EMVIEs 2014: PHD Gets Two Shortlists on Day Two

Vlog On! and Kan Khajura Tesan were both created for Hindustan Unilever.

Day Two of the EMVIEs case study round saw digital taking the limelight. Leading the shortlists tally on this day were Maxus, Lodestar UM and Mindshare with 12, 8 and 6 shortlists each, respectively. PHD India had two case study presentations as well.

PHD's first shortlist came in the Best Media Innovation - Digital (Social Media) category. PHD created a campaign called 'Vlog-On!' for Hindustan Unilever's Be Beautiful. Social experiments are the norm of the day, and PHD decided to try something on the online platform as well.

It is well known that audio and video can do a lot for any brand. However, while this opportunity has been effectively used abroad by beauty bloggers, Indian beauty bloggers are still dependent on the image and text format of blogging. The Indian consumer and net savvy youngster, however, is hungry for tips on fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

PHD organised a master class and invited experts from the fashion, beauty and video making industry to share their knowledge with over 35 bloggers. The bloggers were taught to create content according to the demands of the target audience as well as monetise the content created by them.

Technological knowledge - like camera angles - was also taught so that videos became more interactive. Around 100 videos were created, equalling 400 minutes of content in association with Google and 120 Media Collective. Nearly 61,000 subscribers on YouTube have viewed the Vlogs over 37 million times.

The second shortlist was for Hindustan Unilever's Kan Khajura Tesan. PHD worked on the insight that 73 per cent of Indians live in media dark sections. These are the places which have no television, frequent power cuts, no internet, no cinema, erratic radio reception and a high level of illiteracy. While reaching them was a challenge it was also an opportunity for marketers. The truth is that with mobile penetration at a high in India, along with cheaper call rates, more than 85 per cent of rural India had taken to a cell phone.

PHD decided to use this knowledge and combined it with the fact that entertainment, particularly Bollywood content was expensive to consume. Their research showed them that whatever medium they chose to address, this problem would have to be simple to use, free and always on and routed through the cell phone.

PHD designed a platform which, for the first time, brought together telcos, marketers, content and technology and created the Kan Khajura Tesan (KKT) or Earworm channel. As the name suggests, a earworm wriggles into your ear and stays there. Similarly, once someone listened to the KKT, they got addicted to it.

The method used was simple. Since most rural consumers wanted free content, they were asked to give a missed call on 1800-3000-123 and in return were given 20 minutes of free content. Of this, 17 minutes was entertainment content, which was refreshed each week, and three minutes of branded content by HUL's brands.

PHD tied up with Bollywood movies and stars like Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Ajay Devgn to make the entertainment platform bigger. Listeners got to hear songs and dialogues from popular films and the station was customised according to regional language and cultural differences.

KKT went on to create a world record of sorts and has been nominated in the Limca Book of Records. The station received 18 million missed calls in five days and was the first telco agnostic technology used in marketing through radio. PHD has now extended KKT to include the rest of the country and has been receiving 2,000 new users every hour. The current station now has 21 million subscribers and is adding 50,000 new subscribers every day.