Kaya vs The Internet Challenge

The Internet penetration in India has given more than 30% of the Indian population access to global information and content so much so that that they spend more than 200 minutes on an average per day on social media, entertainment, search sites, etc. While this has benefited the consumer in many ways, given that  answers to almost everything is now just a few clicks away, finding credible sources and relevant information, especially for high involvement but evolving categories such skin care & hair care, still needs much more than just a simple search on Internet.

What does this mean for consumers ?

The consumer issues here are many. Incorrect information, lack of depth on a topic, generalization of a personal experience, fake news, quantity overshadowing quality are some issues that come to mind.  

With the democratization of content, one just needs a device and internet access to hear experiences of other people & their opinions. However, with the quantum of information available online, it has become increasingly difficult to discern facts from myths with a lot of people falling prey to incorrect information and its consequences. In the milieu of instant gratification online, consumers usually forgot to question the authenticity what they read, and abandon the quest for accurate answers by restricting themselves to the top search results on a search engine. And it was this string of thoughts that got the Kaya team and our agency partners pondering early this year – how can we increase access to  expertise, relevancy, and, well, hard facts, on an overcrowded Internet? An interesting mission was dawning upon us at Kaya.

The importance of expertise and credibility

Kaya, over 15 years, has built a network of 150+ highly qualified and experienced dermatologists and researchers. The team of dermatologists play a key role in delivering expert consultations and efficacy of its solutions, and with relevant brand building efforts the trustworthiness and reliability and the brand has grown from strength to strength as also seen from the healthy growth in our brand metrics.

Yet, there remain large number of consumers who are not accessing this dermatological expertise and the task remains to provide this access.

Ok Google..Yahoo and everybody else

After some intense analysis on searches on popular search engines and social media sites, in-depth keyword research, and studying an endless list of results across popular content sites we realized that all was not well. What we saw - conflicting information, unverified DIYs, and a lack of qualified medical voices - meant that consumers on the Internet were exposed to differing opinions and possibly unscientific healthcare remedies. It was clear to us that this misinformation would end up doing more harm than good, and that unsuspecting consumers are going to be at the receiving end of it all. Something had to be done.

 We got down to business and decided to dig deeper. Using our social listening tool, we drew specific insights about the various concerns consumers had when it comes to haircare (our focus area for this project), myths, pain points, common queries, common solutions recommended and platforms for the same. We learnt for example that men were not very comfortable is discussing hair loss and other hair concerns openly because of the stigma they perceived to be associated with the same. More than 25% of consumers were hesitant to admit they had challenges they couldn’t overcome, and we immediately realised that encouraging people to reach out to seek expertise was going to be the first step of this campaign. 

Using humour to make serious information consumable

While Kaya comes from a position of expertise and credibility we also wanted to make the conversations engaging and warm. Humour has the ability to lighten up the most serious situations and we instantly knew we could get people to start talking by collaborating with a known stand-up comic artist and an approach where the common challenges faced by the people in finding answers to their queries online were talked about in an engaging context.

Our knight in shining armour for this mission was to be a familiar, easily recognizable face with a strong social media presence - so who better than Naveen Polishetty of AIB fame? Now, this was getting exciting!

Before we got started

We had some interesting takeaways from our social listening exercise on the hair care category,

1. The highest number of conversations about hair related topics were happening through YouTube videos.
2. Most conversations, especially among women, revolved around home remedies for hair concerns and the efficacy of the ingredients. The overall sentiment and experiences showed that while some remedies were ineffective, others were baseless and unsubstantiated.
3. People have a lot of queries regarding hair concerns for which they are searching online but aren’t necessarily getting the correct or customized answers.
4. Men find it difficult to discuss hair concerns; especially those around a balding, receding hairline. We found it was very personal and almost all the time, they are hesitant to discuss it.
5. There was a lot of misinformation and misconceptions around the causes of hair fall. The fact that people are resorting to the Internet for the answers meant that there is a demand for expertise on this subject matter. Although people do reach out to various sources through the Internet, they’re left disappointed due to the lack of a concrete, researched solution.

Indeed the stage was now set, for the true experts of hair care to play their part!

Setting our goals:

We knew we had a large campaign ahead of us, so we huddled and set clear goals for our exercise.

1. Establish Kaya as the go-to destination for consumers with regards to hair care  (the brand was already strong when it came to skin)
2. Encourage more search activity and let people reach out to us and openly discuss their hair care related concerns.
3. Educate consumers about Kaya’s range of solutions and services across the entire hair care spectrum - hair loss, thinning, hair fall, dull and damaged hair, etc., for both men and women.
4. There is no substitute for a one-on-one consultation with a dermatologist when it came to personalized advice. So at the right stage in the consumer journey, we created a way-in for consumers to seek face-to-face advice from the Kaya dermatologist

What we did:

 Based on the takeaways from our research, we put together an action plan for our campaign with the following assets: 

- 5 Short Videos

- Microsite

- Comedian Collaboration

- Hair Testimonials

- Social Media Amplification

- Blog

5 Short Videos – Kaya v/s Internet

The 5 short videos that we created, each talked about the most common search terms regarding hair care - Hair Fall, Hair Loss, Alopecia, Hair Transplant, and Hair Thinning. We roped in comedian Naveen Polishetty essay the character of the Internet in these videos. The main concept of the video series was ‘Kaya vs. The Internet’.  Thereby positioning Kaya as the credible alternative.

Kaya vs The Internet - It Actually Happened! 

Essaying the role of the Internet, Naveen answers the various queries that users have about hair care, and comically brought to fore the silly inconsistencies that the internet tends to throw up, effortlessly conveying the problems the modern netizen faces.

Kaya on the other hand, intervenes and addresses these queries in clear and succinct manner, urging them to ask their questions to specialists like Kaya instead of the “know-it-all” Internet. 

Microsite 

We created a microsite with an interface similar to that of a search engine, trained to answer each and every hair care related query. Using the social media listening tool, we looked at the common queries and got them answered by our dermatologists. The only difference was that the answers that you got on the microsite were accurate and authentic, since they came from the experts at Kaya. 

Users could search for the hair concern that affected them and the microsite redirected them to the relevant page on the Kaya website, where the users could find all of the information about the concern, its stage, causes and solution and could book an appointment with a Kaya’s dermatologist instantly. 

Memes Through Comedian Collaborations

To encourage general public to talk about these concerns, we roped in four popular comedians - Sorabh Pant, Angad Singh Ranyal, Sapan Verma and Mallika Dua - to join in the conversation about irrelevant answers on the internet and amplify the campaign further. We piggybacked on their popularity and encouraged conversations around the irrelevant, funny, weird and sometimes bogus answers that the Internet throws up. Eventually, Kaya came to the rescue and guided each hair care query with the true facts of the matter. 

Consumer Testimonials As A Remarketing Tool To Drive More Leads

To further enhance Kaya’s credibility as the expert, we used testimonial videos of consumers who underwent treatments at our clinics successfully, as a part of our remarketing plan to reach out to users who had seen the video on Hair Transplant to answer the common queries of people considering to get a Hair Transplant done. The completion rates for both the videos was a stunning 44%!

 Digital Media Amplification

All the five videos positioned as Kaya vs. The Internet were shown on  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to around 8.8 million people. Further, we actively responded queries on Quora.

Blog

To provide more credible information and solutions, we wrote 30+ blogs around relevant topics and plugged information gaps where obvious, in addition to the 500+ articles already present in the blog section. A few of the topics were,

Your Guide To Hair Transplants

How To Stop Hair Fall

Best Solution To Hair Loss In Men

Is Hair Thinning Genetic?

When Do We Need Hair Transplants?

Our 3-step approach

A simple 3-step approach defined our go-to strategy:

- Teaser: built hype around our upcoming collaborated ft. Naveen Polishetty which generated curiosity

- Campaign Launch: collaborated with other comedians triggered the launch and got our users talking.

- Video launch: one by one, we uploaded the videos with supporting content as fillers in between

- Remarketing : Bumper & GDN ads as well as consumer testimonials videos

- Promotion on blogs : Third party sites, social & SEO

 

Our Remarketing Plan

- YouTube – Bumper Ads (6 Secs): Each main video had a bumper version of a video. After 7 days of the campaign launch, we kicked off bumper ads for each video for brand recall.

- GDN (Display) – Banners: We also served those who saw our videos with customized banners throughout the Google network

As a rule of thumb, we made sure our activities across channels were in sync and led to the same end goals.

Moreover, we used two testimonial videos of consumers who underwent treatments at our clinics successfully, as a part of our to reach out to users who had seen the video on Hair Transplant.

Results

We made the right kind of noise to let people know we are the go-to experts in the hair care category. We also successfully positioned ourselves as authorities and subject-matter-experts.

We saw audiences engaging with us across all of our assets, with numbers to back the same.

Kaya vs The Internet videos saw over 1,326,151 views

Facebook Engagement Rate was 36.10%

Instagram Engagement Rate was 10.56%

And, most importantly, the growth in enquiries for hair care was 41%

With over 1.2 million completed views across our videos and more than 4 lakh sessions on Kaya’s search engine, combined with an increase of leads by 41%, we were able to meet our objective of creating awareness about Kaya’s expertise in the hair category successfully.

To the victor, the spoils

We won the Best Marketing and Promotions Campaign Award of 2018 at the Images Retail Awards. (add links)

Social Media Post from Campaign - https://www.instagram.com/p/BgvdTI6HUJW/ 

We also made it big at the CDO Awards 2018. Kaya won Best Use of Social Media in a Digital Campaign, as well as Best Content Driven Digital Campaign (add links)

Social Media Post from Campaign – https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg88W2mHXVz/

The campaign was recognized by a few PR Portals such as Media Infoline and Exchange For Media as well. (add links) 

The awards were indeed the victory lap for the  teams, both at Kaya and Schbang - all of whom put in the dedication and effort to successfully help retain our position as the leaders in thinking different, in today’s evolving digital arena. Special mention to Naveen and the crew who made this possible for us. 

And now, without further ado, I bring to you, Kaya vs the Internet. Enjoy, and let me know what you think in the comments!