Case Study
SBI uses the power of Twitter to negate online negativity, says #KindnessIsCool
Key Results
15M
impressions
232K
engagements
9.8M
video views
The Opportunity
When State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI), India’s largest bank and the world’s most followed BFSI brand on Twitter, sensed high decibel negative sentiment across its online platforms, it turned to Twitter to help calm these frayed nerves.
Sometimes all it takes is a reminder to be humane. And what better way to send out this reminder than on Twitter – a safe space enabling healthy, open and diverse public conversations.
The campaign that ensued, best known by its hashtag #KindnessIsCool, originated from the insight that 'people are nice and kind in general, but what happens to them when they go online?' Highlighting this duality in human behaviour, it addressed online aggression with emotive messages, which appealed to the sensibilities and significantly hiked brand mentions.
The Strategy
In early March 2021, SBI connected with its audience and promoted a simple yet powerful message entreating people to be kind while they were online or offline.
01
Capturing the contrast
SBI launched the campaign with a compelling video asset for #KindnessIsCool which depicted different aspects of our day-to-day life. It showed how people are innately nice to friends, family and colleagues offline but could behave completely differently online.
02
Evocative elements
To forge a distinct campaign identity, SBI used a ‘Branded Emoji’ aligned with the campaign hashtag (#KindnessIsCool). This brought in an element of fun and facilitated the messaging effectively.
03
Affirmative response
The campaign culminated with SBI using Trends Takeover+ to reinforce the campaign messaging and boost engagement for a 24 hour long period. An encouraging connection of the campaign with the audience was visible in the positive Tweets shared by many users.
The Success
The initiative struck a chord with the people on Twitter, meeting its primary objective of soothing sentiment. A Twitter Brand Study, initiated to deep-dive into the performance of this campaign, found that it was well-received. There was a significant uplift across brand metrics; it noted that campaign awareness was up by 18%, brand favorability increased by 12% and ad recall rose 20%. Positive sentiment hiked up by 92% during the campaign period as compared to two weeks before the campaign. While creating awareness about the message, the #KindnessIsCool campaign garnered 9.8M overall video views, 15M impressions and 232K engagements.
State Bank of India has always been at the forefront of social change. With the advent of social media, while many use these platforms to share positivity, some choose to misuse their anonymity. SBI tapped into the power of Twitter to deliver the much needed #KindnessIsCool campaign to make us introspect if our online persona is an accurate reflection of our true selves. With over 4 million followers, SBI interacts with hundreds of users everyday and we have been working closely with Twitter to regularly give the users something innovative, exciting and relevant.
Mr. Rana Ashutosh Kumar Singh, (@rana_ashutosh), DMD (HR) & Corporate Development Officer, State Bank of India.
Solutions Used
Creative canvas
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