MUMBAI: Imagine if a brand created a piece of content and consumers lapped it up weaving it into a magical fun filled visual story, which caught the imagination of 3.5 million people. What are the possibilities that it could create?
Taking exactly this route, Pulp Strategy Communications embraced a disruptive campaign through online storytelling, to launch its latest gaming app Rescue’em. The campaign concentrates on breaking the existing clutter in the gaming paradigm to come up with a concept that swayed away from violence and bloodshed to be a stress buster instead. Strategists worked on a detailed story map that had an identified target audience, a powerful game plan matched with animation and processed with latest technology.
Beginning with releasing a news video animated to announce Baby Bubba the cute sheep from Frolic Island is missing, Baby Bubba’s emotional parents appealed to the public to find Bubba. Sparking the curiosity of the people #BubbaMissing, started trending on Twitter as people generated conversations and content around the video driving over five lakh views on social media in just three days.
The creative strategy was to generate curiosity among people and create a buzz around the game, while keeping all communication fun, trendy and bordering on hilarious. #BabyBubba, #FrolicInPanic and #RescueEm began trending in quick succession as the story unfolded.
Pulp Strategy Communications spokesperson said, “We knew that with the general trend of not so positive topics on social media the clean, cuteness of missing Bubba and friends captured attention. The hashtag chosen was intriguing. People could relate to it and hence it was the ideal conversation starter. The animated video is as close to the real world as could be and the agony of parents other than Mr & Mrs Wools… well, who wouldn’t relate? It’s captivating online storytelling.”
The promotional activity was divided into three phases:
·Phase one: The story of the character Bubba, missing from Frolic land was floated on social media. Hashtags like, #BubbaMissing & #FrolicInPanic started trending nationally for 11 hours. It witnessed millions of impressions and thousands of conversations trending. Various other activities like display media online, series of spoof episode videos of news reports from Frolic Island, sharing of videos via WhatsApp and strong social media reach based on content was carried out.
·Phase two: In the second phase, the story gradually progressed with clues leading to the prime suspect called ‘Brutus’ and people started pouring their support with #SuspectingBrutus and #RescueEm on Facebook and Twitter.
·Phase three: The third phase was an off line phase where a candle light march was announced and the targeted audiences were enthused to participate in the vigil that was held at the Delhi zoo.
There was live streaming of content on Twitter via very new tools Periscope and MeerKat. Consumers across five cities started holding candle vigils to support the cause via crowd sourced micro gatherings.
The story line was built with vines, videos, news reports, mailers and social conversations that saw over a million views and engagements. Within 48 hours of releasing its first video, it gathered 40,000 views and over 300 shares across platforms.
