What a way to spice up an otherwise ordinary morning! I woke up around 6:30am to a lot of commotion in the living room. My couch surfing friend (unemployed, pre business school) was eagerly logging into the SpiceJet website for the 777 deal for their 7 year Anniversary: All flights, anywhere for Rs.777 for 77 minutes this morning starting 7am, via their website. Indians take 2 things very seriously: deals and anniversaries so when you combine the two - this was a BIG deal - very smart marketing campaign. Sadly, the site went down soon after 7 and the Twitterati wrath kicked in soon thereafter. While #spicejet trended for almost 5 hours in India, most of the comments were extremely negative. SpiceJet even extended the offer till 10am and some folks were able to get online post 8:30am and were very pleased with themselves for scoring a good deal but for the most part the brand was left was a black eye on their anniversary.
There were many interesting reactions from tweeple - many were just annoyed that they woke up early for nothing, others that compared SpiceJet to KF and AI etc. that someone with a degree in social anthropology is better placed to comment on. The tweet that really struck me though was the one from SpiceJet themselves: " "@flyspicejet: Thank u 4 an overwhelming response & making this offer a success! Watch this space 4 more exciting offers.#spicejet"
Now it could be that they needed something nice to say, so that's what they came up with. But think about it. They ran a flash deal campaign and probably sold more tickets in a single day and acquired more 1st time customers than ever before at a very low operational cost (it was online). So in a sales review, this was a successful campaign. In an agency review, they trended for a whopping 5 hours from 7-noon and their banner click through rates were probably unprecedented. Who knows, this might even win best digital campaign of the year. After all, on paper, the black and white results make this a best practice campaign.
But if you were experiencing all this live, you would have been a frustrated customer who refreshed 777 times because the site didn't work for you or redialed 777 times because you couldn't get through on the 1800 numbers. You would have felt enraged about the suspiciously planted positive tweets (e.g. "booked 18 tickets. Spicejet rocks.") Or you would have been exhausted after spending 3 hours battling the site just so you could score the deal. Does all this matter? It does. Because a short term sales boost is not worth a hit to your brand - ever. And today was a black eye for SpiceJet's brand.
This is clearly a case where marketing and IT didn't partner well during the campaign planning stages to ensure they had a scalable backend to support the spike on the web and in the call center nor did they have a social media listening and response mechanism to manage or neutralize the negative sentiments effectively. Sadly, I see this all the time in my interactions with CMOs and CIOs. A few years ago, marketing would immediately blame IT. But As LK Gupta, a fellow DesiCMO, tweeted so articulately "easy to blame IT. But the project owner, which is mktg, shd hv forecasted the site traffic and anticipated the result."
If you read my previous blogpost, this does makes the case for CEOs hiring Chief Marketing Technologists even stronger doesn't it?? :-) Do spice up my post with your comments!
There were many interesting reactions from tweeple - many were just annoyed that they woke up early for nothing, others that compared SpiceJet to KF and AI etc. that someone with a degree in social anthropology is better placed to comment on. The tweet that really struck me though was the one from SpiceJet themselves: " "@flyspicejet: Thank u 4 an overwhelming response & making this offer a success! Watch this space 4 more exciting offers.
Now it could be that they needed something nice to say, so that's what they came up with. But think about it. They ran a flash deal campaign and probably sold more tickets in a single day and acquired more 1st time customers than ever before at a very low operational cost (it was online). So in a sales review, this was a successful campaign. In an agency review, they trended for a whopping 5 hours from 7-noon and their banner click through rates were probably unprecedented. Who knows, this might even win best digital campaign of the year. After all, on paper, the black and white results make this a best practice campaign.
But if you were experiencing all this live, you would have been a frustrated customer who refreshed 777 times because the site didn't work for you or redialed 777 times because you couldn't get through on the 1800 numbers. You would have felt enraged about the suspiciously planted positive tweets (e.g. "booked 18 tickets. Spicejet rocks.") Or you would have been exhausted after spending 3 hours battling the site just so you could score the deal. Does all this matter? It does. Because a short term sales boost is not worth a hit to your brand - ever. And today was a black eye for SpiceJet's brand.
This is clearly a case where marketing and IT didn't partner well during the campaign planning stages to ensure they had a scalable backend to support the spike on the web and in the call center nor did they have a social media listening and response mechanism to manage or neutralize the negative sentiments effectively. Sadly, I see this all the time in my interactions with CMOs and CIOs. A few years ago, marketing would immediately blame IT. But As LK Gupta, a fellow DesiCMO, tweeted so articulately "easy to blame IT. But the project owner, which is mktg, shd hv forecasted the site traffic and anticipated the result."
If you read my previous blogpost, this does makes the case for CEOs hiring Chief Marketing Technologists even stronger doesn't it?? :-) Do spice up my post with your comments!
