today, Sachin Tendulkar beat the highest global ODI score of 194, and then surpassed it with a double ton, yep a full 200 not out. Not only did this mean that thousands of Indians were glued to their screens and that Cricinfo's traffic must have shot up, it also means that thousands of Twitter updates are catching Sachin fever like wildfire.

Take a look at the list of Global Twitter Trending Topics (time stamp around 7:00pm IST) . We Indians and global cricket fans have taken it over with Sachin, Tendulkar, #sachinisGod AND ODI.



It takes a huge magnitude of tweets to get there. See the graph below for an idea of how many times tweople typed up Sachin, Tendulkar and ODI (courtesy of TwitterVenn):



That's a total of 101,856 tweets around Sachin, Tendulkar and ODI, in FIVE hours (seeing as the match started at 2:30 and it's almost 7:30pm now)

The last time Indian cricketers took over Twitter was December 2009, when both Sachin and Dravid made the trending topics for passing their respective milestones. Clearly Indians are becoming more tvocal on Twitter and are geared to steal trending topic slots from US tweople. The fact that all matches of IPL 2010 will be available on YouTube means a lot more Indians will be watching the match on their computers, mere clicks away from Twitter. We will undoubtedly see a lot of Twitter activity around IPL.

But will we take over trending topics during IPL 2010 as well?

Let's do some math. Today we had the entire nation rooting for Sachin. There are about 15 lakh Indians on Twitter (as per Comscore), let's assume a major X of them were rooting for him. In 15 days, when IPL 2010 starts, the country will be divided into 8 groups since we have 8 IPL teams. Roughly one eighth, that is 0.125X will be supporting each IPL team -- 0.125X cheering for the Royal Challengers, 0.125X for Mumbai Indians and so on. Will they be able to provide the needed momentum to get their team and player names into the global trending list? Or will we just see #cricket and #IPL trending?

We just launched a new campaign to celebrate the launch of Tata Sumo Grande MK on ORKUT. Over the next few months, Orkut users will be able to schedule test drives with a dealer of their choice, directly within the social network. They can then choose to enter the contest for which all they need to do, is share their test drive experience with friends and ask people to vote for their review. Winner (i.e. people who post most interesting and popular review) will get all expenses paid trip for family of four to Goa.




Why did we choose to do this within Orkut?

- fresh, innovative idea. People have never tasted a contest like this within Orkut before.
- ease of access. One click from Banner AD to install the social app and get started.
- built in viral ability. You can ask your real friends and family to come along for drive.
- highest reach in multiple relevant markets (for the brand) across India



The contest idea is fun and yet has a direct connect with the marketing objective to get more people to test drive the vehicle, instead of relying on perceptions. The application engages users from the get go, with gorgeous imagery, inviting people to select the color/style of car of their choice. You get started with the test drive experience right-away as you schedule your appointment and a timer counts down to your scheduled date and time. A back-end data bridge transmits the information to the dealer location, for personalized phone follow-up.



We have placed our bets on the ORKUT platform (against Facebook) for this campaign, and it will be interesting to see how the idea evolves. Itching to take a test drive? Click on the banner below to reach Orkut (sign-in needed).

In a matter of just 30 days, the online community at royalchallengers.com has grown by over 33%, to cross 40,000 registered members. Thanks to 3 incredibly successful campaigns, launched just 3 weeks back and now running near simultaneously, recruitment for the club is on overdrive. On closing day for the first Campaign i.e. Fanatic Fans Challenge Season II, we clocked over 26,000 unique visitors - that is more than the total combined daily traffic to all other IPL team websites (as per comparative estimates on Alexa).





What makes EC campaigns so successful? Is it just the power of our ideas or our ability to execute, or both?

I think successful campaigns are not just about design or delivery, but also about the team's ability to provide support, 24x7. It is because of the sterling levels of commitment of EC support team, that we are able to generate so much positive buzz on the web. Read what happened at the Indibloggers meet last saturday, (reported by a Club RC Fanatic Fan).

We just updated our EC Digital Marketing Framework for 2010.




For those not familiar with the EC framework, this represents our grand unified vision of digital marketing. It draws upon the combined wisdom of EC founding team and our 15 years of digital marketing experience, ever since the banner ad was first discovered. Having withstood the test of time and now well-integrated with social media, this framework forms the basis of all our long term engagements with some of the biggest brands in the country.

Our vision will continue to evolve, as consumer behavior and engagement preferences on the digital web changes.

when fans on your website say this!

Closing the real-time loop on digital marketing starts with an intimate understanding of campaign dynamics. Social media signals (which feed forward) helps shape early audience opinion, before display media campaigns go hammer & tongs amplifying the story. A real time feedback loop (measuring buzz, traffic and engagement) helps in course correction and also maintains stability.

Think about the potential chaos, when you have 4 separate parties trying to do all this together - Mainline agency telling stories, creative technology shops producing campaigns, social agencies influencing opinion, and media agencies sourcing ad-spots.

At EC, we monitor and control campaigns a little differently - yes, almost in real-time.

It has been over 4 months now, and we have diligently nurtured the Club RC community (on facebook) to see a steady growth - to the point, that we are now starting to observe some familiar patterns. Notice the accelerated rate of fan acquisition, as the buzz for IPL 2010 starts to build. The rate is similar to what we saw during the buzz prior to CL 2009.



IPL 2010 being much bigger than Champions League, we do expect some spectacular growth in the Fan Club. At EC, we do not believe in advertising-led efforts at growing a social community for Brands on Facebook; and as you are aware from our earlier post, we don't hire paid fans either

What we find rewarding with our slow and steady approach, is the fact that we are able to recruit genuine fans, who choose to interact with our content and stay engaged. Notice the interaction frequency and size of peaks achieved over time. So much to observe and learn, beyond just the "number" of Fans.

Every month, we make it a point, to drop in and check out some of the cool digital assets we created over time. It is always refreshing to see a makeover, a new campaign, or new user engagement at social spaces we helped build. One such asset we helped create is the BIG WALL on bigadda.com, where an user can come and express his/her thoughts on the wall (both in english and hindi) and also paste a few pictures.

Check out how the wall is looking today (sponsored by Sony Ericson).



You too can write on the BIG wall and paste your pretty picture!

It has been almost 6 months since we launched the Meetha Bomb digital campaign, for Cadbury Eclairs, on ORKUT. The digital campaign was part of a much larger integrated campaign from Agency Contract Advertising. Last week I was meeting with their team and it was a pleasure to learn that Eclairs experienced a whopping jump in sales post the launch of the campaign. The team there was mightily pleased with the results of their fist serious foray in social media apps and they are already hungry for more.

The EC team came up with the idea to spin off a "social media application" around the core TV campaign, and launch it exclusively on ORKUT, the largest social networking site in India. The idea was to provide a fun application that simply enables the user and his/her friends to engage with the powerful commercial. You can see the video below and experience how the social app was spun off from the TV commercial, or you can head out to ORKUT and install the meetha bomb application yourself.



The social app Meetha Bomb shot up in popularity chart, nestled close to ZooZoo Videos (within 2 weeks), and then shot ahead in the weeks that followed (yes - ahead of Vodafone ZooZoos, in terms of overall engagement and download stats on Orkut), and came up to page 2, supported by hundreds of thousands of view of bomb blasts and share with friends.