Case Study: Here's how SBI was able to grow positive sentiment for itself on Twitter by 92% with its campaign #KindnessIsCool

• The State Bank of India wanted to answer the question, Why isn't there enough kindness on the internet, to address the negativity and trolling we often see on social media platforms.
• Its campaign, #KindnessIsCool where it asked people to spread more kindness and love on the internet helped it gain a total of 15 million impressions across timelines, attracting 232K engagements.
• It also led to the brand witnessing a 92% increase in positive sentiment around itself during the campaign period.

The last few weeks, we have been witnessing how people on the internet have come together, to help and support each other as the country goes through a huge crisis. The past month, we have seen and read enough and more examples of complete strangers helping each other out, arranging for oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, arranging for plasma, delivering medicines to the ones in need.

However, we also came across several examples where people who were out to help were harassed. Many women volunteers received explicit messages and pictures. Which brings us to two completely opposite sides of the internet. While there is enough compassion, kindness and love on the internet, there are also people who use social media platforms for the exact opposite purposes, to be mean and unkind to each other.

Over the years, we have seen people get trolled for anything and everything on the internet. And this was the insight that led to a recent campaign by the State Bank of India called #KindnessIsCool.

The brand ran this campaign on Twitter between March 1 and March 15, 2021 and saw a huge positive response. Here is all that happened as a part of the campaign:

The State Bank of India is one of the most active and vocal social media brands in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) category. It is also the most followed brand in the category on Twitter - not just in India, but globally. However, it recently wanted to find the answer to the question: Why isn’t there enough kindness on the Internet? SBI looked at this concern through the lens of purpose and worked alongside Twitter audiences to bring about positive changes at both individual and community levels.

SBI made an appeal to people to stay kind in the virtual world. The bank leveraged Twitter to amplify this simple yet powerful message of being good-hearted both offline and online with its campaign #KindnessIsCool.

Objectives:

● The aim of the campaign was to encourage positive conversations on the Internet by urging people to be compassionate and thoughtful while conversing online.
● The aim was also to acquire maximum views for the main campaign video and drive the campaign’s message across timelines.
● SBI also wanted to connect with audiences and increase positive sentiment for SBI on the service.

The Strategy:

● Creating a powerful video asset and hashtag: With support from a third-party vendor, Twitter and SBI created a powerful video showcasing how people are kind to each other - their families, friends, pets, strangers too - in the real world, but turn into a whole different self when they go online. The video was supported by a stimulating hashtag, #KindnessIsCool.


● Making the conversation fun with an emoji: A dedicated emoji associated with the campaign hashtag #KindnessIsCool was also activated by Twitter to add colour and fun to the conversation, thus keeping people engaged.

● Sustaining conversations with regular creative Tweets: The brand ensured message recall by putting up regular Tweets with static creatives that iterated the campaign message, asking people to be nice to each other in all situations.



● 24-hour Twitter takeover: On the final day of the campaign, SBI (@TheOfficialSBI) took over Twitter’s premium real estate of the Explore tab with the Promoted Trend Spotlight as well as a First View that bumped up the video asset across timelines.

The Impact:

● The campaign video garnered 9.8 million overall views across the Promoted Trend Spotlight and Promoted Tweets.
● The campaign made a total of 15 million impressions across timelines, attracting 232K engagements.
● Positive sentiment for the brand grew by 92% during the campaign period as compared to two weeks before the campaign.
● The Twitter Brand Survey conducted to deep dive into the campaign’s performance revealed significant uplifts across brand metrics - brand awareness went up by 18%, favourability was up 12% and ad recall saw 20% positive increase.

Brand speak:

Speaking about the campaign, Rana Ashutosh Kumar Singh, DMD (HR) & Corporate Development Officer, SBI said:
“Being the leading Bank in the country, State Bank of India has always been at the forefront of social change - be it through our on-ground CSR activities, financial inclusion driven initiatives or through social media messaging. With the advent of social media, while many use these platforms to interact and share positive vibes, some choose to misuse the anonymity that these platforms offer. This is what made #KindnessIsCool a timely and much needed campaign - executed with the simple objective of making all of us introspect if our online persona is an accurate reflection of our true selves.

Twitter is an important medium for the Bank to interact and engage with our present and prospective customers. In 2014, when the Bank came aboard Twitter, it was one of the first Indian banks to do so. With more than 4 million followers, SBI now interacts with hundreds of users everyday on the platform. SBI and Twitter have been working closely together to regularly give the users something innovative, exciting and relevant. #KindnessIsCool is the latest example of this.”