Durex launched RexBot – a one of its kind, chat bot on sex education, accessed via a secure private chat window in Facebook Messenger.

The focus of RexBot is to address information needs of its key audience – the young women and men. The content is crisp, light, conversational yet credible, peppered with animated Gifs, meme’s and graphics, which adhered to a consistent design sensibility. The gender-specific content delivery is through two animated characters – Rex and Roxy who keep popping up through the conversation thread.

The topics were chosen after intensive research/polls on the web as well as conducting in depth interviews with young men and women from 3 different cities. The RexBot provides information on ‘The Body’, ‘The Mind’, ‘The Act’ and a general section which covers quotes, humour and myth-busters around sex.

Navigation and UX was optimized for mobile devices – the preferred media of our audience.

Instant Messaging and Search are the two biggest digital touch points for our Audience. There are more than 200,000 monthly active users on Facebook Messenger, in India. Google Insights and social listening reports revealed that approximately 9.1 million searches happened around ‘sex’, each month. Reports indicated equal interest among both male and female audience.

With information on sex being restricted in India, due to social taboo and government regulations, it was imperative for Durex to forge a meaningful connect with its key audience through providing them credible yet engaging information in a personalized manner.

We sourced content from NHS.uk to ensure the credibility of information. Considering the users were uninitiated in a conversation around sex, we classified RexBot’s content into ‘information sections’ in a Decision Tree-based structure.

The bot was developed in a month’s time and beta-tested within an incubation community of over 1,500 Durex associates for over two months. We used the feedback to refine user journey and enhance user experience. Roxy – the female character was created after receiving feedback from our women users.

We focussed on bringing the characters of Rex and Roxy to life, creating various GIF based animations, giving both approachable, friendly and fun loving personalities. All graphics were consistent with a custom created design language – it used fruits and vegetables as objects to convey specific concepts like ‘orgasm’ or ‘vagina’.

RexBot went live for Facebook’s Messenger audience in mid-September 2017. In less than two months, audience size grew to over 100,000 unique users, with around 4,000 users conversing with RexBot on a daily basis. It has gone on to generate immense goodwill and good PR for brand Durex – being covered by both digital and TV Press. The earned media value of RexBot is 4.8 times the value of paid promotions.

More than 6 million messages exchanged

Total Number of Unique user: 100,000+

Daily average new users: 1,800

Daily active users: 4,000

Average session length: 3 minutes

Top user time spent: More than 4 hours

Post launch of the RexBot Durex owned 5% of the conversation on Sex (SOV on the topic).

50% of users wanted to engage further with the Bot, which became evident from their interaction with the More Button. The retention was so high that on an average, a user’s engagement continued till the 5th day, showing that they kept coming back for more.

At an average 70 messages were exchanged by the Brand and the user

3 sessions at an average taken by a user

RexBot got featured on The Economic Times, ET Brandequity, NDTV Profit etc.

RexBot users could also ‘Buy’ Durex products and ‘View’ Durex content (TVCs etc), thereby ensuring a good Return On Investment.