Star World India's cook-off for Masterchef Australia

Given the high popularity generated by previous seasons of Masterchef Australia, Star World India decided to reach out and ignite the same passion among Indian fans of the show in social media.  This gave birth to ‘THE SOCIAL BUFFET’ – a Facebook game, created and conceptualized by Grey Digital India of Grey Group, wherein netizens were  required to don the chef’s hat and create their own dishes to make the longest buffet table, albeit with a Masterchef-like twist. 

 

Fans were each assigned a ‘kitchen’ and the only way they could complete a dish was by inviting friends from their Facebook network, who become the ingredients that had to come together to form a dish on the buffet table. The participant with the longest buffet table would win a return trip to Australia.   

 

Saurabh Yagnik, Business Head, English Channels, STAR India, said, “Our research and consumer preference mapping showed that Indian audiences for MasterChef Australia truly love the food, especially watching it being cooked on the show and are extremely involved in the journey of the contestants as well as the judges.  Hence we sought to give them an opportunity to cook the dishes they love with the people they love.”

 

Commenting on the drama of competition and the broadening of culinary horizons through the application, Sudhir Nair, Senior Vice President and Head of Grey Digital India said, “We Indians are social by nature, we are part of big families, we love eating together and we love drama in a TV show. This was the fundamental insight the team worked with and hence social media was the obvious choice. This is where the inherent social nature of Facebook came to life as participants used their social connections to fuel participation.” 

 

The result is the proof in the proverbial Masterchef pudding.  Over a three week period, THE SOCIAL BUFFET has seen over 75,000 gameplays with over 5,000 dishes being formed on Facebook.  Commenting on the success of the campaign, Navin Kansal, Group Creative Director, Grey Digital India explained, “What is mouth-watering about these numbers is that players of the game alone were responsible for approximately 200,000 direct social connections which resulted in an average connection request conversion of 22% - a reflection of the high organic spread the campaign has effectively managed to achieve.”

 

To find out more head to: www.greygroupasiapacific.com