Exclusive | Unforgettable experiences & irresistible deals: Crazeal's Ankur Warikoo

Crazeal.com (India unit of Groupon Inc. USA), a daily Deals website recently launched an innovative marketing campaign wherein it partnered with multiple cinema houses across India. The idea was to offer a unique movie watching experience to Crazeal customers.

 

Ever since its launch in India in October last year, Crazeal has constantly looked at giving its consumers some of the best experiences. Believing in this philosophy of creating irresistible experiences for its customers, it ran a special deal on the most anticipated movie of 2012 - Batman, The Dark Knight Rises. This crazy deal offered 50% discount on the tickets along with a private screening to showcase Crazeal’s ‘Who Can Resist?’ campaign. Over 3,500 tickets were sold in just under 30 hours.

 

To grab this deal, Crazeal subscribers had to simply log on to the site, buy the deal and tickets were delivered to their doorstep. This special screening was conducted across 9 cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur, Chandigarh & Pune). The Crazeal team personally interacted with consumers at the theatres. Each individual who came for the special show also got a memento. Multiple on-ground touch-points were created to increase brand presence and engage with customers in a fun way.

 

Adgully caught up with Ankur Warikoo - CEO, Crazeal as he talks about the whole experience and about Crazeal’s unique marketing initiatives in-depth.

 

Providing insights into the experiential marketing campaign, Ankur said, “This was an excellent opportunity for us to reach out to our audiences because very rarely do internet companies get to meet their customers face to face and get real-time customer feedback. Amazing Movies is something that everyone likes. Spiderman was a highly popular- much anticipated release and it garnered high visibility. We thought of running a special discount deal for it. The experience was absolutely amazing. It was for the first time that an entire hall of 945 odd people-only Crazeal customers were seen having a great time, providing us with genuine feedback, being touched by our branding and watching our ads. We got to know our customers on a personal basis. Inspired by the success of this initiative, we took it to the next level with Batman. On a Sunday evening in all the big cities of the country, the best cinema halls were running 50% off on The Dark Knight Rises courtesy Crazeal. We had more Crazeal fans than we had imagined. It was a privilege offered only to Crazeal customers.”

 

Shedding light on Crazeal’s “Who Can Resist?”campaign, he says, “ When we were contemplating of how we wanted to position ourselves as an internet company and how we would be different from the others, the idea that we came up with us  was the “Who can Resist campaign.” The focus was essentially on communication, resting on television commercials that have been launched online. It is backed by crazy deals that we would be running in each of the cities that we are present in across the country. The idea was to have deals so crazy that nobody could resist them. The communication which includes three commercials namely the running shoes ad, travel ad, restaurant ad were just glimpses of what could be a crazy deal. But the very fact that consumers saw the Dark Knight at a 50% off on the weekend of its release in one of the best theatres is the kind of crazy deals that Crazeal indulges in.”

 

Interestingly, the advertisements which form an integral part of the communication of the ‘Who Can Resist?’ campaign have an embedded element of humor in them. Commenting on this, Ankur says, “The advertisements had to be clutter breaking. They also had to essentially bring about the idea; that we are a lot about experiences. This had to be projected in a unique fashion.  Therefore, a humorous approach was adopted. People start liking a brand once they find the brand friendlier. That is the core; to entertain people, to ensure that we break clutter. The Group On philosophy is to have the element of humor incorporated which entertains the readers. You also tend to connect with people better when they like your communication .People should be entertained and should enjoy when they engage with Crazeal and Group On.”

 

Commenting on how the initiative will help in strengthening revenues for Crazeal, he said, “In the clutter that exists today, when every e-commerce site claims to be the best discount site, it is Crazeal that offers attractive and irresistible deals. For instance, the Dark Night deal that we gave. These crazy deals set the platform for us to become a regular feature in the life of consumers. Due to this exercise, we not only gained new customers, but also activated customers. Now, customers are a lot more engaged as they continue to explore our best quality deals. The deals that we come up with are a testimony to the fact that Crazeal is the best destination. It is a more long term strategy and completely differs from what we would call hard-core selling. It is more subtle and definitely more personal.”

 

Elaborating on Crazeal’s brand journey since its inception in April 2011 and re-branding in November 20011, he said, “It has been an extremely fascinating and rewarding journey. We have been very conscious of our positioning.  We always want to be recognized as the best deal site in the country. We don’t target numbers. Undoubtedly, our best branding comes from our partners.  We realized that the best way to establish a brand is to ride on the brand value of our merchants.  It is necessary to be very selective of whom you work with and offer the best value to our customers. The branding circulates around the best quality and experience. That translates into whatever we do, be it the TVCs or launching commercials online or coming up with movie deals or coming up with other categories that are equally exciting. Whatever we have done so far, we will continue to deliver on those parameters. The kind of crazy deals and excitement will remain constant.”

 

Providing an overview of Crazeal’s innovative marketing strategies, he says, “From a marketing perspective, we have pushed the experiential marketing agenda. We believe that the best marketing is the one in which the customer has an experience rather than the one in which he is shown an advertisement or when he is forced to buy. In Bombay, we offered an opportunity in which people could go around the city in a helicopter for 10 minutes. Something that people don’t imagine doing but the fact that it comes at a discount and a once in a lifetime opportunity, you would do it. This happened on the evening of Ganesh Chaturthi Visarjan. Imagine being on top of the city overlooking all the Visarjan processions happening across the city. That is the kind of experience we deliver. We also have five-star hotels, top end spas and many more fascinating experiences to keep our consumers hooked.”

 

Earlier, Crazeal had tied up with Café Coffee Day to reach out to its young target group and offer them a unique coffee experience. Talking about the whole engagement, he said, “We had a simple engagement. Any customer walking into a Café Coffee Day outlet across the country would be given a menu card. They would have to Sms their email-id through a short code upon which they would receive a mobile voucher which could be redeemed for a free cappuccino. The most interesting part was that the cappuccino was branded as Crazeal. A Crazeal logo was created on top of the cappuccino with coffee powder. Thus, when the consumer sipped coffee, it formed an instant connect. It worked out very well for us. It was an example of the thought process that we indulged in. We plan to extend this to a much larger scale going further.”

 

Ankur exclaims, “When we started about nine months back, we were the smallest ones and probably the last ones to start in the space. The only reason that we are the best deal site in the country today is because of the quality of service we offer to our customers. That also gives us the confidence to communicate the way we do. The idea is always to come up with unheard of deals and unheard of instances. We deliver on the promises.”