Pizza Hut’s voice-activated campaign validates the merits of conversational ads

The ad on Gaana app resulted in increased user engagement as well as a surge in order volumes.

As voice technology slowly begins to mature, brands and businesses are coming up with creative voice marketing strategies to reach out to their customers. Being able to integrate voice technology into a two-way conversational ad format is a bonus for marketers, as it generates real-time results. It also allows the brand to create a personal connection with the consumers, when other mediums are unable to do so.

A recent example of such an ad campaign is Pizza Hut India’s ‘Buy One Get One’ (BOGO) offer, created by Xaxis Creative Studios (XCS). The ad campaign uses two-way communication - a back and forth conversation between Pizza Hut and listeners, who’re streaming music on Gaana app. The listeners are redirected to Pizza Hut’s website. But if the listeners aren’t interested, saying ‘no’ (or anything like that) would get them back to what they were listening on Gaana.

Additionally, the ad campaign uses ‘continuous dialogue’ to remember how individual listeners had previously responded so that the (ad) creative could be tailored for better ongoing engagement. This ad garnered specific advantages over traditional one-way audio ads that are common on audio streaming platforms.

On accessing the advertising inventory on the music app, XCS revealed that the ad resulted in increased user engagement, by over eight per cent in two weeks, and a surge in order volumes. The interactive audio content generated more than 2,000 responses from 60,000 impressions during a 10-day pilot.

XCS also ran tests to measure the impact of generic campaign creative elements versus creative focused on dinner time. The overall voice-engagement rate saw an increase of over eight per cent.

Commenting on the campaign, Neha, chief marketing officer, Pizza Hut India, said in a press note, “Pizza Hut has been at the forefront of experimenting with innovative marketing formats that resonate with our millennial-minded audience. I am thrilled to see that our voice-activated BOGO campaign has received such an excellent response. Kudos to the Xaxis team for perfectly conceptualising and implementing it.”

Brands have been using audio ads to drive awareness, but typical broadcast methods don’t spur as much customer engagement as interactive formats.

Prasanth Kumar, CEO, GroupM South Asia, added, “Conversational ads are still in the nascent stage in India. Pizza Hut expressed its openness to leverage the expertise of Xaxis Creative Studios and use two-way conversational audio ads to reach its target audience. With conversational audio ads, there is an opportunity for brands to craft a targeted and personalised customer engagement strategy. The results of this campaign are proof that our insight-driven approach and expertise drive impactful and measurable outcomes for the client.”

Voice marketing has the potential to become a big phenomenon. Brands can rely on it to offer better experiences to the users and amplified results to the marketers.