With every passing year, marketing and social media campaigns are becoming better and more innovative especially around the festive season. As the competition in digital and social increases for not only creating awareness but also in generating revenues, brands often save the best for last and in India for the most awaited Diwali season.
There were some exceptional campaigns and strategies- with Snapdeal’s re-branding to ‘Unbox Zindagi’ and ‘Unbox Diwali Sale’ to Flipkart’s #BigBillionsale to Amazon’s #GreatIndianShopping festival. Besides elaborate campaigns we came across some innovative adverts especially from the upcoming and growing e-commerce players such as Jabong, Pepperfry , Urban Ladder, Myntra that became the talk of the town.
Looking at the buzz around innovation and the upward trend in online purchases, we analysed and populated consumer interests during this Diwali season. Some of the most insightful findings are shared in the infographic compiled by a media intelligence company Meltwater. “On monitoring what people were talking about Diwali on social media, it was noted that the three most popular themes associated with Diwali were E-commerce followed by sales, discounts and shopping. Even cars, jewellery and to our surprise crackers were a part of the social chatter. In-depth analysis into the conversations, revealed electronics, mobile phones and used cars were other popular search terms.From our analysis through the Meltwater platform, we found that almost 50% of the conversation on social were discussing experiences and purchases through Flipkart versus Amazon or Snapdeal”- Adele Coelho, Head of Marketing at Meltwater India, Middle East & Africa.
E-commerce being a preferred shopping choice this Diwali, the infographic benchmarks thee three dominant players in the start of the sale season for the initial months of October to derive on a census related to the industry trends and consumer preferences. All three brands have seen exceptional growth patterns in the Indian market with flipkart recently reaching its 100 million customers to Amazon revealing a 5X growth in new customer base to 2015 and Snapdeal going in for a total brand re-vamp.
The big three marked the start of the Diwali sale season by launching creative campaigns to derive a generous ROI of more than 1000 CR within the first few days. Each platform offered distinctive value propositions like 24X7 customer service and 1 day installation of gadgets by Snapdeal, The prime account by amazon ensuring that 1 in 3 sales was by a prime consumer, Flipkart focussing attention on Mobile phones and gadgets etc. that led to huge numbers without eating into the competitors share.
In the coming years, retailers will need to understand the consumer buying patterns in the online space as this market is growing at an exponential rate.