It’s too late to submit your big business idea to the WagonR Think Big Challenge now, but you should still check it out.
Basically, Maruti Suzuki has tied up with the Times Group to launch a contest to find smart business ideas, a theme that ties in with the WagonR positioning of “For the Smarter Race”.
Compared to most Indian consumer generated content contests, the WagonR Think Big Challenge aims big and does several things right.
- First, the theme of the contest, or the social object, is closely tied to the brand positioning. Smart business ideas from/ for the smarter race.
- Second, the contest is supported by television, print, radio, online and on-ground activities. Here’s a gate for the WagonR Think Big Challenge I spotted outside a Maruti Suzuki dealership next to my office:
- Third, the contest extends over city, zonal and national rounds, with prizes worth over Rs. 5o lakhs across different stages, and gives WagonR an opportunity to sustain interest in it over a long period.
- Fourth, the presence of celebrity endorser Madhavan adds a dose of appeal to the contest.
- Fifth, the contest has an active media room, and has received significant coverage in national and regional press.
Still, the contest fails to generate interest on the social web. The YouTube video has about 6000 views but no comments, the Facebook page has almost 1200 fans but no activity, the Twitter profile has less than 50 followers, and I could find less than a dozen blog posts about the contest. The contest would have benefited from a tighter integration with social platforms like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter during the voting phase and stronger social media outreach, especially to influential business bloggers.
Buoyed by the marketing spend behind the campaign, the contest website has overtaken the Maruti Suzuki website in terms of Alexa traffic rank:
However, I don’t see this interest being sustained unless WagonR comes up with a clear answer to the question: what happens after the contest?
My free advice: WagonR would do well to follow up the talent hunt contest in phase one with an online reality show in phase two, where the winners share their entrepreneurial journey in first person. Then, next year, they can perhaps mentor the next round of applicants as they seek to bring their big ideas to reality. Now, that would be a really smart idea for WagonR.
Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.
