How Kellogg’s and STAR One enhanced the interactivity of banner ads

Recent banner ad campaigns by the two companies received a high rate of consumer interaction of 13 per cent and 17 per cent respectively

In August, Kellogg’s spent Rs 12 lakh on a two-week long banner advertising campaign to promote its Corn Flakes brand. And in September, STAR One spent Rs 14 lakh on a week-long campaign, where banner ads were served across major portals, such as Yahoo.co.in, Rediff.com and IndiaTimes.com, to create a pre-launch buzz for its youth centric soap, Miley Jab Hum Tum.

Both these campaigns worked well, as a large number of users, who saw these ads, interacted with them and spent some time on them. The user-interaction rate, which signifies the number of times a banner ad is displayed on a webpage by the number of times users actually clicked on that ad, stands at 17 per cent for Miley Jab Hum Tum and 13 per cent for the Kellogg’s banner ads. The average time spent by a user on a Miley Jab Hum Tum banner ad is around 60 seconds, while it is 77 seconds for a Kellogg’s ad.

Interestingly, the banner ads served in both the campaigns did not redirect users to any other microsite – as is the case with many banner ads – and still managed to receive a higher rate of interactivity.

What was the reason behind the high consumer interaction rates in these campaigns?

Mindshare Interaction, the digital arm of Group M, which developed both campaigns, embedded a game inside the ad. Users could play the game within the banner itself, without being redirected to a microsite and moving away from the webpage they were surfing.

Games of 15 seconds each were created for the four protagonists of Miley Jab Hum Tum – Mayank, a book-worm; Gunjan, a shy girl; Nupur, who is on the lookout for her Prince Charming and Samrat, the Casanova of the college.

Each game required the user to manage an activity performed by an animated character, which resembled one of the protagonists of the show. For instance, in a game developed for Mayank, a user had to catch the books falling from the library racks. Similarly, a game dedicated to Nupur required users to choose an option, which pointed out what she was dreaming about.

For Kellogg’s, the agency developed a mathematics oriented game. The user had to solve various questions based on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within 15 seconds.

Speaking to afaqs!, Haani Mirza, creative director, Group M says, “The purpose of using games for Miley Jab Hum Tum was to introduce and establish the characteristics of the four protagonists before the launch of the show. In case of Kellogg’s, the idea was to strengthen the proposition ‘Dimaag Chalega Nahin Daudega’ for its Corn Flakes brand.”

The agency claims that the Miley Jab Hum Tum banner ad campaign received 2.07 million game plays, while Kellogg’s Corn Flakes campaign received 1.3 million game plays. The replay rate, which indicates that a user has played the game more than once, stands around 50-60 per cent for both the campaigns.

Kellogg’s carried out this online marketing activity for the first time in India. Anupam Dutta, managing director, Kellogg’s India tells afaqs!, “While we cannot directly link the benefits of this campaign with the business yet, but the campaign has indeed performed well, in terms of reaching our target audience in an effective and efficient manner.”