It was a usual day of scrolling for social media users of microblogging platform X, save for the fact that Rahul Krishnan, co-founder of Bold Care, put out his credit card details for random people to shop. The details, complete with sixteen-digit card number, expiration date and the three digit security code, were all part of the post that said, "Happy sextember everyone."
While countless scrolled past the tweet dismissing it as yet another start-up gimmick or marketing ploy with finer terms and conditions, a few did try their luck making online purchases and asking for OTPs. The deal was incredible and the rules were simple: he would share OTPs of purchases made under Rs 1000 in response to the original tweet thread.
There is someone thanking Krishnan the 'sponsor' for biryani, yet another for food delivery through Zomato. Others had a field day logging onto and shopping from Swiggy, Amazon, Blinkit among other e-commerce portals.
The freebies were doled out for roughly five hours as Krishnan kept sharing OTPs in the thread, till the window period of 'marketing' ended. Reportedly, he also took a 30-minute break from sharing OTPs during which he revealed that his credit card limit still had Rs 3 lakh left.
After the post went viral, for expected and understandable reasons, many wondered about the intention behind his action. While a few grew suspicious as to why the card hadn't been flagged by Visa or SBI for an abnormally high volume of transactions originating from so many different IPs. Sometime later, understandably harassed by too many OTPs, Krishnan shares, "Band karo OTP bhejna," which closely followed the post where he shares that his card had been blocked due to the high volume or microtransactions.
What did he get out of it?
Krishnan, the co-founder of BoldCare, a sexual wellness brand, gained a whopping 3.3 million views within a few hours of making his credit card details public. The freebie stunt, seen as a clever and comparatively cheaper marketing ploy by many, was also deemed reckless by a few users.
While he never made public the reasons for doing so, many users opined that this turned out to be far more engaging and far cheaper than paying Rs 5 to 10 lakh to a marketing agency.
The wellness brand
A little digging into the brand and the founders and the move blends seamlessly into the unconventional marketing gimmicks and approaches made by Bold Care previously. Co-owned by Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh, the brand has earlier used a campaign featuring both Singh and adult star Johnny Sins.
