The seventh in a series on DM Case Studies by Sanjeev Jasani, VP, OgilvyOne, New Delhi.
Business is a serious game. And CEOs don’t run!
CEO’s attend round table conferences, strategy summits and engage in high profile leisure activities like Golf, cricket, swimming etc. But somehow we don’t associate them with running. (There are a few exceptions to this of course but only a handful). And certainly not running in public with the masses.
The challenge here was to break this mindset (in this case, the CEO’s own) and get them to run in the Hutch Delhi Half Marathon (HDHM). Since this event was being organized for the first time in Delhi, there were no past experiences to refer to and this event itself would serve as a benchmark for future years. Further since it was being launched for the first time, it was extremely critical to set the tone of the event. And for that it was important to elicit participation from even the upper segment of the society. The database constituted of 100 top CEO’s who were also Hutch customers, held in high esteem by the society and seen as leaders in their fields.
The Idea: Shoes are sold in pairs. Period.
A single shoe is an incomplete story. Which almost calls out for unraveling. When we sent the single shoe to CEO’s, we expected them to turn around and ask for the other pair. And sure enough, they did. The programmed was designed to keep room for a follow up communication. We were aware that we were giving too little time for CEO’s to reschedule their busy lives and take out some time for the event, leave alone to practice. And therefore we sent them a reminder email and offered a RSVP number for them.
Out of 102 DM’s sent the exercise saw 34 CEO’s responding to the invite and 34 pairs of shoes were sent out. This gave us an exceptionally good response rate of 33.33% as compared to the expected 10%. There was a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth publicity that Hutch received amongst the high profile customers and decision makers.
In the larger context, Hutch was also able to establish a connect with its top end users and this exercise served as a platform for Hutch to build a relationship program with these CEO’s subsequently.
This entry won the GOLD at EMVIES AWARD 2006
A very good one. Like the twist in DM and the personal touch factor in following up. Wonder how may companies would work to target 102 people to run a half marathon crowded by thousands!!! I also find a great value PR opportunity for people wanna join such such crowd.
if someone wants to run the marathon and wear a large logo, can you stop that person? this event DOES get a lot of PR. how does that work? If the CEO wants to wear a competing logo, would you allow that?
@nakul – when you do activities like this you need to let go. so if anyone wants to wear a competing logo then so be it. nothing can or should stop them.
but does that mean if, in such an event, a competing company gets most of the runners to wear their logo, can get away with a lot of free brand mileage. no?
its like, if IPL is sponsored by DLF, then if Unitech pays every single person in the stadium to wear Unitech logos, would DLF have a problem? Since TV, print, web, live etc would get a terrible lot of Unitech coverage.
also as for sending the shoes out, did you figure out about the fitness levels of the CEOs before sending out the shoes? marathon is serious tough business…
u cant stop anyone from wearing any logo or brand. what u speak about could be a nice tacticle idea by competition to flank and ride a big cause without spending too much. as for checking the fitness levels of the CEO’s go, well we did not do that 🙂