It’s December, the last month of the year and also Christmas time. Apparently the last month for brands to convince shoppers to swipe their credit cards more. To do so we have a Cyber Monday which is a marketing term for the Monday after the Black Friday, the Friday that follows after Thanksgiving in the United States. Cyber Monday was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. Now with the humongous growth of ecommerce in India in the recent past, Google has thought of introducing the same phenomenon in India too. And it is doing the same today on 12-12-12. Instead of calling it the Cyber Monday, it is being called “Great Online Shopping Festival.”
To give the “Great Online Shopping Festival” the maximum spark and buzz, the global search giant has tied up with various ecommerce sites such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Groupon, etc. to name a few. So if you are really in a mood to shop today then check out the deals which are providing discounts. The idea is to provide customers with discounts and also increase the sales for ecommerce companies in India.
The social media buzz
The festival has designed a cool strategy for creating buzz for the “Great Online Shopping Festival”. YouTube has been chosen for an interactive advertising for the ongoing shopping festival. The ad asks you to play a game where you will have to pull a lever to know the best deals which are valid for today. The interactive ad gives you a feeling of winning a game in a casino then will ask you to expand and see where can you redeem your jackpot. So in other words, if you have won books in the jackpot then the ad shows you a list of ecommerce sites which are giving you heavy discounts on accessories.
On click of the ad, you are taken to the Gosf.in website where you see all the details of the ongoing sale. But wouldn’t it have been great had the ad taken me to the particular section of the deal in, which I was interested after winning it in the jackpot. The ad could have been made more interactive if it had some little surprises in terms of goodie bags for participants as a surprise. May be Google can think on this for next year.
In addition to this, Google has not missed out it’s favorite child Google+ for creating buzz about this event. #GOSF has been created but it has failed to trend on Google+. One of the reasons could be that #GOSF is more India centric. The Google India page has also come out to support this move and has been pushing regular contents about the #GOSF.
Previously we saw Ford India going for a midnight sale and now we have Google India celebrating #GOSF. It would be interesting to see the value that generated for ecommerce sites and customers too. But as of now the early reports are disheartening where it is being said that the deals are not that great. Nevertheless, you can always go and try your luck. You never know you may get lucky!
