Aircel India Launches “Gone In 55 Seconds” To Reach 5,555,555 Fan Count

Every brand wants more Facebook fans, which has been the case ever since Facebook opened up for businesses. While some brands are striving to earn it, there are multitudes more that don’t mind paying for it. In the race for ‘likes’, we are also witnessing clever initiatives being run on Facebook, like the ongoing ‘Gone in 55 seconds’ by Aircel.

Aircel, one of the leading telecom service providers in India, has launched a fun contest game on Facebook that will end either on the 26^th of July or when the page reaches the magical fan count of 5,555,555. Yes, that is the goal of the 16-day campaign which will award fans with an HTC One X every 2 days!

Gone in 55 seconds

The Aircel Facebook page is at 4.9 million fans at the moment, which is just 654,302 more fans needed to close at the required number 5,555,555. The game is hosted on a Facebook app ‘Gone in 55 seconds’ that, obviously, can be entered only after a mandatory ‘like’.

The game requires a participant to grab the maximum number of phones that are flying all over the place, within 55 seconds. They can then invite 5 friends to play the game. Participants can play multiple times to improve their score, but invited friends have to be new ones; the invited friends who have played earlier will not be considered.

‘Get clicking’ gets you going with the game. Click the flying phones to grab them real quick. You can see your scores when the time is up and the app creates a Facebook status to help you share it on your wall. Decline it if you wish.

The app then displays: Invite friends – through which you can invite your friends, ‘I can do better’ through which you can play again, ‘View Leaderboard’ through which you can see day-wise ranking of the top 10 scorers and the number of their friends who have played, and ‘View winners’ where current winners have been displayed.

Another smart ploy to grow your fan base?

Well! I think it is a real clever move by Aircel India, but I don’t understand what’s with the playing around with ’5′, it could have very well been 6 or 7 too. Nevertheless, the campaign being run as celebrations ensures that friends of fans and their friends too join Aircel on Facebook, with relevant incentives like smartphones thrown in too. Quite a clever move by a telecom brand that is directly asking for more fans.

Some time back, Fastrack had thrown a challenge on Facebook with a similar goal. The fashion wear brand targeting youth promised to change its name if it reached 10 million fans in 40 days on Facebook. Rooted in the childhood game where we challenged our friends to do something and promised to change our name if they did it successfully, Fastrack’s ‘Change the name’ caught on with the youth and worked its magic. It failed to reach the 10 million mark, but did manage to create a significant spike in its fan count.

What do you think about ‘Gone in 55 seconds’? Does it help build a relevant Facebook community for Aircel India?