How SharonPly’s #YaanaiChess Campaign Garnered 300K+ Reach

The team at CANIT Solutions proposed, planned and executed an innovative #YaanaiChess campaign for SharonPly.

The case study on the #YaanaiChess campaign of SharonPly reiterates the importance of grabbing the right opportune moment. The study also explores how the campaign harps on celebrating the history of the game of kings and its relevance even after centuries.

Impact of the #YaanaiChess Campaign

1000+
New Followers

300K+
Reach

23K+
Engagement

The Brand – SharonPly

SharonPly is the leading plywood brand in Chennai, well-known for its consistent innovation in plywood manufacturing technology. Since its inception in 1987, the brand has been at the forefront of many pioneering ventures.

Since 1988, SharonPly’s logo has been the elephant that denotes mighty strength. The logo captures the essence and value of the brand, which is strength and endurance. The brand already has the #iamstrongest umbrella campaign under their CSR activity, which focuses on celebrating the strength of humanity. Over the years, the brand’s logo has carved a unique niche among its customers and has become synonymous with its values.

The Timing – Chess Olympiad 2022

The 44th Chess Olympiad, 2022, took place from 29th July to 10th August in Chennai. It is the first time an international chess tournament was hosted in India, the birthplace of chess.

As we know it today, chess was born out of the Indian game chaturanga and can be traced back around 1500 years. The game spread throughout Asia and Europe over the centuries and eventually evolved into what we know as chess around the 16th century.

Chennai, with its intrinsic chess culture and players, is referred to as the chess capital of India and is the home city of five-time World Champion GM Viswanathan Anand. The Olympiad is the biggest sporting event in our nation, with massive participation from 187 countries, and the city was adorned in abundance to promote this event. Many brands took advantage of this golden opportunity to boost their value and reach

Our Campaign with Yaanai

With Elephant being the prominent element in SharonPly’s logo, a campaign was formulated by highlighting the Rook / Yaanai in Chess. To begin with, we created a logo for the #YaanaiChess campaign. The logo for the campaign embodied both the brand and the game of chess.

The rook (Yaanai) in chess is the second most powerful piece after Queen. Originally, the rook symbolised a chariot. The word rook comes from the Persian word rukh, meaning chariot. A rook can move any number of squares horizontally or vertically and participate in castling. Their strength is at its peak towards the end of a game when they can move unhindered and control a large area.

SharonPly seized the opportunity and organised the #YaanaiChess campaign from July 28th to August 10th. The campaign falls under their #iamstrongest initiative. The #YaanaiChess became the perfect way to appreciate the game of chess and get more people to participate in it actively.

The campaign’s goal was to promote chess as the #iamstrongest game. Chess has a long history and is heavily rooted in our culture. SharonPly wanted their brand and the oldest game to reach the younger generation and the previous generation. They wanted people to engage in the game of chess through social media and enrich their knowledge.

Our Execution of Integrated Campaign

1. Fun Facts

The game of chess has numerous entertaining and surprising facts that would blow your mind. In this campaign, we focused on bringing fun facts about the Yaanai (rook) piece of chess.

2. Leadership Lessons

A leader requires many skills, including listening, planning, organizing, and empathy. One can imbibe these leadership qualities from the various pieces in the game of Chess – Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, and Pawn.

3. End Game

In this, we gave different chess scenarios for users to put their chess knowledge to the test. Although these situations are common, predicting what will happen next is challenging. The users were asked to drop their answers in the comment section of the social media post.

4.Yaanai Chess Quiz

This particular segment was a fun short quiz to test the chess knowledge of users. It had ten questions users could answer and learn more about the game of kings.

5. Contest

In the last contest, the users were asked to share their thoughts on social media for the question, “Why is Chess an #iamstrongest game for you?.” They were asked to share their thoughts in the form of a story and tag three of their chessmates. Furthermore, they were asked to mention @SharonPly in their stories. This has given maximum visibility to the brand SharonPly.

Complimenting Branding Activities

SharonPly also had various offline activities to promote the #YaanaiChess campaign. The activities included the following:

Print advertisements

The campaign was advertised in leading newspaper publications in the city, namely, The Hindu and The Times of India. It was the ideal way to capture the attention of users who aren’t social media savvy.

LED Ads

The campaign advertising doesn’t stop with newspapers alone. The campaign was advertised on LEDs placed in prime locations in the city: Anna Nagar Tower Park and Marina beach.

Children’s Day Out

SharonPly supported the State level chess tournament organized for Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Tribal Welfare Department students on July 30th, 2022, in Madras Christian College. In this competition, 100 plus students participated. Following the competition, they took the students to Mahabalipuram to experience the 44th Chess Olympiad.

Qualitative Impact

It was heartening to see people of all age groups actively engaging in this campaign through all social media platforms of SharonPly. The idea to launch an innovative campaign during the chess olympiad worked wonders since it grabbed the attention of many people, urged them to play the game of chess, and discover fascinating trivia about the game.

With an array of engaging contests to pique users’ interest, the users were also challenged to prove their #iamstrongest minds with #YaanaiChess.