Oral care brand Colgate-Palmolive India recently concluded its annual Colgate Scholarship Offer.
Launched in 2009, the Colgate Scholarship Offer gives children from across India a chance to win scholarships up to Rs 1 lakh. While Colgate has upped the number of scholarships and the amount with every passing year, the bigger challenge that it took upon itself this year was to give something to every consumer who picked the Colgate Scholarship Offer pack and not just to the lucky few who end up winning a scholarship. In order to do that, Colgate partnered with BYJU’s, the education app, to give children access to free BYJU’s lessons.
The partnership enabled thousands of school children to avail of maths and science lectures curated by experts at BYJU’s, through the Colgate Dental Cream pack. Each pack offered a free one-month video tutorial subscription of BYJU’s, worth Rs 999. For children who could not access the app, Colgate and BYJU’s together, created special audio lectures that could be availed by giving a missed call on the number provided on the pack, and also mentioned in the TVC.
Participation in the Scholarship Offer did not require consumers to buy the Colgate Dental Cream pack. The 2017 edition of Colgate Scholarship Offer received more than 49 lakh entries from across the country. The lucky winners received a scholarship amount of Rs 1 lakh each, while many others benefitted from the BYJU’s app and the specially created audio lectures.
In order to inspire many more children and their parents to avail of this unique offer, Colgate felt the need to show them the stories of the real scholarship winners – from their own regions – and how they benefitted from this programme. The thought led to the decision of choosing to film individual stories of real winners in their real homes, instead of shooting a standard, scripted TVC in a studio with actors.
The contact centre got in touch with the scholarship winners and collected over 300 stories, of which 25 were shortlisted. The team got together for an in-depth discussion to pick seven to eight stories. With no script/storyboard in place, the crew travelled to different locations to interact, understand and shoot with these winners and their family members at their homes/local settings. After spending/shooting for a couple of days with each of the winners, across different geographies, the team came back with footage, which was ultimately edited into short TVCs, and finally the top five stories were put on air. To make the TVC more impactful, the brand decided to make it more localised – the final five TVCs were of winners from across different zones, and only the local winner’s story (TVC) was aired in that particular region.
Eric Jumbert, Director, Marketing, Colgate-Palmolive (India), said, "We are happy to see how the Colgate Scholarship Offer has evolved over the years. Every year we try to not just make the programme bigger but also to offer something more to the consumer – the Colgate-BYJU’s partnership was one powerful example of adding value to the lives of consumers. The campaign revolved around the real winners from previous years’ Scholarship Offer winners telling their real stories, which made the proposition all the more compelling.”
Speaking about the campaign, Sanjay Sipahimalani, Creative Director, Red Fuse Communications, added, “The Colgate Scholarship Offer has been running successfully for the past couple of years. It provides a unique opportunity to children, many of whom would not have been able to achieve what they did. We’ve seen kids across the country realise their potential and live their dreams. It has been humbling to see this change, and no advertising campaign could have been better than presenting the stories of these children to the world. Thus, our testimonial campaign was shot in a raw, candid manner. Our teams went to their houses, and spoke to them. What you see on television is their life, and their narrative.”
The campaign was shared across all platforms – digital, print, Out Of Home, retail outlets and public relations – to generate awareness and drive participation.
The winners stories:
The company claimed the following impact of the campaign this year:
Digital: 12.80 million views on YouTube; 1.84 million views on Voot
Public Relations:
1200 number of print exposures across 103 markets announcing the Scholarship Offer; 45 number of local media print exposures for the winner stories
AVE: INR 31 million(approx.)
Reach: 224 million
Retail outreach: More than 7.5 lac retail outlets