Making the best of the Covid -19 lockdown. Enhancing our online presence.
It was a few days when the buzz of ‘stay at home’, avoid travel and social distancing began making its rounds on all communication channels in India. We began contemplating and planning on how to spend our time at home and how to get our staff to work from home. Not a healthy thought when we are in the field of live events and entertainment.
The next day our PM Narendra Modi announced a Janata curfew on the 22nd March 2020
Immediately we felt a burning need to connect with people around us. We noticed the growing boredom level and restlessness especially as we all were leading a fast-paced life with constant activities that staying home and nothing to do was a huge task by itself. While we connected with other business associates and youth through Zoom and WhatsApp, we realized that there was nothing for the kids to do.
Yes, the kids could spend hours watching movies, cartoons and doing all stuff of DIY activities but after a point that too gets boring. It became an overdose of learning from home for the kids. Something they were not used to.
That was when Flubber decided to go LIVE on the Janata Curfew day. It took a while to figure out what to do. We narrowed down to having a simple chat with kids telling them it is “OK” to be BORED. Kids who came online enjoyed the light chat and talking to Flubber. It was a chill out time for them to just do nothing but only LAUGH. The kids got so much hooked instantly that when the lockdown was announced for 21 days, they wanted Flubber to come online every day. We sensed this need and took it up as an opportunity to reach out to as many kids as possible.
5pm soon became a chill out time for them and their families to just do nothing but only LAUGH. We joked, asked riddles, talked about our favorite things and danced.
We soon had over 1000 views on Facebook for every Live show with some regulars coming in every day. This pushed us to do better and better every day and come out with new content for them. While our creative team worked on the content for Flubber, our client servicing team worked on connecting with our past clients and reaching out to new clients focused on kids’ space and wanting content. Our technical and design team made sure that the posts were designed, reminders put, and live shows monitored.
Soon this became a structured online event activity. A series where we worked on it professionally and focused on Brand Building. We had reporters calling us and Flubber got featured in the Mumbai Mirror. We had some of our past and new Mall clients requesting Flubber to come on their page to promote Happiness and Laughter to their patrons. We ended Season 1 with a continuous 24 days of Facebook LIVE, additionally for 5 malls across India (Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai). This has given us a tremendous online reach. As a token of our appreciation we will be sending out a personalised picture of Flubber the Clown to all kids that came online.
The learnings from this is that we could turn a challenge into an opportunity. We experimented with a new communication tool and achieved success. We were able to give our staff something constructive to work on. We could measure our success and our online reach in real time. We developed a larger fan base across India. With this Brand building boost, we are now working on Season 2 with bigger collaborations.
Roshni Dsouza
Co-Producer International Clown Festival