Unilever Plans To Replicate Gang Of Girls Model Internationally
The Economic Times reports that Unilever is planning to port the Sunsilk Gang of Girls concept internationally after its success in India. Apparently, the site has 2,50,000 registrations and 25,000 gangs, with around 200 million hits and gets 12-13 million page views every month. Apparently, the concept is also going to be ported to the rural areas (no clue on whether online or offline) as Sunsilk Sahelian.
The Gang of Girls initiative concept has been promoted using out-of-home, is also being pushed online and via TV and print, and it seems a lot of marketing muscle has been put behind it. Since it’s an example of a “successful branded space”, it invariably gets mentioned in the media. It seems to me that the site primarily targets the younger lot, who have very few spaces to call their own online, since most social networking spaces are inhabited by young adults. Just a thought – how is HLL monitoring content and interaction on the site, since even MySpace has had issues related to paedophilia.
Nikhil:
I am a bit skeptical about the 12-13 million figures mentioned by ET or Lever. I have a comaprison of social networking sites from Alexa on my blog and according to that MingleBox has been leading in the past several weeks. Is their a way to confirm Sunsilk's figures ? Could Alexa be wrong ?
Their claim of 12-13 million PV/mo seems wildly inflated given their Alexa numbers at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.sunsilkgangofgirls.com
I think they have smoked some nice stuff from Idukki (hill areas in Kerala, the best in the world I suppose).
I don't give them more than a million page views a month to this HLL site. It's just a PR hype. People have read about sunsilk gang of girls more in newspapers than actually by visiting the site. Pure PR bullsh*t.
Who are you fooling?
VK
On the other hand, they might have smoked stuff from Theni, TN:-). As good as Idukki, if not better.
Like you, I tend to be sceptical of any Indian social networking site's numbers. More of PR hype than anything else. A few months back I saw hoardings claiming 32,000+ registrations. Now it's 2.5 lakh plus! Wah, some growth.
The Sunsilk gang of girls registrations would be higher than any other
community site and I would not be surprised given the level of advertising they have done ATL. However, their biggest problem is high level of customer churn.
Secondly, re: Alexa, its an extremely inaccurate benchmark of traffic outside the US as it depends on the Alexa toolbar downloaded by users.
One might argue that on a relative basis ALexa is equally inaccurate for most Indian sites and therefore is a good relative benchmark. However, when it comes to small amounts of traffic as seen by Indian community sites, even a small amount of contribution from the expatriate Indian community can lead to sizeable inaccuracies in the Alexa measurement.
My 2 cents…
Sunsilk numbers are not inflated. I work with an agency that has related access and can confirm that their numbers… remember HLL has no reason to inflate the numbers. They are ruthless and will not spend this kind of money if the site was not working. It is delivering beyond expectations, i have seen couple of reports. Unfortunately I cannot share more data here online.
are koi hai jugaaaaaaaar
sunsilk is a failure in terms of a web property, even a site like indiwo.com with 0 marketing has 3 times the traffic, goes to show that viral is always the best form of marketing.