TATA DOCOMO has positioned itself as a value for money GSM mobile service with a pay per second module that bills the user for the precise time spent talking. This, in today’s abbreviated generation comes as a welcome feature where most cell phone talk is more of an en-route update as compared to actual conversations which are usually relayed by mail/chat sessions/landline phones.

Taking to the digital medium in a bid to create brand awareness, TATA DOCOMO devised an interesting contest that extended its talk time ideologies to the next most frequented means of communication; social networks. The Dietalk contest was a 14 day activity that encouraged participants to engage in ‘diet talk’ (updating your status with a maximum of 15 characters including spaces) on various social networks like Twitter, Orkut, Facebook, Yahoo! Messenger and Gtalk. The contest commenced on October 19th 2009 and participants stood a chance to win either an Acer E101 Winmo handset or an iPod Touch 8GB, with new winners everyday! A jury was set-up to pick 1000 random participants that engaged in ‘dietalk’ on a daily basis, of which two winners walked away with either the Acer E101 or the iPod Touch.

By engaging participants in seemingly routine tasks and adding a daily incentive to the same, the brand was able to rake up an astonishing number of participants making it a successful online campaign. Such was the outcome of the campaign that the ‘dietalk contest’ is running for the ‘Best Brand Use of Facebook’ category at the Mashable Open Web awards.