Of the 85% of the Indian urban population who own a mobile phone, 56% own a feature-phone. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the feature-phone market grew by 55%, while smartphones grew only 12%. This striking statistic tells us that the next wave of mobile phone growth in India is coming from consumers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities who are just happy to get hold of cheaper devices.

Our challenge was to capture this growing market and drive smartphone adoption by showing non-internet users what a difference connectivity could make to their daily lives.

As it was first of its kind service it was necessary to demonstrate the product to break the ice and instill a sense of ownership to the consumer.

But how do we demonstrate this service to the masses?

Strong Audio-Visual mediums TV & Digital could not be used. As TV being a mass medium, targeting only our pilot markets would only lead to spillover and wastage of investment. Also considering they are feature phone users we couldn’t target them on digital.

The only other voice medium which we could use was Radio.

Radio offers precise targeting by reaching the clearly targeted audience, also research has shown that radio has very low avoidance in small cities

For demonstration, plain vanilla airing would not bring alive the experience of using Google assistant. Therefore, to showcase the strength of the service in radio we made the google assistant, a ‘Radio Jockey’ itself.

Teaser: Daily RJs have to go through a lot of hassles to ensure that they are an authentic source of information and entertainment for their listeners. Therefore, RJs talk about taking a break and getting a Personal Assistant - someone who will help RJ during the shows! Teaser promos along with live Radio Jockey mentions were aired for a period of 48 hours.

Reveal: Vodafone phoneline with Google Assistant was introduced as the RJ’s Personal Assistant. RJs would call the number and talk to an assistant for information like news updates, top music list – basically everything. We highlighted the usability of Vodafone phoneline Google Assistant.

Kick-off: a 24hrs roadblock with the Google assistant integrated into every segment. Followed by a full-fledged RJ mention plan accompanied by a brand spot campaign for a period of 8 days.

Sustenance: For frequent reminders, we aired elements like Time-checks, Traffic and Weather updates.

160k unique customers called the service, 67% of the customers were feature phone users. 13% penetration on target base in first 3 months

550k calls received over a period of 3 months, with an average call duration of 3 mins

High customer satisfaction feedback – 82% of customer said they would recommend service to others, 73% have already recommended

8.3% of feature-phone users upgraded to smartphones in just 2 months, which is 27% higher than the natural upgrade cycle in UPE (same period)