Case Study: Decoding Dineout ‘s customized video campaign for GIRF that gained 900mn Impressions | #casestudy

To promote the 6th edition of the Great Indian Restaurant Festival – Dineout rolled out a series of personalized video ads featuring Kusha Kapila as a part of a larger campaign marking the return of GIRF post the lockdown.

The Dineout personalized video campaign was released on Facebook & Instagram and tweaked to address certain common Indian names for piquing the interest of prospective users during the Great Indian Restaurant Festival (GIRF). The case study delves deeper into the campaign execution, conceptualization, and results.

Brand Introduction

Dineout is one of India’s largest dining out and restaurant tech solutions platforms that aims at revolutionizing the way India dines out! Made for foodies across its core 20 markets, Dineout provides users a 360 experience at restaurants, from exploring top restaurants, finding the best deals & offers, reserving tables & paying bills using Dineout Pay on the app to earn cashback for their next bills. They also offer unique experiences at premium restaurants with Dineout Passport membership and specially curated events via SteppinOut.

Summary

After a year full of missed birthdays, anniversaries, and occasions to dine out in 2020, it was time to bring back India’s largest restaurant food and drinks festival in its 6th edition – Dineout’s Great Indian Restaurant Festival (GIRF) in March 2021. This annual festival provides users an opportunity to explore new restaurants and even upscale their restaurant choices to premium categories with the help of competitive Flat 50% off deals on the total bill, food bill, drinks bill, and combos. Spread across 20 cities and 10000+ restaurants, this festival encourages users via a 360 Digital and ATL campaign that if they are looking for real deals on their meals, “Dineout Par Dekho”!

Dineout GIRF Campaign

Problem Statement/Objective

Indians love value for money and are always on the lookout for the best deals when it comes to spending. But in today’s advertising age, when brands say 50% off, they don’t mean it. They are always some hidden terms & conditions and the offer is always too good to be true, therefore making the users skip through their promotions. Moreover, with a foodie first culture and the plethora of restaurants available in every city, how do you decide where to go? Dineout killed 2 birds with one stone this GIRF, with “Dineout Par Dekho”!

Brief

• To promote GIRF is back with a differentiated communication strategy that helps bring back the restaurant industry on its feet after the severe impact from COVID-19 lockdowns
• An offer that’s too good to be true, help users truly believe that when it comes to the best offers and highest savings at restaurants, Dineout is your go-to app
• Convince and advocate GIRF offer via increased brand recall and share of voice via a colloquial call to action

Creative Idea

Where do you search for restaurants when you’re hungry or planning to go out? So many apps, restaurant options with so many deals but alas hidden terms & conditions. They say 50% off but offer only INR 50 or INR 100 discounts. Been there done that right? So users often get discouraged and go back to square one – looking for more legit options!

Dineout recognized this problem that diners faced and came up with a simple straightforward communication strategy – For real deals on your meals, Dineout Par Dekho! Not just Rs. 100 but actually half the bill.

Now how do you help spread the word? Let’s not just make one brand film, but 300! Using Influencers to tell the story in the form of an ad, original content, their style! Furthermore, using regional communication to convince and convert a diverse nation using a sprinkle of innovations.

Challenges

• Convincing users to believe the savings on restaurant bills they can make using GIRF.
• Building a brand recall while promoting a sale campaign
• Optimising spends and selection of marketing channels to ensure successful implementation of a 360 campaign in 1/4th the budgets due to COVID impact
• Building thumb-stopping communication for a sale campaign to increase CTRs

Execution

1. Attract: In the pre buzz phase of the Dineout GIRF campaign, ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) audio and visuals were used to tell people their most awaited festival GIRF is back & captivate their attention because when it comes to food, it’s all about making a users mouth water and craves what you see. They used ATL channels like Print ads, OOH, and radio using social trends to communicate their offer.

2. Convince: On the first day of the festival, Kusha Kapila makes a grand entrance through a series of quirky videos that shows how she searched everywhere for terms and conditions, but the 50% off on Dineout’s GIRF was actually the real deal.

This was further supported by over 300 influencers & publishers with a mix of popular content creators like Rahul Subramanian, RJ Abhinav along with some micro and regional food influencers telling people “Dineout PAr Dekho” in their own unique style.

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3.Convert: Dineout launched a social-first contest “Bill Waapsi” that further helped convince and convert users through an increased share of voice. Users were asked to upload their 50% off GIRF bills in return for winning their full bill amount back. This resulted in user-generated content helping build organic share of voice and building confidence in users of the reality of the offer.

4. Innovate: To make them truly thumb-stopping and using a data-led approach, Dineout rolled out a series of personalised video ads for users with the most common & popular first names on Instagram & Facebook. Kusha Kapila stars in these ads with a “Hey <first name>” that instantly grabs the receiver’s attention leaving netizens in splits of how they received a customised ad with their name. Dineout did not use any automation or AI to implement this but simply married logic with a simple insight and created a never seen before ad format!

Results

1. Dineout received over 5.5M diners seated during the festival, who bought over 1.5Mn deals and booked as many as 784 tables every hour – saving a whopping INR 110 Cr on their dining bills, no conditions applied!
2. Dineout gained over 900M impressions, 500K installs 350M engagement across digital and ATL for GIRF 2021. This was achieved using 1/4th media spends as compared to the previous year’s GIRF with the help of effective communication and channel optimization strategies.
3. Over 300 influencers & publishers helped build brand recall and increase awareness of the campaign via unique content ads
4. Personalized name ads innovation helped the brand increase CTRs on ads by 62% with a 100% video completion rate by 35% of the audience reached. The ads also received an increase of 53% of the engagement rate as compared to other ads done by the brand.

CMO Quote

Nikhil Bakshi – Marketing Head, Dineout commented, “As the industry gets back to normalcy after a year of shutdown and loss of income, as one of the biggest supporters of the country’s restaurant industry, our biggest goal with this year’s GIRF was to bring back users to dine out again and help elevate the restaurant industry back on its feet stronger. Our ‘Dineout Par Dekho’ campaign has helped serve that objective perfectly, bringing more than 5 million diners to our partner restaurants who spent close to 1.5X of the average bill amount from last year. All in all, the festival has proven to be a win-win for both diners and restauranteurs around the country.”

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