Snapdeal’s Rebranding Strategy Makes Waves on Social Media

Snapdeal had social media abuzz with their massive rebranding strategy. I, for one, totally agree that one of the best things about buying online is unboxing. Why do you think unboxing is a huge thing on Youtube?

The ecommerce brand unveiled their new logo and served it with a side of the #UnboxZindagi campaign on the 10th of September. We will probably have to wait till the end of Diwali shopping season to evaluate how well this will translate into clinching a bigger slice of the hyper-competitive market. What we can do now, however, is to look at how the brand’s efforts have been received by social media audiences.

You must keep in mind that consumers are rarely excited about rebranding efforts – and if they do, then it’s usually in a bad way. It depends to a great extent on the marketing efforts undertaken by the brand. Needless to say, social media plays a huge role in spreading the word and getting people to take an active interest in what the brand has to say. Of course, it helps if there are freebies involved.

Facebook

It is quite clear that the brand has got the social media crowd’s attention. There is a very evident increase in Page Likes, as well as in Conversations. While Page Likes is in no way the sole or key indicator of how well a brand is performing on social media, it has some impact on Reach.

Here’s the trend in Fan Growth:

The graph suggests that there is a steady and noticeable increase in Fan numbers. It doesn’t look like the campaign went viral, but there is certainly an increase in Fan’s excitement. A better place to look for proof of that would be the Conversations generated by Fans that mention the brand:

Snapdeal has had a huge increase in the number of People Talking About Them on Facebook.

But what about Snapdeal’s social media efforts? How much engagement did the Posts that advertised the rebranding efforts get?

These charts show the engagement that the brand received over the course of the month of August and September respectively: 

What is interesting is that the brand published more in August (81) than it did in September (67). They did get better engagement in September. Better content and/or wider promotion are possible reasons why. Let us look further.

Promotion

Snapdeal published 67 Posts from the beginning of the month of September 2016, till date.

Organic and Promoted Posts: Volume

 

18 of these were Promoted. On the whole, these Posts brought in 119,272 Likes, 19,195 Comments and 3,876 Shares.

In the graphs above, the points on the line marked by dollar signs indicate Posts that had money behind them. Even though more Posts were promoted in August, the number made up a smaller fraction of the total number of Posts put out that month.

A huge advantage that brands gain from Promotion is Reach. On average, the brand generated a Reach of 69,197. All the Posts that had a Reach higher than average were Promoted.

The Post that got the most Reach advertised an upcoming event that the brand is yet to disclose details about. By using a very relatable GIF sneak-peek, and backing it with Promotion, they were able to generate great engagement.

Content strategy

It is very evident that the brand has had a clear-cut content strategy chalked out to get social media audiences take an active interest in their rebranding. There is a refreshing mix of content types.

The first Post to hint at a huge brand overhaul that was set to happen was published on September 8th. By letting Fans wrap their heads around the puzzle that was presented, they ensured that they had the audience’s rapt attention.

The Post received close to 150 Comments. This is commendable given that it did not have money behind it, however, we estimate it generated a Reach of only 2,000 given the low volume of shares and the fact that few people would have seen the post organically.

The five Posts that followed this one were all teasers leading up to the final unveiling of the logo. They used GIFs that highlighted the color red and indicated that they had a surprise in store for their Fans. On the tenth, they unveiled the logo.

The video that introduced the new logo was Promoted. This Post received 2,471 Reactions, 645 Comments and 178 Shares. It also enjoyed an estimated Reach of over half a million and got close to a million impressions.

What followed was an elaborate set of campaigns designed to get the audience enthusiastic about Unboxing. Take a look at how the campaigns performed:

The campaigns #UnboxDiwaliSale, #TheGreatUnboxSale, #UnboxZindagi, #UnboxNewSnapdeal all seem to be performing quite well on Facebook. Better yet, it looks like the latest campaign around the Diwali sale is getting a lot of engagement. This bodes really well for the brand.

Twitter

Snapdeal was much more active on Twitter during the same period. The brand Tweeted 140 times, and got a total of 9,083 Favorites, 9,892 Replies and 8,999 Retweets.

The brand experienced a sharp increase in Follower numbers on Twitter too. This is encouraging as it hints at the brand generating interest among social media audiences. And Snapdeal has certainly amped up its Twitter performance. Take a look at the number of Tweets put out by the Brand:

Let us explore if this increased activity was met with a rise in engagement as well

On average they received 39 Favorites, 41 Replies and 38 Retweets.This is an improvement over the last month when they received 22 Favorites, 18 Retweets and 21 Replies.

It is quite surprising that the brand did not run any Twitter ads to popularise the change in the logo or extend the Reach of the campaign. We need to look at the content in greater detail:

Contests performed the best on Twitter. They ran 28 contests this month. Snapdeal asked their Followers to send them a screen-capture of the GIF that they tweeted out with the product and the logo visible.

Q.4. Share a screenshot when the product and logo appear together & you can win it! #UnboxDiwaliSale pic.twitter.com/jzOVaZ67Dm

— Snapdeal (@snapdeal) September 25, 2016

 

Contests were effective in giving a boost to the engagement the brand received on Twitter. Very often we think of engagement only in terms of engagement metrics like Likes/Favorites, Comments/Replies etc. Here, these Posts were engaging in the sense that Fans were truly motivated to pay attention to what the brand was doing on Twitter. While this could be in no small measure because of the tangible benefits they can get from doing so, it still counts.

Take a look at the brand mentions on Twitter:

There is a sharp increase in mentions after September 4th and again a spectacular increase on September 25th. Both these dates coincide with contests run by the brand.

The campaigns run on Twitter are almost the same as the ones on Facebook, with a more contest-spin. Here’s how they performed:

Given that Diwali is round the corner, Snapdeal could not have picked a better time to rebrand. It goes to their credit that their ad campaigns have found a perfect fit with the spirit of the holiday. Tying the idea of the joy of unboxing something you ordered with the holiday spirit of gift-giving, their content is clearly finding favour with audiences. The color red that they have highlighted in the content as well as their new logo too is festive and vibrant.

Youtube

Snapdeal uploaded videos on Youtube at a frequency called for by the sale season. Just consider the fact that in the month of August, they uploaded just one video on Youtube. The number so far this month is 16. This is nothing compared to the number of views they received this month.

Snapdeal has had 2.4 million new channel views and 1,158 subscribers this month. Take a look at the trend in channel views:

How incredible is that Snapdeal has been able to attract nearly 2.5 million new viewers to their channel!

This is the most watched video:

Summing up, here are the highlights of Snapdeal’s social media efforts around its rebranding campaign:

• Use of channel-specific strategies: While the creative that they used (videos, GIFs, images etc) were used across networks, they customized strategies and goals for different networks. This meant that they used Twitter more for getting engagement, Facebook and Youtube for getting more views through Promotion.
• Effectively timing it around a major event: With Diwali sales round the corner, they did not have to have a huge sale to popularize the rebranding efforts. Snapdeal managed to piggyback on the excitement around a major holiday.
• Redefining buying: The whole campaign around Unboxing, and timing it around a major holiday makes every order (especially the part where you finally get your hands on the box), a moment to celebrate. It is no longer about buying X or buying Y, it’s about the joy of opening something that is going to spread the holiday cheer to your dear ones.