The marketing challenge and brand insight:
The Australian snack-food market's
brutally competitive. New launches and aggressive discounting are
weapons in the snack-food marketer's arsenal. They face a
relentless battle against range deletion given shrinking
shelf-space availability, further intensified by retailer
expansions of home-brand snack-food offerings.
With a higher price-point and dated
image, Pringles were struggling to fight off deletions, their share
of shelf-space being eroded as competitors continue to innovate
with new lines and flavours. The brand wasn't resonating with
either the consumer (Youth) or primary purchaser (Grocery Buyers).
To add to an already challenging situation, Pringles were moving to
a higher price-point with the launch of their larger format King
can. While consumers would get more chips per pack, the cost
difference vs. cheaper neighbours would be striking at
point-of-sale.
To survive it was crucial to smash the
perception of Pringles as an uncool, boring snack. We weren't going
to achieve this by playing safe. Instead we challenged the status
quo and took all involved firmly outside of their comfort-zones.
TV, the historic bedrock of Pringles activity, is a
tried-and-tested medium proven to lift short-term sales and drive
retailer support at point-of-sale. Our client, despite initial
resistance from retailers, bravely embraced our recommendation to
abandon a TV approach and shift the entire budget into social-media
where we could speak directly to the end- user (Youth).
The consumer insight and communications strategy:
To get under the skin of our Youth
consumer we researched their passion points finding these could
vary considerably, for example: both Gaming and the Twilight
book/movie franchise, while popular to large sub-sets, were also
extremely polarising. We didn't want to alienate consumers so we
needed to identify areas Australian youth are consistently
passionate about. Music and friendship are universally important to
young Australians, to the extent that our consumers assert their
individuality and/or conformity via their iPod collections and
circle of friends.
Our challenge was to develop a
strategy that would spark interaction and word-of-mouth by tapping
into this personality-defining part of their lives. To succeed with
this judgemental, fickle and marketing-savvy consumer, we needed to
be invited into their world; bombarding them with Pringles
messaging would inevitably lead them to reject the brand. So how
did we successfully infiltrate their world to the point that they
actually spread the word for us?
We partnered with brands that opened
doors to the spaces in which we wanted to start a dialogue with our
consumers: music & friendship. Modular are a Australian music
label famous for cultivating up-and-coming local talent across
multiple musical genres. Their cool and edgy brand image made them
an ideal strategic partner for Pringles. Leveraging our access to
Modular's Artists, we created a social-media campaign via the
ultimate friends' site, Facebook. A multi-dimensional calendar of
promotions, interactive elements and Pringles updates was designed
to deliver sustained relevance, driving an avalanche of Pringles
related conversations.
The creativity of the communication and activation:
To launch base campaign awareness
weekly demo targeted ad units ran on Facebook, targeting 3.2
million unique users and driving them to become Fans of Pringles.
The Pringles Australia Fan-page became the central hub for a newly
created online community. Fans were able to interact with Pringles
through engaging features including polling, commenting, sharing
and entering promotions.
To really fire their imaginations we
produced a bespoke video party application. The user was given the
option to select a venue, a Modular band and 100 friends they would
invite to their dream party. This information was used by the
application to create a user-specific video/prize draw entry with
the winner getting the money-can't-buy party experience they
designed. A flash-clip of their ultimate party video was posted on
their profile pages and used as a party invitation they could share
with friends. Their friends could comment on it, vote for it and
create their own. As users engaged the momentum built, spreading
like wildfire across friend networks.
To drive on-going conversation and
deliver instant gratification we also gave away 100 music downloads
as spot prizes. This further reaffirmed Pringles brand alignment
with Music while rewarding their loyal fans. By answering questions
consumers posted on the fan-page, we embarked on a genuine two-way
dialogue with our Pringles advocates, creating an active source of
invaluable consumer insights. Pringles brand perception has leaped
from being distant, boring and irrelevant to becoming fun, young
and involved. It's amazing how powerful demonstrating you're really
listening can be.
The results:
Pringles Australia fan-page is the NO
1 Facebook Fan-Page in Australia with an astounding 266,000 fans,
bigger than the total of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th largest
Australian fan-pages combined. Our fans embraced the campaign and
exploded it across the Facebook universe, ensuring the Pringles
message was delivered to 7.1 million Facebook users, the total
Facebook Australia population at that time! We created a powerful
and immediate sales-driving tool. A simple alert to our fans
announcing that the new King Can was available at a key retailer
led to a massive 200% leap in sales within just 2 weeks. Most
importantly we have created a vehicle through which we can engage
in a lasting two-way dialogue with our consumers, arming our client
with the priceless insights they need to win the shelf-space
war.