Perera & Sons enters social media world with a bang

Tuesday, 23 August 2011 00:25 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

A brand that has been in existence since 1902 is making a major hype on cyberspace, as it recently joined the social media trend that many companies are stepping into.

An initiative of its Managing Director, Gihan Perera, who wants to combine technology to better serve the Perera and Sons (P&S) customers, P&S has joined the Facebook wagon wheel.

Not only is the company becoming immensely popular on Facebook (http://fb.com/PereraAndSons), with now over 20,000 fans in four weeks, it is also using the other tools that many tend to leave out when it comes to social media; Twitter and Foursquare.

Twitter which is primarily a tool regarded as a micro blogging platform is slowly now becoming a trend amongst the younger generation with the ability to keep things simple and to the point has been its greatest ease of use.

P&S Managing Director Gihan Perera said: “Our brand has been a very trusted one since inception, but we felt that we needed to start attracting more youngsters. Since social media has taken the youth population of this country by storm we decided there was no better way to target this audience than through a series of events carried out solely through social media. The result of course speaks for itself.”

P&S has been able to successfully engage with the twitter (http://twitter.com/PereraAndSons) audience in Sri Lanka and winning their trust in a big way. P&S was able to really captivate the twitter audience when P&S rewarded the first twitter follower a treat for him and 20 of his friends on Twitter! This was successfully concluded on 12 June at the Rajagiriya outlet and word about it spread virally from amongst the tweeps that took part. This further increased the love for the brand online.

Foursquare is another social media tool which has not been made use of by other brands. P&S is initiating foursquare promotions in selected outlets in Colombo (starting in 19 locations) and in time will ensure that all outlets have foursquare coverage.

Anyone visiting the Colombo outlets can check-in on foursquare by visiting http://m.foursquare.com on their mobile phone. If a smart-phone is used, an App can be downloaded to do the same. The foursquare promotions that will be activated at P&S would be the biggest of its kind in the country and P&S would be making way for others to follow in their footsteps.

The promotions (called ‘Specials’ on foursquare) allow the loyal frequent customer to get between 10%-25% discounts for products purchased and this would surely encourage most Sri Lankans to get on foursquare and start checking in since now there is a really valid reason to do so rather than just for fun.

The loyal customers will be decided based on the loyalty card which will be awarded to the loyal fans of P&S via foursquare. Customers can claim their discount by producing the card at the P&S selected outlets.