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| Bacardi-Martini India: Digital engagement |
| Amit Ranjan Rai / New Delhi Dec 08, 2009, 00:30 IST |
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Bacardi-Martini India and Hungama Digital Media have launched a music and video download website called Bacardi Mixxology (mixbacardi.com) to promote the Bacardi white rum brand in the country. Similar to iTunes, the internet storefront allows users to download music, videos, ringtones, mobile wallpapers at a reasonable price of Rs 10 a download or Rs 99 for unlimited downloads for a month, both on PCs and mobile handsets.
Hungama, which provides the content and maintains the site for Bacardi, claims that the site currently provides access to over 300,000 songs and the number is expected to increase to about 2 million in another six months as the company will acquire content (close to a million songs) from Warner Music and EMI. Hungama CEO & Managing Director Neeraj Roy says that his company has tie-ups with over 300 original content owners in the country and internationally, and it is putting together the entire catalogues of Warner Music, EMI, Universal as well as tonnes of contemporary Bollywood and regional music from entertainment majors such as Yashraj, T-series, Eros and so on. “This is going to be the largest entertainment storefront of its kind in India,” says Roy.
The idea behind the site is, of course, to promote brand Bacardi by providing an engaging platform to consumers between 21 and 29 years. Bacardi-Martini India President & CEO Mahesh Madhavan says, “What we are seeing in the US and Europe is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to engage with consumers using traditional media such as television and cinema. That’s starting to happen in India too. Consumers want brands to speak to them in a language that connects to them. If Bacardi is not able to speak the language of its target consumer, it will not be able to pull them into the brand. Internet and mobile, and the type of content we are offering them (music and videos) is how we think Bacardi can best connect to its consumers.”
Adds Roy of Hungama, “Instead of doing it as a regular brand site which tells all about the brand, we decided to recognise the core passions of our consumers, build an experience around that and thus engage them with the brand.”
Over time, Bacardi hopes to build a community around the brand on the website which is also linked with all the big social networking sites such as Facebook, which will help the company connect with them for the various events and parties it hosts. The company is rolling out a number of schemes and offerings to promote the brand and the site, such as contests to participate in events both in India and abroad, coupons on purchase of the brand to download music free of cost, invites to parties and so on.
“Over time, we hope to see a couple of million consumers on the site as a base. Of that if we can get 70,000 or even 50,000 consumers to the Bacardi fold, we would have done our job,” says Madhavan. Within four days of its launch, the site got over 3,000 hits a day, 700 transactions and 340 members. Bacardi, which has been spending 2 to 3 per cent of its budget on brand building on the Internet, will increase it to about 15 per cent in a year or two, and hopes to raise it to 100 per cent in 15 to 20 years.
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