#Livewithoutcashtweet2win is a different type of hashtag than we usually profile in this feature.
Rather than a traditional ad campaign, #livewithoutcashtweet2win is the signature hashtag of ICICI Bank’s Live Without Cash contest on Twitter, which it ran throughout the morning today.
ICICI Bank has about $103 billion of assets.
ICICI posted six directives to its 36,700 or so followers on Twitter, who responded to each one with a tweet following the directive. Some were questions and some were actions, such as taking a selfie in a particular pose. Each tweet was tagged with #livewithoutcashtweet2win. Whoever answers all questions and completes all of the actions correctly will be declared the winner, and will receive an iPad Mini.
The Twitter contest is an interesting animal. Running for several hours, it keeps consumer interest on the bank’s Twitter account for that duration. Because it offers a prize, the contest also fosters goodwill among the account operator’s consumers. A contest is also memorable. This was helped along in ICICI’s case by the cute graphics of a man, Cashvenger, and a woman, Expressions Gal, that accompanied questions and hints via pictures.
The biggest problem with a time-sensitive contest like ICICI’s, though, is, well, time. Questions were set to begin coming at 3 PM, India time, but that ends up being far earlier or later internationally. In New York City, for example, where I am sitting writing this article, that was 5:30 AM. Because of this, ICICI’s international community, such as its considerable consumer base in China, is to some extent left out of the goodwill fostered by the contest.
However, this isn’t such a bad thing. ICICI is an Indian bank first, and should be commended for trying to build a rock-solid consumer base in its own country. ICICI will have plenty of opportunities to connect with international consumers, and it is a simple matter to run a similar Twitter contest synced up with other time zones.
Here’s the Q1 task, hurry & start clicking for a chance to WIN an iPad mini! #LiveWithoutCashTweet2Win #ContestAlert pic.twitter.com/r0MMzv6cJI
— ICICI Bank (@ICICIBank) July 21, 2015
ICICI’s most-viewed tweet of the contest, seen above, has 95 favorites and 149 retweets. That’s a lot for a bank Twitter feed. The rest of ICICI’s tweets for the duration of the contest are in that range, too. And based on the sheer amount of tweets going out about ICICI and the Twitter contest — at one point, according to my own observations, consistently at over 100 every five seconds — I can call the #livewithoutcashtweet2win hashtag nothing but a success for ICICI.