Adgully Exclusive | Businesses need to look at innovative ways of leveraging digital medium: Red Digital's Yashraj Vakil

While everyone talks about going digital and the way forward, Red Digital's client Monginis was an early adopter of social media and it has seen its boon. After Facebook and Twitter, it had to innovate and promote itself to the next level reach out to its audience and the vision was exactly in sync with this thought while moving onto Foursquare platform.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Yashraj Vakil, COO, Red Digital spoke about the new campaign.

Speaking about the brief of the client and the use of Foursquare, Vakil said, "Monginis wanted to extend its offline presence and create digital integration with real life. We wanted to use the reach of Monginis and its 750 strong retail outlet base. Foursquare proved to be a medium we could use for integrating all of this and benefit customers and outlet owners with more footfalls, better sales and social word of mouth. At present we have activated over 500 outlets for Monginis where they offers specials for Mayors and check-ins. They also offer discount coupons through Foursquare, which can be redeemed online through their social shop."

Adding further about the use of any other social medium, he said, "Red Digital effectively used Monginis' Facebook Fan Page, which has over 40K fans, as well as Twitter. We also effectively used Foursquare Window Clings at the door knows on the entrance to let customers know that the outlet was Foursquare activated."

Highlighting the objective behind the campaign, Vakil said, "The sole objective was to use word of mouth on social media to increase the number of people who see, hear and read about Monginis on the Internet and Social Media. This was followed by an endeavor to increase footfalls and sales at the outlets. Other secondary objectives included generating recommendations from customers about products and tips, which are outlet specific."

The end result of the campaign was, Monginis through Foursquare recognized its loyal customer base and allowed them to become vocal. This has led to many check-ins at all 500 outlets thus allowing Monginis to follow each one of its customers and give them a premium experience.

"Foursquare has helped in gamification of a loyalty program, adding to the fun of collecting points by making the information public. Monginis through Foursquare gives loyal customers bragging rights and an ego boost when they walk into a store where their loyalty is valued which is the primary motto for Monginis", added Vakil.

Very few clients in India have used Foursquare in their communication strategy. Responding to our question, as to was there any second thoughts in the agency's as well as the clients mind while deciding on this plan, Vakil said, "Social and digital marketing is still picking up in India and you can't blame companies for their skepticism. They usually aren't well informed on digital strategies and how social media works but we have reached a stage where it certainly cannot be ignored."

"Businesses need to look at digging deeper into innovative ways of leveraging digital medium which would create an instant brand recall and empower brands to interact with its customer. The recent trends suggest location based digital marketing is gaining fast and will hog limelight in coming times", concluded Vakil.

Yashraj Vakil is a Commerce graduate from the Mumbai University, with a dual major in Tourism and Accounting. Along with his Bachelor's Degree in Law, he also holds a Diploma in Cyber Laws from the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

With close to a decade of cross functional experience in media and interactive content industries, Yashraj has worked with some very reputable organizations such as Procter and Gamble, Lowe, Jump Games and Zapak.com Over the years he has successfully forged lucrative alliances, managed international content acquisition and serviced clients with inventive brand solutions. | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]