Unilever is offering free Bollywood music to 350 million villagers in India, to promotion its Lifebuoy soap and Fair & Lovely skin cream products.
Hindustan Unilever started the service in October last year in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, and has since extended it to neighbouring Jharkhand. The service now has over 8 million listeners.
How it works
Unlike other music streaming services which stream over expensive Wi-Fi and 3G plans, the Unilever music service lets a user place a call to a toll-free number, which disconnects after two rings.
The system then calls the user and plays a 15-minute pre-recorded chunk of music interspersed with ads for the company’s soaps, skin creams, shampoos and detergents.
Last month about 2 million people listened to Unilever’s free music service available on mobile phones in two states.
“Mobile advertising has the reach, the power to measure, and the power of constant engagement,” Girish Nair, the chief executive of Netcore, the agency that is executing Unilever’s mobile service, said. “You now have the opportunity to get data on each subscriber” that could help optimise ad campaigns and improve distribution, he said.
There were 364 million rural cellphone users in India as of January 31, and the pace of additions in villages was faster than cities for the fourth consecutive month, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.