Festivals, Data and Marketing: through the lens of Sherlock AI

How can marketers use Sherlock AI's Ganesh Chaturthi data from Mumbai beaches

The beaches of Mumbai turn into leisure grounds providing space for a multitude of activities, especially on weekends. From spotting celebs in the famous Juhu Beach to the lively sand beach at Gorai and mouth-watering food stalls at Aksa, beautiful walks at Versova- Mumbai’s beaches offer a plethora of things to do all-round the year.?

But what makes it even more popular among locals and tourists alike in the month of August & September? Thousands of people celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi (*cue* images of splendidly decorated idols of Lord Ganesha, gigantic and festive pandals throughout the streets of Mumbai and the public processions with mesmerizing music ranging from devotionals to Bollywood!). All these festivities end with people thronging the beaches leading to the visarjan after a lively procession.

Sherlock AI: The superlative number-cruncher

It is no secret that people like to visit the beaches on weekends, holidays and festive occasions, and especially during the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. Sherlock AI plotted the data of the number of people visiting the beaches starting August 24-26, 2022 i.e. weekdays, and saw the numbers going up 100% on Sundays, dropping again to 31% and 27% respectively on Monday and Tuesday i.e. August 29 and August 30. These numbers were expected to continue to be low on Wednesday and Thursday or August 31 and Sept 1, 2022, respectively as these were weekdays. Sherlock AI found the number going up again (89% on Aug 31 and 60% on September 1 which were weekdays) as these were festive days of Ganesh Chaturthi and people were seen thronging the beaches even though these were not the designated ‘visarjan’ days. Overall, during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival days, the number of people visiting the beaches was even higher than on weekends.

Is it just enough to understand the “footfall” of people visiting the beaches? After all, it’s almost common knowledge that the number of people visiting beaches during weekends or Ganesh Chaturthi is higher than on normal days. These are people that actively participate in religious festivities like Ganesh Festival, Navratri, Dusshera, Diwali, et al. It’s nice to know the exact quantitative “surge”, but wouldn’t it be even better if we could understand more about these people visiting the beaches- where they come from, their spending capacities, their demographics? Oof, we know hundreds of marketeers who would kill for this level of precision targeting!

Finding the home location of crowds & their consumer behavior

Besides the data on numbers and days of the week, what would be nice to know is where these people are coming from. Sherlock AI also determined just that. While it’s obvious that people who live close to these beaches would visit them, what is even more interesting is that people who live further east and in fact, even as far as Navi Mumbai and beyond, visited these beaches on the Western side of Mumbai on Aug 31, 2022.

Home locations of visitors to various beaches in Mumbai on Aug 31, 2022

The yellow towers indicate the home locations of the devotees and the height of the towers indicate the number of devotees from that location.

Marketeer’s delight

Once the marketers know where these people are coming from, a lot falls into place. They can, for example, see the Sherlock prosperity index ? of the places these people come from. The prosperity index gives an indication of the prosperity of the 150m block in a city/town. It has been created using 8+ econometric datasets that now accurately predict whether people living in that block can afford a product/service or not.? They also know these people are the right target audience for any goods and services related to religion, spirituality, and festivities. How to sell gold to this audience on the occasion of Akshay Tritiya – shops like Tanishq and other jewelers can really benefit by tapping into this specific audience rather than advertising to a larger audience. How to tap these audiences to buy puja ingredients online or will they be willing to buy such ingredients online? How to advertise the services of astrologers, and tarot readers to them? How to sell precious and semi-precious jewels to them? Besides religion and spirituality marketeers looking to sell lifestyle goods, two-wheelers, set up kiosks at the beaches, and perhaps? even Diwali-related lines, can all benefit from this data. Sherlock AI brings you nearer to your audience by telling you who they are and where exactly you can find them and advertise to them

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