Author
EE News Desk
When BCCI in 2008, formally made the announcement of India’s very own T20 cricket tournament, Indian Premier League to be held every year, the decision was welcomed with applause all over the world. For a country like India where cricket has almost a holy quality, IPL came as an ingenious decision. Now the blue eyed fans would not have to wait four years for ICC One-Day International World Cup to cherish their favorite sport. Also with IPL promising to be a blooming opportunity for young cricketers within the country, more money and support was pumped into the idea by Bollywood and honchos of the corporate world. Thus, in the first year of its inception itself the sport became an unprecedented conglomerate of Cricket, Bollywood and Entertainment and the entire nation went crazy for it. Events from the bidding of cricketers to even the making of IPL sets and production value were all sellable quotients now and marketers capitalized on every single opportunity to ride on the soaring high popularity waves. The UK-based brand consultancy, Brand Finance, valued the IPL at US$2.01 billion in 2009 and then at $4.13 billion in 2010, the reasons of popularity were obvious. Brand marketing reached a new level all together with multiple brands ranging from diverse genres of lifestyle like Moov (pain relief medic) to educational institutions like Amity University becoming sponsors of the IPL. Also brands like India’s biggest property developer DLF Group paid 2.50 billion (around US$50 million) to be the main sponsor of the tournament for 5 years from 2008 to 2012 and from 2013 season, the American food and beverage company PepsiCo took over title sponsorship for five years valued at 396.8 million, and also became the exclusive beverage supplier for the IPL teams in the 2013 season. However, the tables today have been turned and over the years with the inception of more controversies and preference to entertainment over the spirit of cricket itself the Indian Premier League (IPL) has embraced the sobriquet of the ‘Indian Problem League’, and is seen to be doing more harm than good for Indian cricket and cricket in general. Speaking of the controversies, The Indian Premier League has always been about the abundance of Cash, Cricket and Controversies. While cash and cricket were the essence, controversies like the suspension of Lalit Modi, speculations over the match fixing row with cricketers like Shreesanth being involved and the infamous SRK scuffle at Wankhede added to the degraded spirits to the game and the trust of high spirited fans in their favorite sport was somewhere lost in the glitz and glow of the format. Till 2012, IPL remained a big threat to most Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) as it meant a significant drop in viewership and a dip in ad revenues. But Post 2012, there’s been a change in the modus operandi of Hindi GECs. As a huge low in the ratings of the IPL had been witnessed and the GEC channels seemed not to be bothered by the sporting extravaganza anymore and upped their ante to bring on more content oriented shows that have managed to steal the limelight from the gentleman’s game. Taking the example of 2015, they have gone ahead and launched ambitious, high investment television shows bang in the middle of the IPL season. From reality shows (India’s Got Talent 6, Indian Idol Junior 2 and Nach Baliye 7) to fiction (Dostiyaan, Yaariyaan Manmarziyan, Reporters, Sankatmochan Mahabali Hanuman, Fear Files, Ek Tha Raja Ek Thi Rani, Gulmohur Grand, Mere Humnawa, Rangrez) the programming platter of 2015 seems more crowded than ever before. The low phase of the game has also had significant changes in the attitude of key marketers who were left in a precarious situation with the sudden downfall of the game but recently with the development of unique and creative intellectual properties like the Indian Soccer League, Pro Kabbadi League, Super Fight League and others they too are seen jumping off the IPL bandwagon and are investing in more sports and content oriented genres of properties. Not only are such marketing experiences for the brands less expensive than the IPL but the growing popularity of these sporting properties have also led to a possible end of the monopoly of cricketing dominance existing in the country for years. With a shift in focus and clearly visible low ratings it is only a matter of time before the property goes back to its roots and re-iterates its focus, but until that happens we wonder if pumping any more money into it is a good idea.
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Samsung as a mobile brand has tremendous reputation in terms of its experiential ventures in not just India but across the globe. The company has always tried to push the envelope by coming up with innovative concepts one after the other for marketing its mobile phones in a unique and impactful manner in comparison to competitive brands. The brand stormed onto the experiential marketing scene in 2012 and has continued to pace up. Samsung as a brand has invested into diverse experiential activities that range from mall activations to gala evenings to multi-city pool parties to helping the disabled. A forward step in this chapter has been the recent launch of the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge at Los Angeles and New York on April 2 and April 7. The brand came up with out of the box ideas to provide a hands-on experience for guests who got to experiment with the devices in sleek environments inspired by the phone’s design. EE brings to you the 5 takeaways highlighting the best elements from Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge launch parties that every event organizer must learn from. 1- Mobiles as Place cards Samsung started off each party with a dinner cleverly designed to get a select group of celebrities and influencers to get photographed holding the phone. The guests in Los Angeles and New York found Samsung phones in lieu of place cards at a mirrored table and had to use the device to order the food. Now as prospective customer this move was an experience of its kind to have all his favorite celebrities get photographed with a phone and it naturally builds in a compelling desire to have the phone. Also, by allowing guests to use the phone from the get go the brand allowed the celebrities to actually get engaged in phone rather than just organize a high profile party. 2- Technological way to explain features At every launch party most mobile brands have a specialized video or a spokesperson that takes you through the features of the phone but at this launch the guests learned about the S6 features via mirrored, cube-shaped vignettes. The Cube shaped interiors included digital graphics providing a high-tech feel. The experience was a kind for the guests who were stunned with the thinking that had gone into curating every detail of the launch. 3- Decorative Ideas Samsung wanted its guests to have a better idea about the camera of its galaxy S6 phones and hence it carefully got the guests to be photographed with the mobile phones in hand then posted these photos of guests shot with the phone throughout the party venues. The concept is another innovative way to decorate the ambience with more interests arising from the every corner to explore more of the experiential venue. This idea can also be used by event companies for hotel launches or at an event where they want the customers to carefully scrutinize a venue. 4- Use of Colors The brand carefully used variety of colors to highlight another important crucial element of the phone i.e the screen color quality. The brand decorated the entrance in blue lighting in blue lighting colors that provided the guests a real time experience of the better screen quality of the phones launched. Guests at LA, also had to go through a 30 ft long plexi tunnel and Samsung had also created a black, white, and gray color palette by incorporating reflective and metallic textures as well as jewel-toned lighting meant to symbolize the phone screen’s color quality. 5- Engaging elements The launch also has multiple engaging elements designed for the attendees. Hollywood stars walking into the launch party of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge were asked what their “six appeal” was also guests were asked to step into futuristic cubes and try out new features of the mobile phones such as all new Wifi-only charging. Also, the event was filled with music and performances that added another dimension to experience building as performer Chromeo took the stage for a performance, followed by DJ Zen Freeman, who provided beats for the remainder of the evening.
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Experiential campaigns largely have only one primary agenda- to create memorable experiences for consumers in association with the product. And though creating direct experiences for customers is a newer concept, still in a short span of time experiential marketing as a practice has been adopted by brands all over the world and across all categories of brands. All major brands in the country today have made significant attempts to come up with experiential activities and while some have truly managed to captivate a stronghold in the hearts of consumers, numerous others have failed miserably with an over the top and defocused approach. A copious chunk of the marketing budget is pumped into creation of an experiential campaign and hence it is very important for every brand to dwell deep on the concept, theme and execution of the activity. Therefore it becomes extremely crucial for every brand to truly understand its brand identity to execute a successful experiential campaign. It is important for every brand to establish how it wants to be identified in the market and an experiential campaign has to be fabricated accordingly. Lets take an example of Redbull, a brand acclaimed for its innovative experiential endeavors. The brand thrives on the tagline- “Gives you wings”- symbolizing its identity as a cool, adventurous, unique brand that supports the unconventional and adventures. And keeping in line with that it has established experiential activities such as B-Boying Championships, Stunt Chmapionship, Flug-Tag Race, Air Race World Championship, Soapbox race and others. All such activities have further elaborated the brand’s identity and hence have been examples of inspirational experiential campaigns. Another brand whose experience driven campaigns are an extension of its identity is Samsung. The mobile brand is best known to inculcate the latest, the most stylish technological elements into their products and citing examples from their campaigns be it a Samsung Galaxy Edge 6 launch or a dealers meet, a small BTL activation or a concert they have associated themselves with; all campaigns are executed in a manner that showcases and emphasizes its technological edge. Brands needs to understand today, that the eventual success of an experiential campaign is not determined by the amount of investment but by building brand value through it. A great example is Skore condoms which executed a successful experiential campaign aligned with their brand identity of having people speak openly about condoms in the country in form of Skore Fashionista-A fashion show that had all the costumes made only out of condoms. While a bigger brand like Vodafone that has executed some of the best experiential campaigns in the past can be easily spotted struggling to find a perfect idea that defines the crux of all their experience driven campaigns; while their campaigns like Voadfone superstar mela, IPL activations, Fan army and Family day are also successful in their own ways but all of them combined create a blurred image of what is the final concept that the notable telecommunication brand actually wants to convey? Experiential campaigns without realizing the brand’s identity is going to lead nowhere. A hastily designed campaign not only brings in a bad name to the overall brand prestige but also fails to really do anything fruitful for a brand in terms of creating memorable experiences.
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Conceptualized by Live Viacom18 and Cineyug, MTV Bollyland brings together two of the hottest genres in the Indian music scene – Bollywood and EDM – to Kolkata. MTV Bollyland City Concert will feature legends of Bollywood music Atif Aslam and Kanika Kapoor performing to pulsating beats by DJ Chetas and DJ Anshul. Popular Pakistani musician Atif Aslam, known for chartbusting numbers like ‘Tera Hone Laga Hoon’, ‘Tu Jaane na’, ‘Pehli Nazar Mein’ while Kanika Kapoor, one of India’s rising playback singer is known for famous tracks like ‘Baby Doll’, ‘Lovely’ and ‘Kamlee’. MTV Bollyland City Concert will take place in Kolkata on the 2nd of May, 2015 at Nicco Park Big Lawns, Salt Lake City, Kolkata. MTV Bollyland is a property featuring of popular Bollywood soundtracks with heady electronic beats, aimed to create a unique experience meant to keep dancers tapping their feet. An extension of the annual MTV Bollyland, the city concerts will travel across 12 cities PAN India, thrilling audiences with a thumping mix of Bollywood Dance Music
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The bugle for the marketing wars has been sounded and with the kick off of a new financial year, the competition amongst the mobile phone category is heating up. A study by Statistica suggets that the number of mobile phone users in India is expected to reach more than 730 million by 2017. Thus with the opportunity of magnificent growth looming ahead of them no mobile brand wants to leave any stone unturned towards getting a leg up through intelligent marketing. Multiple strategies are being devised and numerical metrics are being worked upon. If we look closely into the market share of mobile vendors in the country the figures further elaborate on how interesting the mobile battle is; In August 2014, Counterpoint, a technology market research firm, reported that Micromax with a 16.6 percent market share overtook Samsung (14.4 percent) as the largest mobile phone supplier in Q2 2014. Micromax and Samsung were closely followed by Nokia (10.9 percent), Karbonn (9.5 percent), and Lava (5.6 percent). However, the latest statistics have a different say all together; as per a report released by The International Data Corporation for India mobile phone market for Q4 2014, Samsung stayed on top with a 17 percent share, followed by Micromax with a 15 percent share, Nokia with a 10 percent share, Lava with an 8 percent share, and Intex also featuring with an 8 percent share. So with the rapidly changing market environment what can a mobile brand do to not only have a stronghold on their existing market but also expand its share in the process? Industry experts are of the opinion that experiential is going to be the key differentiator in this category as the behavior of a traditional Indian buyer are determined by factors like price, value, advertisement and mostly “experiences”. Experientially the observation seems to be bang on as taking in consideration all the mobile vendors brands in the country Samsung clearly remains the top investor, followed by brands like Gioni, Karbonn, Micromax, Motorola and Google Nexus. So while experience generation and creation might not be a sure shot success mantra for the increasing brand popularity of a mobile vendor however it is one of the most crucial ingredient for the same. But what determines the kind of experiential campaign a brand should invest in? What is an ideal spent for a brand into experiential today? And, how can a marketer be sure that an investment in an experiential campaign will positively benefit his product. Well, the answers to all these questions lie clearly when one begins to study the experiential campaigns of these brands. Experientially speaking Samsung as a global mobile giant obviously has the upper hand and dwelling into the history of their experience based campaign their position as the top market player seems well earned. Whether it’s the execution of BTL activations or a star studded launch of club Samsung, targeting the youth through contests with MTV to technological savvy new launches and from the initiative of a customer service plaza to ‘party on with chaton’ campaign, the brand has cleverly created a diverse range of experiences for their customers and hence is the most popular and trusted among the Indian mobile buyers. It is without a doubt clear that the brand takes Indian market very seriously and hence wants to experiment within at multiple levels to maintain their top spot. The result of experiential ventures of Samsung makes evident the reasons behind the failure of other global mobile vendor giants such as Motorola, Apple and Google Nexus to capture a significant share in Indian Mobile Market. Since the latter brands have not contributed towards any significant experience building activities to their prospective customers their reach can be termed limited to the elite few. However, an interesting highlight of this race will be the entry of ASUS with Zenfone 2 which promises to be high to experiential activities this year. And while most global giants have refrained from taking the route of experiential in the hearts of their customers it is the India mobile brands that are making significant attempts towards the same. While Gionee has recently associated with campaigns like Indian Digital Superstars, India Beach Fashion Week, Tour EDM and others its rival brand Micromax can also been seen investing in VH1 Rock Rules Concert, Mall activations, Telegram Service campaigns etc. The results are slightly visible as the brands are successfully climbing up the popularity and trust ladder among their customers. Karbonn as an Indian mobile brand can be proclaimed to be the dark horse among the race as its unique experiential ventures such as Karbonn MTV Bloc Party, Fly Festival, SAFF championship and campus programs are not only targeted towards the youth but are also successfully resulting in its growth in overall market share. With the targets ahead of them clearly outlined, the interesting aspect of the race will be the next marketing moves by these International and national mobile brands. And since the world of experiential full of possibilities and opportunities it can be safe to say that the ultimate success of the brands in the country is going to be strongly decided by experiential.
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Located behind Huda City Mtero Station, Oysters Beach, Entertainment District, Sector 29, Gurgaon, has opened its gates on April 16, 2015. The beach shall remain open from 11am to 6pm on all days and shall have a special Inroductory offer price of Rs. 599 for senior citizens and children below 4 feet of height and Rs. 799 for guests above 4 feet of height. In the evenings the beach becomes an entertainment hub where you can dine and tap a foot late into the night. Oysters Beach is a unique experience nestled in the heart of the concrete city of Gurgaon and spread over 10 acres offering a total of 15 water rides. Besides 4 multi-speciality restaurants in its food court, a World Cuisine restaurant and a bar, one can indulge in activities such as Volley Ball, Soccer, Interactive Cinema, Rain dance, Sand castles, other Beach sports like Tug of War. There is also a gaming arcade, spa and a flea market. Varied background music will be played across the venue. So whether one is at the ticket counter, food court or in the pool a different beat shall accompany. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Ravi Madan, Project Director, Entertainment District said, “Young adults and young families today demand new experiences, In Oysters Beach we have created a unique social hub that’s not simply about exciting water rides but a complete experience full of music, fun, sports and excitement. I want the young citizens of the NCR to say Life is a day at the beach.”
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Rural Marketing Association of India (RMAI) as an industry body was established in 2005 with the objective of promoting, improving, developing and strengthening the cause of Rural Marketing in India. Amounting to 12.2% of the world’s population, rural market today, represents the single largest potential market and accounts for 53% of FMCGs and 59% of durables sale in India. Thus, in an attempt to highlight and reflect upon the challenges and opportunities in rural India, RMAI engaged its various stakeholders- corporates, rural agencies, media, academicians, and influencers, in a knowledge sharing and thought provoking platform with the Rural Marketing Conclave 2015 on May 8-9, 2015 at The Grand, Vasant Kunj. The Rural Conclave 2015 kicked off with a welcome address by Sanjay Kaul, CEO, Impact communications and President, RMAI, who highlighted the importance of marketing in rural for brands in the competitive brand driven business environment today and some effective measures on how community building and business development as two integral aspects should work hand in hand. Keynote address of the conclave was delivered by Pradeep Kashyap, CEO-Mart, who spoke about the emerging opportunities in the rural areas of the country. “Defining the Rural Consumer 2.0” was a panel discussion that followed next. The session included Gurpreet Wasi, Principal Consultant, IMRB, Alpana Parida, President, DY Works and Puneet Vidyarthi- Head Rural at JCB India as key speakers. The session highlighted upon the aspirations of the rural community and people towards an urban lifestyle and the phenomenon had resulted in a coinage of “ruurban” as term defining the fusion between the two. The first day of RMAI also featured sessions on “Geo Marketing” by Sapna Ahuja, Sr. VP, Strategic Operation and Alliance at Map my India, “Path Breaking Execution in Distribution” by Geroge Angelo-Executive Director at Dabur India, “The Advent of Mobile in rural” by George Paul-Director and Head of Marketing at Ericsson India Ltd and “Mobile as a new media engagement” by Vipul Mathur, Category Head and Head Mobile & Rural Marketing at Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Other important highlights of the first day were sessions on “Public Private Partnership in Rural Sector” headed by Sanjay Panigrahi-CEO at Sahaj E Village Ltd, Dilip Chenoy MD & CEO at NSDC, “Rural in Digital Space” by Anurag Banerjee, Founder, and Director-Digital Empowerment Foundation. The Flame awards case study for Best Channel Development of the Year and Best Use of Technology featuring Mahindra and Mahindra Financial services and Project Disha by Dabur India Ltd marked the end of day one of the RMAI Rural Conclave 2015. Day 2 of the conclave began with the special theme address by Dr Shivkumar, Chairman and CEO Pepsico India Holdings Pvt Ltd who spoke about the future opportunities and unexplored ventures of rural marketing in the country. Following him were case study presentations by Vijay Sharma, GM, GSK Consumer Healthcare Ltd and Siddhartha Choudhary-Headm Marketing at WaterHealth International. Both the presentation dwelled on how marketing campaigns initiated by both brands aimed at creating a community impact and marketing of the products came as a natural output. “Rural is more about doing it the right way” was the theme of another insightful presentation by S Shivakumar-CEO of ITC. S Shivakumar during his presentation spoke about how marketers should try to fill in the missing elements in rural to better market themselves. Following next were sessions on theme “Where does Creativity Begin” and “E- Commerce, Entrepreneur Case” featuring Sangeeta Talwar, MD, Flyvision Consulting, Raj Kr Jha, National Creative Director at Geometry Global and K S Bhatia, Founder & CEO Pumpkart.com The post lunch sessions of Day 2 also featured case study presentations of GoodKnight Fast Card, Marico Ltd, Greenlight Planet and Nerolac that enabled the audiences to get a glimpse and absorb the nuances of the successful journeys in the domain of rural marketing. The end of day 2 was marked by the announcement of Corporate Excellency Awards wherein India Post bagged the Corporate Excellency Award in Government Area. In other categories the award for Excellency in services was given to Sate Bank of India, Hero Motor Corp was adjourned as the winners in Automobile category, LG Electronics bagged the honor in the category of Durables and it was Hindustan Unilever that won the corporate excellency award in the FMCG category.
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Cricket is no longer the only dominant sport in India as the country with its citizens have opened up to the idea of accepting other sports not only in the form of an interesting career option but also in the form of the content that they would love to watch on television. As a result numerous other intellectual properties apart from the Indian Premier League (IPL) such as India Super League, Super Fight League and Pro Kabbadi League have come up challenging the game of cricket on every sphere be it the entertainment that they offer or in the terms of the flamboyant content. While IPL is a brainchild of BCCI and was launched in 2008 in form of India’s very own T20 cricket tournament, other intellectual properties like The Super Fight League is an India based mixed martial arts promotion formed in 2012 by Sanjay Dutt and Raj Kundra, The Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) is a professional kabaddi league in India managed by Mashal Sports Managing Director Charu Sharma and India Super League is a professional football league in India launched in 2013 with the objective of catering to the avid football lovers in the country. In terms of Participation, The Indian Premier League clearly has the upper hand as the majority of India still celebrates cricket throughout the country. However, the passion and the quality of talent witnessed on the Pro Kabbadi League and India Super League platforms has truly outlined that in the presence of required resources and proper guidance the two sports can also establish themselves in the same fan following league as Cricket. Also the successive editions of these intellectual properties are likely to only add up to the interest of future sportsmen to reflect upon these as a choice for a successful career option ahead. The Super Fight League too, seems to be steadily catching up on the pace and is expected to grow further in the upcoming years. However in terms of affiliation, the monopoly of cricket seems to be coming at an end with most advertisers demarcating their budgets to thrive on the audiences growing interest in other sporting events of the country. Also small and medium scale advertisers who did not had the budget to associate themselves with cricket earlier can now be seen openly promoting the new IP’s as it gives them more branding opportunities in the same investment figures. While India Super League has leading brands like Hero, Maruti Suzuki, Amul and Pepsi co India as its prime sponsors, the Pro Kabbadi League also is managing a lot of advertising revenue from the Future Group and its entities. The Super Fight League has also roped in a sponsor in form PACL India Ltd and is garnering more advertiser attention with every edition. Another important aspect that determines the overall success of a sports intellectual property in India is the revenue being generated from viewership on television. And as far as this aspect is concerned though de-regulation in television has brought a significant amount of exposure to other sports and their properties but the generation of revenue by them in this regard is minimalistic and cricket seems to be the only sports resulting in profits. However industry experts are of the view that the new intellectual properties cannot be expected to take on the popularity of cricket at such an early stage and the generation of television revenue is a milestone they will hopefully achieve in the next few years. So is IPL the clear winner among sports IP’s in India? Well, the situation is more complex than what it looks like. Though currently all the interrelated elements and intricacies of revenue generation root for the continued success of IPL for now but a clear shift in the audience interests from the sport of cricket can be easily witnessed symbolizing the growing success of India Super League, Pro Kabbadi League and Super Fight League as well. With the organizers adding more interesting elements to each new edition making it better from the previous one it is only for time to tell which sports IP in India will register the ultimate win.
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While the idea of corporate social responsibility for many may translate into planting a few trees, a few brands are genuinely out to walk the talk and do a bit more in the pursuit. Meaningful it may be, but what’s disappointing about CSR is that on several occasions it remains restricted to an overflow of information against genuine engagements with the participants.With most companies still following the monotonous old concepts and themes for CSR, it’s only a few brands that have truly managed to create interesting ideas around it. Here are6 unique CSR campaigns that struck the right cord of innovation and engagement. 1-Lee National Denim Day (Lee Jeans) The idea of Lee National Denim Day began in 1996 when Lee Jeans invited companies all around the world to have their employees participate in a fundraiser where they could wear jeans to work one day and donate $5 apiece to a breast cancer fund. In the first year of the campaign itself, nearly 3,000 companies participated and the campaign subsequently spread from the workplace to the streets: Anyone can now take part in Denim Day, which is usually held the first Friday of October. Since its inception, the day has raised nearly $80 million for the battle against breast cancer. 2- Fledgling Wine (Twitter and Room to Read) Twitter recently launched its own wine label to promote literacy because, as its founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams fervently believe that, “If you can’t read, you can’t tweet.” The social media website is collaborating with Crushpad, a San Francisco-based winery, and the nonprofit organization Room to Read in what they call the Fledgling Initiative. Customers can pre-order $20 bottles of pinot noir or Chardonnay and follow the wine making process via Twitter. The campaign has already generated a lot of buzz on several platforms of the social media and wine is scheduled to be bottled in August, and $5 for every bottle sold will be donated to Room to Read for literacy initiatives in India. 3- ‘Give Them Wings’ (Expedia Facebook Campaign) Expedia, one of the world’s key online travel company had made a resolution to fly 100 street and working kids from the Butterflies NGO on a fun-filled 3 days holiday to Mumbai. The project, aptly called ‘Give them wings’ ran on Facebook where for every ‘like’ and every ‘share’, Expedia contributed Rs. 10 to their travel fund. Also out of every booking made between Dec 25, 2011 and Jan 25, 2012, Expedia contributed Rs.100 to the travel fund. This campaign was a unique idea that integrated the element of social media to increase following of the brands as well as bring a sense of pride amongst fans for being a part of unique CSR activity. 4-Campaign for Real Beauty (Dove) Launched around the year 2004, the Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” aimed to broaden the popular definition of beauty. The campaign focused on real women of all shapes and sizes, instead of professional models, for its advertising. It previously released a viral video depicting the lengthy and unrealistic transformations a model’s photo undergoes before it ends up on a billboard and offered an interactive website where young girls can get “self-esteem certificates.” The campaign was a major success and many NGOs for women also came on board with the brand to extend their support. 5- Surf Excel India’s ‘Back To School’ Campaign On Facebook This initiative by Surf Excel was in partnership with GuideStar India, a platform that connects you with NGOs in India. More than 160 NGOs from across India were a part of this campaign that worked on the idea that parents can donate old notebooks, textbooks and stationeries to support the education of kids who cannot afford it. The campaign made use of an app through which you can locate the nearest NGO and get in touch with them. In addition, Surf Excel donated 50p for every ‘like’ on its Facebook page during the entire campaign 6-The Bloodline Club, A Tata Docomo Initiative Needing blood urgently is a very common phenomenon in India and despite having a large number of donors around us, sometimes we do not connect at the right time and a life is lost. The Bloodline club, an initiative by Tata Docomo was a website that noted your mobile number and blood group and one can request as well as donate blood quickly through this existing network that also uses Facebook and Twitter in an innovative and fun manner. The campaign having nearly 8 million fans made the Tata Docomo Facebook community one of the largest online communities in India.
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Dance and Music Festivals area rage amongst the youth all over the world. Not only are such festivals unabashedly loud and flamboyant in terms of their production values but they are also a safe bet to engage a mass audience though an event. Thus, more and more of such festivals are being organized at local and national level these to capitalize on the young audience that is willing to pay a large amount of money for the same. However an alarming fact about such routine festivals is that lack of innovation and creativity in terms of the content they offer. This, this time at EE we list down 5 of the most unique dance and music festivals across the globe. 1-Meadows in the Mountains (Bulgaria) This unique music and dance festival takes place in the serene surroundings of Bulgaria’s Rhodope mountain range and offers a chance to commune with nature to a blissful soundtrack of afterhours house, disco and techno. An important highlight of Meadows in the Mountains festival is that it has an honorable commitment to eco-friendly partying: the organizers are committed to sourcing timber shacks, art installations and stages from the local forest. Appearing on those stages are all kinds of live bands which include genres like funk, dub, alternative and jazz ones and, of course, the obligatory earnest men with acoustic guitars. The festival is also hugely popular for the post-festival pool party, tickets for which are sold separately. 2- Fusion Festival (Germany) Communal, countercultural and often described as the European Burning Man, anything goes at Fusion festival held at Larz, Germany. Located, oddly enough, on a disused military airfield, the four-day programme of the Fusion Festival is packed full of music and performance art, art installations and sculptures also dotting the site. The distinguishing factor of this festival is that the emphasis isn’t just on performers to perform but also the attendees are encouraged to dress up, bring instruments and generally express themselves however they see fit 3- Bahidorá (Mexico) Festival, carnival and hipster-honeytrap, Bahidora music festival organized in Mexico is a 24 hour party that celebrates not just the passion of the music but the spirit of life itself. The setting is gorgeous with acts being performed next to a sparkling blue river flanked by palm trees. The revellers colourful: many are resplendent in jazzy beachwear and feather headdresses, with a fondness for spontaneous processions. As for the music, it’s a mix of carefully selected indie, electronica and hip hop: Coco Rosie, Modeselektor and De La Soul. A point worth mentioning is that Bahidora is the only music festival in the world where you can learn circus skills and kayaking. 4- Fuji Rock (JAPAN) This unique festival organized at Niigata prefecture in Japan is different as you require a trip up a mountain by cable car to see the performances. The 20 minutes of highwire travel is all takes to reach the glorious stage and is a good illustration of the festival’s vast size. The festival is known for its beautiful verdant setting in the Naeba resort and is the biggest music festival in Japan 5- Wilderness (UK) Wilderness is as much a celebration of the inner life (there are talks and debates, a spa and yoga classes) and good old fashioned back-to-nature activities (horse-riding, wild swimming and foraging) as it is a music festival. Hence this music festival attracts crowds that are not average festival goers on the lookout to get hammered. There’s more of a family friendly vibe to the festival where an entire family can go and simply unwind themselves. The beautiful lakeside Oxfordshire setting Wilderness calls home will host an excellent line-up of musicians including Bjork, Ben Howard and funkmaster George Clinton, performing with his legendary bands Parliament and Funkadelic.
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