Mondelêz International spearheads rise of digital ad spends, adopts tech to connect communication to actual product experience for consumers in the digital world
By SRABANA LAHIRI
Ever imagined a connection between the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) and Oreo cookies? Well, it turns out that the same company that designs platforms for NASA created the ‘Oreo 3D printer’ for Mondelêz International for a unique activation called ‘Eat the Tweet’ at the South by South West (SxSW) festival in the United States, creating a new level of consumer engagement and experience. Pushing the use of such concepts and the latest digital technology to aid marketing at Mondelêz International is Bonin Bough, Vice President, Global Media & Consumer Engagement, who encourages the FMCG major to “behave like a tech firm”.
“The big thing is to bring in players who can help you think totally differently about what you’re doing beyond the traditional communication ecosystem,” says Bough. He goes to places “where new thinkers are spending their time” - so this year, a 55-member Mondelêz team descended full force on SxSW, the Davos of Digital, to build networks, partnerships and excite new players to come along with them on the journey to change the company’s communications.
The company’s team in India too has been active on this front, leading the shift to digital though it has some iconic traditional advertising to its credit. Some recent campaigns, in fact, have broken on social media first. At the recently held AdTech, Mondelêz carried out an activation on Oreo that created buzz and excitement around the brand. There was an Oreo stall – Oreo is currently in the zone of a mysterious cookie – and a hashtag #mischievouscookie. When people tried to reach for a box of cookies in the stall, the box ran away from them. “It created a lot of excitement at the forum. People who came and experienced it shared it; it was also trending for some time on Twitter. But the bigger objective for us was to indicate the intent that we are a pretty serious player in this area and we are looking at partnerships and new ways of working,” says Sindhuja Rai, VP-Media and Digital, Mondelêz India, adding that it was perhaps the first time that motion sensor technology was used for such an activation. Not content with just the activation, they captured the expressions on the faces of people who experienced the runaway cookies, and made dozens of videos, which became a huge source of content, created without much expense.
For Bough, the strategy is to be at the places where new thinkers are, see innovation being built, and bring it back to the organization and take it to scale. “There’s a hotbed of technology sitting in Delhi and Bangalore, and I think how are we going to tap into those areas,” he adds.
HIGH DIGITAL AD SPENDS, IN INDIA AND WORLDWIDE
The approach to media and allocation of investments are totally driven by individual brand strategy and media strategy. “Television is the largest in terms of reach, but in terms of time spent, digital is far bigger. So naturally it is coming into our plans as either a lead medium for some of the brands or for target audiences, and as the second largest medium in terms of brand investment. For instance, television is just one of the platforms to deliver your video - there are platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. This year, we will allocate anywhere between 10-15% of our marketing budget on digital ad spends. It will not be taking away from other media spends; rather it will reflect what the consumer is consuming today and how.
Bough says 24% of media is consumed on a mobile device, but globally less than 1% of the advertising dollar goes to mobile. “That is insanity. If the consumer is consuming information here, we advertisers should be placing content too. We need to understand where media is being consumed in a market and shift our communication accordingly,” he comments.
The moot point is engaging the consumer and any platform that delivers on that parameter is attractive for Mondelêz. The very first Oreo Twist campaign, the pride cookie, was ‘liked’ by a million people, there were 33 million Facebook fans and a million more fans came to it and then seven million ‘liked’ it! Bough calls it “pretty iconic” that they were able to deliver their message without television, adding that creative has to map to the platform in order to be iconic.
LEARNINGS FROM INDIA FOR GLOBAL MARKETS
The work around integrations has been the best practice from India shared across the globe. “The partnership between Twitter and TV and how that works well, is a platform that we are moving,” says Bough. “What we do well in India is think about the message and the medium together. We are figuring out how to use YouTube better than to just put out our 45 seconds spot on it.”
When an ad comes up on YouTube, it has a ‘skip ad’ button after 5 seconds. The team at Mondelez India has created an ‘intro’ that tells people not to skip the ad. The idea is to fan curiosity in the minds of the viewer, whose tendency will be to stay on and watch the ad. “Around 98% of the people to whom we served that communication stayed on and watched the entire communication,” reveals Rai, while Bough says “those are numbers that we don’t see anywhere else in the world”.
He is highly appreciative of the fact that messaging has been tied up with the actual medium in a way that makes unique sense, and at the same time drives huge engagement rates. The other best practice from India that he is showing an upcoming global Oreo meet revolves around the missed call platform, which can be replicated in other emerging markets. “There are a lot of such examples that we will be moving across the globe,” Bough says.
CASE STUDY
#EatTheTweet
Mondelez International achieved path-breaking innovation when it made ‘edible technology’ a reality at the SXSW Interactive Festival. Two vending machines, at the Oreo Trending Vending Lounge, enabled attendees to create and consume personalized Oreo cookies based on conversations that were trending on Twitter at that moment. Bonin Bough of Mondelez International says, “We called this activation ‘Eat The Tweet’ by which you’re able to print what’s trending on Twitter and actually taste culture through an Oreo.” The user was required to browse a selection of ‘trending flavours’ displayed on a large touch-screen panel on the machine and was then asked to choose from 12 flavours and colours of crème. Once the personalized selections were made, the user could watch as their unique Oreo cookie was built. The experimental vending machines, which used 3D printing technology to assemble the Oreo cookies in less than two minutes, were custom-created by MAYA Design.
#ShubhAarambh League
The Indian Premier League is an opportunity that almost every brand in India attempts to leverage by way of endorsements and sponsorships. Cadbury Dairy Milk was no different, except that during the sixth IPL last year, they achieved their objective without spending a penny on sponsorship. Instead of using the tournament’s name, Dairy Milk associated itself with the T20 format and wove in its slogan ‘Shubh Aarambh’. A team watched the matches live, picking out every moment worthy of a celebration, which were then converted to tweets and graphical posts, creating a treasure chest of shareable content in real time. The brand also hosted a contest, which encouraged users to share the hashtag. Winners were selected based on their score which was calculated by measuring the user’s reach and influence on social media. The activity generated over 80,000 conversations on Facebook and Twitter, reaching 47 million unique people on Facebook and 3.8 million unique people on Twitter.
#NotSoSweet
To reposition the Bournville brand from “You earn it” to “Not so sweet”, Cadbury Bournville launched the ‘Tape a Tweet’ campaign on June 26, 2013. Seamlessly integrating three online platforms – Twitter, YouTube and Facebook – the brand asked its Twitter followers to share moments that were annoying and #NotSoSweet according to them. The best of these were selected in real time and converted into one-minute YouTube videos, and short acts by popular stand-up comedians. Along with achieving engagement, Cadbury ended up creating a bank of viral content that continues to be consumed by users. Sindhuja Rai of Mondelez India says, “We got a couple of thousand entries and we had four stand-up comics on call live. Within an hour, we were trending – first in Mumbai and then at Number 1 in India for quite some time. Throughout the day, we pushed out around 20 videos and achieved around 12 million views.”
The Daily Twist
Oreo celebrated its 100th birthday by churning out fresh content on its social media channels for 100 days. The online campaign, “Daily Twist”, kicked off on June 25, 2012 and generated an explosion of social conversation with its very first twist – the Gay Pride cookie. A picture depicting the Oreo cookie with seven layers of crème in rainbow colours celebrated the Gay Pride month. Other “twists” marked the landing of Curiosity Rover on Mars and the return of the Dark Knight in cinema theatres. Over the 100 days, Facebook audiences rose by over 1 million and virality rose by 280%. The activity generated the equivalent of 231 million media impressions. Bonin Bough explains, “The idea behind Daily Twist was to re-imagine culture through the eyes of Oreo.” The campaign went on to win six Lions, including the coveted Grand Prix Award in the Cyber category, at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
(Transcription credits: Simran Sabherwal, Henna Achhpal and Saloni Dutta)
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