How Vivo Achieved Explosive Growth from IPL Sponsorship
Kavya Ravi
August 17, 2018 • 4 min read
Updated on August 17, 2018
Vivo entered the Indian market in December 2014 and largely stayed under the radar until it acquired the title sponsorship for IPL in 2016. The brand has seen good engagement on digital platforms especially capitalizing on the IPL frenzy. Facebook is the largest platform for the brand with a staggering 22 million fans! The brand added over 2 million fans on Facebook since the beginning of 2018, suggesting their aggressive growth on the platform.
The highlights indicate brand posts that saw higher engagement than usual. An unusual spike in the chart indicates an update in Facebook’s algorithm that displays the total fan count of the brand’s global page on its regional brand pages.
The IPL Campaigns
Vivo used Facebook and Twitter as the major platforms for running their IPL campaigns. The content published centered on their new smartphone models, IPL contests and other IPL related content. The step-by-step nature of the product launch built hype and awareness for the new products. The brand also utilized its IPL sponsorship and posted match highlights and cricket related content to drive traffic to their channels. But, unlike on Facebook and Twitter, Vivo did not use overt IPL branding on Instagram. Overall, the brand had an active presence on the three platforms as they encouraged users to use the brand hashtags to win the contests
During the IPL 2018 season, Vivo saw an addition of 649K new fans on Facebook between April 1 and May 31, 2018. This was a huge jump considering that the brand added just 24K new fans during the IPL 2017 season. Vivo posted 167 times, of which more than 43 % were photos, over 41% videos, and close to 15% were links to iplt20.com and hotstar.com. The IPL campaign got high engagement on Facebook as more than 58% of all of the published content was promoted. Overall, content published during the IPL got more than 4 million interactions and 52.9 million video views. The estimated reach of Vivo during the IPL campaign was 98 million.
Total brand posts and total number of interactions on Facebook in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Vivo successfully promoted their latest smartphone Vivo V9 during the IPL season this year, leveraging the engagement and visibility that came with it. In early 2018, Vivo announced that Aamir Khan would be its brand ambassador replacing Ranveer Singh who endorsed the brand for two years. The smartphone brand built momentum for their newly launched Vivo V9 through the #MadeForMore campaign that began mid-March. The brand kick-started it with a post revealing their new brand ambassador. This post is Vivo’s most engaging post in 2018 with over 1.4M interactions.
Right before the onset of IPL season, Vivo launched their new series of ads featuring Khan. The ad spots involving Khan and his two pets were markedly different from Vivo’s previous campaigns featuring Ranveer Singh, a move that many see as reflecting a change in Vivo’s marketing strategy.
This integrated campaign launched on TV as well as across social media platforms was the brand’s IPL special campaign as Vivo retained their title sponsorship for the third year. The #MadeForMore campaign had a total of 27 posts during the IPL season including 4 videos that featured Khan. The 4 ad spots alone received 722K interactions and 19.8 million video views.
During the last leg of the IPL, Vivo initiated a campaign to launch Vivo X21, their second smartphone launch of the season. The brand posted 20 times during the time period and promoted 75% of the posts. The campaign got an estimated reach of 21.9 million. Vivo’s strategy involved teasing the phone’s features and building hype for the launch that was also broadcast through Facebook Live. The post below got over 243K interactions and is the most engaging post of the campaign.
Vivo has an active presence on Twitter with 227K followers. The brand ran their IPL campaigns on Twitter with IPL contests and live match updates etc. to engage with users and tweeted more than 780 times. Vivo also managed to expand its audience size and added 15K new followers during the IPL season.
Watch the biggest matches of the season, live at the stadium! Simply use #VIVOIPL & #PerfectFan on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and you could win match tickets to the Playoffs or Final, or a brand new Vivo smartphone!
T&C: https://t.co/stCsLcWE1b pic.twitter.com/6xSC4bomAk
— Vivo India (@Vivo_India) May 23, 2018
Campaign hashtags like #MadeForMore and #VivoIPL got high engagement on Twitter. #VivoIPL was used in 190 tweets and got over 73K interactions. The brand urged fans to use #VivoIPL and #PerfectFan to win the IPL contests. Vivo thus had a successful footprint on Twitter during the IPL season with over 115K mentions.
Vivo’s integrated campaign on different social channels especially their ad campaign with their new brand ambassador seems to have worked well for the brand. The smartphone maker made the most of its association with IPL to drive excitement for their product launches and to increase overall brand awareness. If you need to improve your brand’s social media performance with data driven insights and competitive intelligence, check out Unmetric Analyze.
