Dhanbola is eBay’s industry-first move to celebrate festivities: Shivani Suri

eBay India hosted its first ever FB Live gaming event for its consumers, called Dhanbola (online tambola) yesterday. Hosted by stand-up comedian Zakir Khan, Dhanbola was live on Tuesday, October 25, 2016 from 4.00 pm to 5.00 pm on eBay India FB page. Dhanbola is also an opportunity for eBay India to reinforce its TV campaign, #ThingsDontJudge.

Over 5.6 million consumers on ebay.in were given codes that entitled them to participate in the live Dhanbola event and stand a chance to win a MacBook Pro, an Apple iPhone 7 or a Philips Bluetooth speaker.

Commenting on this initiative, Shivani Suri, Director - Marketing, eBay India, said, “Our recently launched TVC, #ThingsDontJudge, struck a chord with consumers from different walks of life. Dhanbola is yet another industry-first from eBay India to not only deepen our engagement with consumerson a platform which is preferred by them, but also to celebrate the spirit of the festivities.”

Speaking further to Adgully, Shivani Suri sheds light on the Dhanbola initiative, eBay India’s festive season plans, sales targeted and more. Excerpt:

 

Even as other e-commerce players have rolled out elaborate festive season plans, how are you leveraging the buying frenzy that accompanies the festive season?

Our Diwali sale kicked off on September 15 and will continue till the end of this month. As part of the sales, first and foremost what we have put together is a selection of Retro products that are available on our site. You will not find this kind of range on any other e-commerce shopping site today, and a lot of offers, deals and collections on Diwali-specific supply that are available on the site. There are a lot of exclusive launches as well. Besides that, we have also launched a TVC this September-end, which will continue throughout the festival period. We also have a movie tie-up with the much talked-about ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’, which is launching this weekend. And now, we have this first ever Live Game Show on Facebook – Dhanbola – that we launched. It was Zakir Khan’s Diwali Party and the show is the first ever interactive show on social media.

 

Compared to the other e-commerce players, we have not seen eBay being very aggressive in its festive marketing drive. What are the reasons behind that?

We have our own playbook; the focus is on unique supplies and our range of products. We have 10 crore products, which really are our differentiator. However, we do have very attractive deals and offers at eBay. We believe that for any brand, pricing can be a differentiator only for a limited period. We have a more fundamental pillar that drives the business on a long term perspective. And our focus for the long term is on building our differentiation and unique product selection.

 

What kind of traction are you expecting with the first ever FB Live gaming initiative?

The Facebook Live feature allows users to put up videos in real time, so we have used that real time platform to actually do a game show Live, using the format of Tambola. Nobody has used the Facebook Live feature to do a game show before, we are the first in the world to have used this feature in this format.

 

What is your expectation in terms of sales and traffic to the site?

The build-up to the campaign was driven by the buyers, based on what they bought on the site. Whoever bought on the site got the Tambola ticket to play with us.

 

After this event, now how are you planning to take this initiative forward?

Our strategy is to build a sustainable growth-driven e-commerce market place. We see India as one of the largest e-commerce markets and are, therefore, committed to our growth in this market.

 

Could you tell us a bit more about the #Thingsdontjudge TVC?

The insight that we have used in the TVC is that e-commerce is a new way of life. It has been breaking the norms of traditional shopping, and also as a culture we are becoming more accepting of differences, which are arising from people’s preferences, regions, caste, colour, gender. Our society and culture are becoming more accepting of these differences, and e-commerce is also seen as a new way of life breaking away from the set norms, with more and more people accepting it and adapting to it. We came up with this insight not with market leadership, but conversational leadership, given that our culture is moving to a new way of life. With this TVC, we want to communicate a strong enough proposition of cultural conversation, taking it to the next level.

 

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