Digital Platform gets us a meaningful reach: Prashant Dhar

Digital has taken the world by the storm leaving no brand untouched by its far reaching ability. It has become the need of the hour and all- Small medium and large enterprises are taking on to this route. In a recently concluded Google SME Heroes challenge 2014, Racold Thermo Limited, was awarded for using Social Media in an innovative and extensive way to establish brand relevance and to grow and accentuate the business.

Google had shortlisted 5 SME organizations, in five different regions, to acknowledge and award them for using different Google platforms and social media to create buzz in the public domain about their products and services. The entire process lasted for 6 months and then Racold Thermo was declared regional winner from west zone in first quarter of 2015, the only non-ecommerce company, to achieve this honour.

Prashant Dhar, Head of Marketing, Racold Thermo India spoke to Adgully on their tryst with digital and their recent win at the Google SME Heroes award. He elaborated “Basically we won because of growing traction of consumers on our website due to usage of various google platforms and other social media initiatives by using digital marketing in an innovative way. The whole idea was to make the brand meaningful to the consumer. We know that Digital platforms are very efficient and it is where we can get a focused reach.”

Racold Thermo started their journey on social media two and half year back by revamping the website, It also got active in other social media platforms like facebook, youtube, Linkedin etc,. The web sites visits for Racold have grown 5 folds in the past 3 years and steadily the fan page acquisition on Facebook has moved from 1000 in initially to more than 300 thousand and has seen a growth on other Social Media platforms as well. As Prashant quotes “Racold operates in the water heater category, which is not a very high involvement one , so the challenge for us was to create enough buzz and engagement on social media to reach and connect with our target audience.

Some of the steps taken by Racold in that direction was revamping the content of the website, creating exciting engagements on Facebook, using YouTube to create engaging videos around the brand and product and by creating engaging apps which could lead to focused brand interaction with the target audience. For e.g. On the World Environment Day, Racold initiated a campaign on Facebook to spread awareness about saving energy. Another example is  the Racold Wake Up Bucket Challenge that created the right disruption in the social media with a 360 degrees approach.

As he points out “We created Wake up Bucket Challenge keeping in mind that it is a good category fit, has a corporate social responsibility angle to it, is innovative and engaging. Apart from creating hype about the campaign by using disruption on TV, Radio and digital, we went for society activations as well where we asked people to take up the challenge and contribute towards a good cause. It was a very successful campaign.”

The Wake up Bucket challenge not only helped in creating the right buzz for the brand but also brought in the element of social responsibility. We planned to donate one water heater for every 25 photo or video upload of people taking the challenge in the microsite specifically designed for the campaign. Total 558 people took the challenge and we ended up donating 23 water heaters to leading NGO’s of the country. (Save The Children and Snehalaya) Racold has initiated another energy conservation campaign called switch2green(through online and offline mode) by tying up with leading NGO named Green Energy Foundation working in energy conservation space as Prashant believes that connecting with consumers through an emotive route is always far more effective as opposed to a functional feature led communication. This resulted in creating tremendous amount of brand recall amongst the consumer, dealers and our trade partners.