Tag Archives: casestudy

Social Media Case Study – Charity: Water

Charity: water is a charity started by Scott Harrison that provides clean water to save lives in poor countries. Charity: water has successfully raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors, thereby providing clean water to nearly one million people in Africa and Asia.

charitywater_1

Here’s how Charity: water is using Social Media to be more effective

  1. Creating Relationships: Charity: water (CW) is using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to connect with people who share the same concerns as them. CW also adds value by sharing relevant information and content with their friends/followers in these social platforms. Relationships are the key currency for nonprofits and social media is a great way to build and maintain good relationships.
  2. charitywater on facebook (Charity: water on Facebook)

    With social media it’s also relatively easy to ask people for small contributions or motivate them to volunteer for a task or just spread the word by say putting a badge on their blog.

    charitywater on twitter (Charity: water on Twitter)

    2.  Maintaining Transparency: For nonprofits to scale beyond a level, transparency is very important and to some extent the rate of their growth also depends on how transparent they are. In this sense too, social media and nonprofits are made for each other. Charity: water shows donors the specific impact of their  contributions. They post photos and G.P.S. coordinates so that donors can look up their (Charity: water grants naming rights to wells) wells on Google Earth. Come September and they will have a new web site that will match even the smallest donation to a particular project that can be tracked online.

    charitywater transparency
    3.  Experimenting with new things:

    During Twestival (meetup for twitter users in twitter lingo), charity: water raised $250,000 this spring.

    charitywater_6
    Viral video campaigns by charity: water are also a hit among its supporters and play a significant role in motivating people to contribute.

4. High Stakeholder Involvement:

    When was the last time you were asked to by a charity to engage in conversation?
    Hmm…Never?

    But that’s not the case with Charity: water, during Twestival CW invied donors to get involved by

  • Watching four daily short videos of the drilling as charity: water goes from village to village drilling wells.
  • Following the drilling updates via twitter.
  • Asking questions of the local drilling team via email or twitter. Also, The local charity: water drill team answers the top five questions on video

I’d like to end this case study by quoting  “communityorganizer20.com”

Charity: water is giving its donors exactly what they want: success stories, videos of the impact of donations, and  information about financial accountability.

If you know of something else  that Charity: water or some other nonprofit is doing to leverage social media, share with us

Dev D, Ghajini, The President is coming and Tata Nano marketing case study

It’s been quite some time since I wrote marketing case studies on

and it just occurred to me to make the pdfs of all these case studies available as a compressed version, hence this post

Click Here to download the rar file containing pdfs of all the four case studies.

Marketing Case Study: Tata Nano

Tata Nano

Tata’s Nano is not a car, it’s a PHENOMENON. Tata Nano is undoubtedly being looked upon as the next big(actually small) thing. With a lot at stake on Nano, it’s success is extremely crucial. Let’s delve into what all has been to market(online+offline) the car of the year.

Online Marketing:

1) Website: TataNano.com
A website dedicated to Tata Nano was up and running since January last year. The website saw huge spurts in traffic when it was the website was released and when the car was launched.

Traffic for tatanano.comThe folks at Tata have a done a good job at building a beautiful website which experience wise is also good.

Nano Website
The major sections of the site are
a) Galary (both pictures and videos)
b) Game(rather Link to a nice virtual driving game by Zapak)
c) Community
d) Why Nano?
e) Booking Details

The website is quite informative and easy to navigate while the chat feature is either programmed or buggy. The site also has a forum which is slightly active and has no signs of involvement by officials from Tata.

2) Social Media:
There are definitely some efforts to use social media to market the car. Not sure if there’s an elaborate strategy behind it all but here’s what’s being done.

a) Blog:
nano_blog
Though it’s certainly a step in right direction but clearly it’s a semi baked and half hearted effort with just two posts on the blog(managing 71 and 20 comments respectively) and no official replies to the conversation.

b) Orkut:
Orkut is one of the most popular social networking platforms in India and thus an obvious choice to pitch. There’s a user profile for Nano which has a few pics and videos and has around 350 friends. Also, there’s a group dedicated to the care which has around 11,000 members. The group was started back in May, 08.

c) Facebook:
Facebook is also a top networking site amongst Indians and there are some attempts to market Nano here too. There’s a fan page for the car with about 6000 fans, a few videos and picture albums. Here again the interaction levels from company reps are quite low(if at all).

d) YouTube:
There’s also a YouTube channel for Tata Nano which has some 78 subscribers and has managed to generated more than 10,000 views on videos of the car.

3) Online Booking:
There was also a lot of buzz surrounding online bookings for the car, I am not sure if this idea was implemented on Tata Nano’s site but it did definitely generate a lot of excitement on the web in general.

4) Nano Game:
Tata Nano Game
As mentioned previously, the game by Zapak was a great move to spread word about the car and it seems to have really worked well in doing it’s job. There are a lot of claims that the game has been played millions of times since its launch. It’s a simple and easily accessible game, which anyone with a browser and internet connection can play.

5) Online Advertisements:
nano_ad_iciciThe blogosphere and indian media sites were inundated with ads for Tata Nano. The ads came in all shapes and sizes and were definitely noticed. Though not directly a part of marketing, it’s an important aspect of Nano’s promotional campaign.

Offline Marketing

1) Collaborations:
As a part of their strategy to avoid premium for booking Nano, Tata partnered with a few banks for releasing application forms. Though the reason behind the move was different, it did help a lot in marketing Nano as the banks used their resources to market their collaboration with Tata to attract more and more applicants. ICICI bank for example initiated a whole campaign to get noticed and spread the word. Icicibank.com had a banner ad on their home page for booking Nano, and also ran links inside the site for the same. Not only this, the banks hired extra part time staff to book the Car. Roping banks like ICICI and SBI helped in also offering loans for total payment of car and infact to surprise of sum Tata announced a bank interest on the applications for Nano which will be rejected in lucky draw.

2) Mall Promotions:
As is the case with most automobile companies, Tata too ran a series of promotional activites on Malls to get Nano in front of perspective buyers.

3) Leveraging Existing Infrastructure:
Tata, a giant brand that it is has also leveraged it’s umbrella groups to market Nano. Now you can find Nano <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

merchandise, application forms and demo cars in Tata Indicom,Titan, Croma and Westside stores. Tata Indicom is also offering a money-back offer with every application form.


4) TV
Though Tata didn’t invest heavily into TV commercials, they did get a few channels to use the word ‘nano’ instead of small wherever possible. For instance, instead of anchors saying ‘we’ll be back after a short break’ on TV channels, they’re saying, ‘We’ll be back after a nano break.’

These are some of the marketing campaigns/tactics that I could find about Tata Nano, if you think I’ve missed something, just drop a comment and I’ll update the post.

You can also download this post as a PDF  for future reference, Download