Plugging the last mile gap

Parle Agro's Hippo turned Twitter into an inventory tracking interface to replenish stock and grow sales

Right after its successful foray into the snack food market with Hippo Baked Munchies in late 2009, Parle Agro faced the challenge. The launch campaign did exceedingly well in terms of creating demand from consumers. Such unanticipated surge in demand meant Hippo stocks were drying up fast and its sales and distribution teams struggled to track and re-stock the empty store shelves, especially at the kiranas that still dominate Indian retail. At this stage Parle Agro feared people might wrongly consider the empty shelves as an indication that the brand has failed to deliver after a short-lived launch phase. Unavailability of stock could also mean that the consumers would look for substitutes. It was important for the brand to act swiftly to deal with this crisis.

Name of the brand: Hippo
Agency: Creativeland Asia
Digital case: Plan-T

Beefing up the inventory management team meant appointing more sales officers to visit stores, report back and get new stocks dispatched. All this entailed a three-day wait. Instead the brand turned social media platform Twitter into an inventory tracking interface. Hippo asked its followers to tweet and inform it about locations and even specific stores where Hippo packs were unavailable. A core cell was set up at the manufacturer's headquarters in Mumbai to monitor these tweets, collect the information and pass it on immediately to teams of distributors in different areas. This model proved to be efficient. Within 48 hours of locations being identified, teams of distributors would replenish stocks.

As people began to see that their tweets were actually getting heared, word of mouth and social media conversations amplified the campaign. Soon, tweets were pouring in from over 45 cities. The company rewarded the most active Hippo followers on Twitter with personalised 'anti-hunger' Hippo hampers.

When this initiative was taken up 800 people on Twitter were already following Hippo. Shortly after launching this activity, the number of people tracking the inventory touched 50 per cent of the company's sales and distribution network. All this was achieved at zero cost. Needles to say, sales also went up by leaps and bounds.