Tata Docomo's unique concept: night recharges during Durga Puja fetched a lot of traction

This Durga Puja, when every Kolkatan went either pandal hopping or on vacation, some celebrated with family & friends and some slept, a team of 100 people redefined the Durga Puja celebrations in their unique, bang on way! When people go pandal hopping at night during Durga Puja, the availability of talktime recharges on their phone is a big problem. Most of the outlets remain closed at the time. Grabbing that opportunity Tata Docomo, created an industry first concept of night recharges through the four nights of Sasthi, Saptami, Ashtami & Navami.

Sticking true to its one line though, Be there when there is no one else around and create an innovative eyeball grabbing visibility,Tata Docomo created one more ‘DO the New’ initiative, staying true to our philosophy of being ‘Refreshingly Different’!

Ashok Ghose, Chief Operating Officer, West Bengal & NESA circles, Tata Teleservices Limited, while talking to Adgully shared some insights about the campaign.

When asked, how this idea did come up, he said, “Being true to its philosophy, the brand Tata Docomo stands for ‘DOing the NEW’. This Durga Pujo we came up with the concept of night recharges because we identified this as an innovative sales opportunity. Apart from the objective of branding and visibility in top Pujo mandaps, we also wanted returns on our investments. Most telecom outlets remain closed during the four days of Pujo and more so at night.”

Speaking about the investment part, he said, “We have spent closed to a crore for this year’s overall Pujo activity and branding, which includes night recharges. It will be difficult to give individual, activity wise costs.”

In the four days and four nights we recharged almost 7000 customer phones totalling to `10 lacs. Not just sales, we also addressed various customer queries relating to balance transfers, Photon Plus, VAS offers and more. The trade was highly appreciative of this effort. The one of a kind exercise got much notice from the pandal hoppers and rave reviews from critics.

On asking behind the reason behind choosing Kolkatta and Durga Puja, he said, “This is a Kolkata Circle initiative. Durga Puja is the mardi gras of Bengal and Kolkata. All brands bring out their best armoury during this time. And the solution of night recharges fitted with this environment very well.”

While concluding, Ghose said, “There is much more to come and we will keep at our spirit of being refreshingly different. We are sure to come up with more exciting activations in the future.”

Nearly 600 retailers were plotted who would keep their shops open from 10 PM to 2 AM near big Pujo pandals. These outlets were a mix of telecom and non telecom (food / ice cream) outlets. The outlets were mapped to DSEs (Sales Executives) who serviced them at night. To create visibility and guide traffic to these outlets, we placed glow boxes with Durga Pujo motif and the message of “Recharge Available Here”. Apart from all this there were even, backpackers who were seen doing the rounds in the pandals talking to people and guiding them to the retail outlets or to the DSEs who transferred talktime balance through easy recharges (phone to phone). | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal@adgully.com]