Thursday, January 19, 2017

Kan Khajura Tesan - Mobile Marketing in Rural India

180030000123
That's the number Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) uses to inject a dose of entertainment into the lives of millions of rural Indians and up its business in these areas. 'Missed Call Lagao, Muft Manoranjan Pao' (Hindi) which literally translates to 'Give Us a Missed Call and Get Free Entertainment' is HUL's tagline for about 3-year old Kan Khajura Tesan (KKT) – a free on-demand, entertainment channel on the mobile platform.

Hindustan Unilever Limited[1] (HUL) - one of the largest consumer goods company based in India with 4000 brands and products such as Lipton Tea, Close Up toothpaste, Lakme beauty products, Knorr Soups, and TRESemme hair products - wanted to reach to reach consumers in deep rural markets, so HUL came up with the idea of Kan Khajura Tesan (KKT).

The driving force behind KKT campaign is the fact that a large percentage of the consumer group for HUL brands are in media dark villages and cannot be reached via traditional media like TV, radio & print. In these rural, semi-rural areas, access to TV and radio is limited and further constrained by poor availability of electricity. The only thing that serves as a means of entertainment for this audience is their mobile phone, which they use to listen to songs and watch movie clips. Also as mobile is operated on battery recharge of 6-8 hours it obviates the need for electricity to consume content unlike TV. This consumer insight was used to create and deploy a win-win solution for both the consumers and the company. HUL launched an innovative mobile marketing solution Kan Khajura Tesan which is in fact an always on mobile entertainment radio channel in which the content is interspersed with HUL brand communication.




Kan Khajura Tesan (KKT) literally translates to "ear worm radio channel" in English. KKT helps HUL brands engage with rural consumers in media dark areas such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Jharkand. The content is interspersed with ads for HUL’s brands. KKT is the first fully advertiser funded mobile based entertainment-on-demand initiative in India. Rural consumers have fewer entertainment choices compared to entertainment-rich urban consumers, so they find something like this quite interesting and are quite happy to listen to such content. The solution is:
-         Simple
-         Always on
-         Free for the consumer

 How Kan Khajura Tesan Works:








KKT was piloted in Bihar in 2013. Executed across the country, but focused on the 'media dark' central India belt, this campaign used All India Radio (AIR) to invite people to call a certain number and hang up, only to be called back and fed jokes in the romantic, 'husband-wife' space, one that Wheel operates in. The content was customized for each state. Recently, a new feedback system was introduced recently. At the end of the capsule, there's a quick survey that helps gain insight into the profile of the caller. The survey reveals the gender ('If you are male press 1, if you are female press 2), age ('If you are below 15 years, press 1', and so on) and economic status ('If you own a cycle, press X') of the caller. The messages are in Hindi, of course, and participation in the survey is incentivized (with, for instance, a free top-up recharge).

At present, HUL is able to see, on a 'live dashboard' or graphical chart, the geographies (districts) that yield maximum traffic. Moreover, HUL has access to other useful information such as the frequency of the calls, the time of day the calls come in, the numbers from which repeat calls are made, and perhaps most importantly, the exact point during the capsule at which the caller decides to hang up. The dashboard also shows the number of ad impressions for, say, a Lux versus a Lifebuoy. So far, KKT has fetched over 100 million ad impressions, according to Ozonetel.

Here are the numbers, I captured from KKT website on 19-Jan-2017 around 8:00PM ET.






With almost 70% of Indians living in rural areas, HUL surely found an effective way to market its product in a fun way!






[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustan_Unilever

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