MUMBAI Cafe TC and  the digital agency from the Dentsu Aegis Network - Dentsu Webchutney have created Liquor Ticker, claiming it to be the world’s first ad ticker on the popular messenger WhatsApp.

Cafe TC, earlier known as Turquoise Cottage, was on the lookout for a low-budget campaign to promote its makeover to target mainly its patrons. Executed by Dentsu Webchutney Innovation Lab, Liquor Ticker converted Cafe TC’s status into a running ticker and the profile pics into ever-changing Graphics Interchange Formats (GIFs) to show a vast variety of content - from its brand new logo to the new menu and a host of offers. Users could send a screenshot of an offer they liked to avail of it at the bar.

“Our brief was clear to the agency. Promote our revamp in a way never done before, but of course, with a limited budget!” revealed Cafe TC founder Gaurab Soral. He added, “When the agency told me that they planned to use WhatsApp, I was a little sceptical since WhatsApp doesn’t offer any official ad space! And we’re not the kind of brand that would spam its users.”

Dentsu Webchutney Innovation Lab CCT Gurbaksh Singh said, “We were toying with this idea for quite some time now, but were looking for that perfect match. With a little play of technology, read that as modifying WhatsApp’s API (Application Program Interface), we created an ad space on a medium that doesn’t have any! Liquor Ticker might just open the floodgates of advertising on WhatsApp.”

Last year, Cafe TC along with Dentsu Webchutney came up with the award-winning Happy Hours Rewind where users could turn back time and extend the happy hours by tweeting more and more.