Citi celebrates the freedom of choice with its Social Led Independence Day campaign

Independence Day is the time of the year when people from all over the country come together to celebrate freedom in all its' forms. Freedom can have different meanings for different people. For some freedom may mean to break free from the stereotype career paths of becoming engineers/doctors and pursuing their passion in music. For others it may mean a solo bike trip across the country. Whatever be our freedom of choice, we all agree that it is the choices we make that set us apart from our friends and families.

In this day and age where our favorite international brands are just a click away from us, consumers also love to have choices - be it shopping for their favorite bag, purchasing new durable for their home or choosing a holiday destination, we all love to have choices. Capitalizing on this consumer insight Citi India built a social led campaign on Facebook, Twitter to celebrate the freedom of choice that customers enjoy with Citi.

The campaign kick-started with changing the look and feel of the Citi India Facebook page to be in sync with the campaign theme and promoting posts/offers which celebrated the freedom of choice for Citi India customers. To communicate the core consumer proposition, Citi India launched 2 brand videos on Facebook. These short yet humorous videos encouraged customers to celebrate their freedom of choice. These videos were well received by audiences on Facebook and were viewed by over 5 million people over a 5 day period! Both videos were well liked on social media and were shared over 6700 times by people who wanted to share this fantastic content with their friends and families.

What was truly amazing about this campaign was the way Citi promoted its' offers by integrating them with the campaign theme - 'Celebrate your freedom of choice'. The theme helped to bind the offers in the minds of the customers by associating them with the freedom to choose from offers in Dining, Travel and Shopping. Within Dining itself customers could choose from amongst Citi's offers across restaurants, serving range of cuisines in different cities across the country. The freedom of choice extended into Travel and Shopping spheres as well with great offers on MakeMyTrip and Reliance Digital. The promoted offers on Facebook found resonance with the social audiences as suggested by the posts engagement score of 21%.The offers were communicated with aesthetically pleasing and crisp creatives, which helped to build a connect with people and drive engagement scores in a short span of time.

Next came promoting offers and brand videos on Twitter. Nothing defines success in a Twitter campaign better than a hashtag which starts trending and going viral! #WhatsYourFreedomOfChoice was one of the most trending hashtags on 15th August in India. People from all over the country were made aware of Citi's offers through individual offer posts on Dining, Travel and Shopping.. Citi's brand videos were loved by people on Twitter, as was evident from the retweets.

#WhatsYourFreedomOfChoice was such a descriptive hashtag, that people on Twitter started posting how they would celebrate their freedom of choice to make the country better. The campaign reached over 5.9 Million unique Twitter accounts and delivered over 50 million impressions in a single day!

Although this was a short campaign but the impact it created on Facebook and Twitter was significant. The folks over at the marketing department at Citi India surely know all the right buttons to push to make an impactful social media campaign.