Case Studies

The Client

A fine dining restaurant, Aurus exudes opulence beyond luxury. Located in the heart of the city of dreams – Mumbai, Aurus serves as the perfect getaway from the mayhem of bustling city life. Cocooned in fuss & frills by the beach, Aurus redefines hospitality by offering unparalleled exotic experiences with its impeccable services.

The luxury dining restaurant is a part of Dish Hospitality, a group that is focused to conceptualise, build and manage innovative hospitality and lifestyle concepts and to become an industry benchmark for quality, service and customer satisfaction.

The Brief

Aurus Sunday Sundown - Aurus introduced a fresh and innovative concept in November, 2009. Christened ‘The Aurus Sundown’, the setting and the mood at Aurus every Sunday from November to February, resembles a marriage between an eclectic ambiance, comfort food and fiery music.

Featuring international award winning electronica acts every week during Sunday Sundown, Aurus is the place in town to be!

HGS Interactive was approached to translate and transmit this experience via social media platforms and channelise it to enhance brand image & identity.

The Approach

Aurus caters to an elite audience and the guidelines were to enhance without going over the top. The music festival features different artist every Sunday. Hence, the online communication strategy was crafted to focus on artist, ambiance of event, cuisine, etc.

Sunday Sundown event needed a dynamic presentation that sets it apart, though Aurus was promoting the event through its human profile on Facebook, there was no substantial activity.

HGS Interactive's social media strategy for Aurus was to engage – create innovative concepts to showcase the brand with relevant content (videos & photos) and involve more people by the use of technology to build interaction and channelize cross promotion.

Facebook & Twitter were the primary platforms to publicize Sunday Sundown, in tandem social bookmarking was utilized to drive targeted traffic and control negative reviews.

The Solution

• HGS Interactive publicised the event on the web with Social Media Optimisation (SMO) strategy. SMO is the medium of informing the masses about anything new via the web of social networking sites. The SMO was focused on popular networking sites within India – Facebook and Twitter which were the main targets of communication strategy.
• To start with, a 'Fan page' was created on Facebook with customised tabs to navigate into sections like Sundown Artist (where users could sample music by the artist), The Grill & The Bar (featuring the best of delicacies and cocktails offered at Aurus) and the Sunday Sundown Tab for viral effect and involvement of the fans.
• FBML technology was used for the Sundown Artist section and it was designed as per the artist every week. Every week an artist will have a dedicated space on this page with music player & videos of their songs or concert. This created a unique brand identity for the artist on the Sundown Artist page.
• Focusing on user involvement - Interacted with fans time and again through information, tabs and innovative & interactive posts (asking fans for review of previous event). Updated fans about the then upcoming events by sending invites to fans through Facebook Events every week.
• Generated user interest by content dissemination: Posted exclusive photos/videos of previous events. Released photographs of Events. Updated the FB page on a timely basis (with approved posting)
• Promotion of Facebook fan-page amongst similar groups. Migrated existing user base through invitation from the human profile to fan page. Drove traffic through attractive & relevant Facebook ads.

The Result

The response to Aurus Sunday Sundown was overwhelming, from a revert rate of 5 R.S.V.P.'s to an event it soared to 450-500 attendees. The users were kept engaged with innovative design changes in the skin of Twitter & Facebook profiles and content updates.

FBML tabs – Sundown Artist and Cuisines generated a lot of interest that was evident with the numbers seen in daily analysis. In a short span of time Aurus Sunday Sundown achieved an enviable fan base that was in multiples of their older profile.

Strategic cross linking resulted in 200+ followers for Aurus Sunday Sundown's Twitter page, with effective bookmarking reducing the impact of negative reviews. Effective & constant content updates kept users posted and built a recall value amongst thousands of uses profiles thus enhancing Aurus's brand image & identity.