Rohan Mascarenhas O&M Account SupervisorAnand Tilak O&M General Manager: Marketing All other dot.coms talked to existing users of the Internet and had product specific propositions. The market truth was, that the reason for majority of people getting on to the net, was e-mail.Yahoo! India therefore took on the category-promoting task of getting non-internet users on to Yahoo! Mail by highlighting the generic benefits of e-mail over conventional snail mail "Why not try e-mail instead … it's fast, free & reliable". We wanted to specifically reach out to non-users of internet and through unconventional mediums.And what better way than approaching them through the very carriers of snail mail – MAIL VANS.We approached the mail vans and struck a deal with them renting out advertising space on their vans. We very innocuously put up different messages on the mail vans each clearly stating the advantages of snail mail over e-mail.

Needless to say it got covered in the media thus gaining free publicity for Yahoo! India. The subscriptions to Yahoo! Mail increased by 15% as against an average of 5% in previous months.

The use of e-mail for communication is still in a nascent stage and there’s huge potential to increase the subscriber base. Yahoo! India decided to convey the advantages of e-mail over snail mail. Yahoo! India was a new entrant into the dot.com industry whereas competition had been around for at least 3 years. And with a limited media budget of 40% of the competition, Yahoo! had to outsmart rather than out shout them.The whole media strategy revolved around not being omnipresent but being strategically present in media best suited to the proposition. And the media team learnt that mail vans in the city had just opened up as an advertising medium. What can be more special in advertising than getting your rival to advertise for you?Mail vans in the city had just opened up as an advertising medium and it offered an ideal opportunity to spread the generic benefits of e-mail over snail mail … which was the main proposition of Yahoo! MailThe sheer irony of a mail delivery van which earlier stood for Speed Post now carrying a message urging people to try e-mail instead and tongue-in-check highlighting it's benefits, caused a stir. Competition actually promoted our message!

The use of e-mail for communication is still in a nascent stage and there’s huge potential to increase the subscriber base. Yahoo! India decided to convey the advantages of e-mail over snail mail. Yahoo! India was a new entrant into the dot.com industry whereas competition had been around for at least 3 years. And with a limited media budget of 40% of the competition, Yahoo! had to outsmart rather than out shout them.The whole media strategy revolved around not being omnipresent but being strategically present in media best suited to the proposition. And the media team learnt that mail vans in the city had just opened up as an advertising medium.