Swiggy – "Voice of Hunger" Campaign

Overview

Swiggy, one of India's leading food delivery startups, launched the groundbreaking "Voice of Hunger" campaign in 2019. This innovative Instagram challenge leveraged the platform's new voice-note feature, inviting users to create audio waveforms that visually resembled food items. The campaign perfectly aligned with Swiggy's brand identity focused on food cravings while driving massive engagement and app traffic among young urban consumers.

Swiggy's "Voice of Hunger" campaign (2019) – Turning sound waves into food shapes

Challenges

Swiggy faced significant challenges in the competitive food delivery market:

• Breaking through the clutter in a saturated market with multiple competitors
• Engaging tech-savvy urban millennials inundated with content
• Creating genuine user engagement beyond passive impressions
• Reinforcing Swiggy's fun, food-loving brand personality
• Driving traffic from social media to the app effectively
• Achieving viral participation despite short attention spans

Strategy

Swiggy and agency Dentsu Webchutney crafted a brilliant strategy centered on user participation, novelty, and emotion:

• Innovative Feature Utilization: Discovered Instagram's voice note waveforms could resemble food shapes
• Gamified Challenge: Created the #VoiceOfHunger challenge where users "drew" food with their voice
• Emotional Connection: Tapped into the universal human emotion of hunger and food cravings
• Incentivization: Offered a year's worth of free food as the grand prize
• Multi-platform Approach: Extended beyond Instagram to create cross-platform buzz

Execution

The campaign was executed over 10 days with multiple components:

Creative Launch

• Started with mysterious gibberish posts to create intrigue
• Daily food shape challenges announced on Instagram
• Users created sound waves by singing/shouting to match food outlines
• Unlimited attempts encouraged through direct messaging

Influencer Collaboration

• Partnered with popular creators like Srishti Dixit and Barkha Singh
• Influencers posted their attempts, fueling peer participation
• Other brands (Airtel, Netflix India) joined with witty responses

Technical Achievement

The campaign's success overwhelmed Instagram's systems, with Swiggy receiving over 50 voice-note entries per minute, causing temporary rate-limiting by the platform.

Results

Awards & Recognition

• Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2019 (Social & Influencer category)
• One Show Gold Pencil 2020 (Social Media category)
• Celebrated as a benchmark for innovative engagement marketing

Key Takeaways

Sources

This case study is based on official reports, news articles, and marketing analyses from:

• The One Show Awards
• Social Samosa
• Growth Folks Club
• Cannes Lions International Festival