Marketing lessons from Danone’s Michael Aidan & Unilever’s Ira Noviarti
Brand marketers face all kinds of challenges – at times it is as common as the launch of a global brand in a local market and in other cases it can be as worrisome as the loss of relevance of not just a brand but a product category itself and the need to re-establish why such a brand should even exist.
In the wake of a global crisis
Evian faced this challenge in 2007-09, when in the background of the economic depression, industry observers and social commentators were questioning the branded water category and its relevance. For a brand such as Evian, that largely operates in markets were tap water is accepted for drinking as well, the situation posed an intense dilemma.
The market was decreasing double digit, and by the admission of Michael Aidan, Head of Digital & VP Digital Brand Platforms, Groupe Danone, the company’s initial reaction was basic, predictable and inefficient. The need of the hour was to rethink the brand’s next steps. The brief for this, as per Mr Aidan was very ‘straightforward’.
Evian needed a copy that would tell and emotionally engaging story, be consistent with the brand heritage, create a global universal platform, be web centred and ‘become viral’. The solution came in the form of ‘babies’. The brief led to the first Evian babies campaign ‘Rollerbabies’ that was widely accepted and celebrated. However, the next challenge was not far off. “Babies are great but no one understood the campaign because Evian was not seen with babies and we needed this exercise to be more than a PR tool,” divulged Mr Aidan.
The answer then came in association Evian with babies with the thought process of the ‘baby’ in the consumer. Various offline extensions were created to connect the babies to brand Evian and the idea was brought online again to strengthen the association. Evian achieved a significant turnaround as part of the process as per Mr Aidan. He informed that in the course of five years, the campaign was viewed over 400,000,000 times making it amongst the top five most clicked brands in the world. Evian became the preferred food brand in France ahead of Nespresso, Lindt and Coke and among Asia’s top 100 brands.
“In most of the things we did, we threw the media book out of the window. We opted for lesser but longer ads on TV. We continued with the journey of purity, healthy hydration to youth. We signified this through our packaging, sponsorships and through the baby campaigns. The final result was that the brand grew from a negative growth brand to a fast growing brand every year,” stated Mr Aidan. He cited Evian’s recent association with ‘The Amazing Spiderman’ indicating the evolution of the Evian Babies campaign.
His key takeaways from this experience are:
• A crisis is not always an enemy
• It is about storytelling and engagement
• Content is king and digital makes it fluid
• Each touchpoint has a specific role to play
• There is no such thing as online or offline strategy
• Trust, talents and mindset are key ingredients
• You need to give it time
Preparing a local game plan
As easy as it may appear to some, the launch of a global brand in a local market like Indonesia comes with its own set of challenges. Ira Noviarti, Vice President, Ice Cream, Unilever Indonesia experienced this at the time of launching Unilever’s premium ice cream brand Magnum in Indonesia three years ago. Today, Magnum is fourth biggest growth contributor to the global Magnum worldwide revenues, drawing attention to the plan that Ms Noviarti’s team put in play in Indonesia.
“We were devising a strategy that factored a global brand in a local market. We took into account the changing infrastructure with the coming up of malls and the fact that Indonesia is socially very active,” explained Ms Noviarti.
She outlined five steps that Magnum undertook for the market. The included:
#1 Engage consumers through brand experience:
Unilever Indonesia built Magnum Cafes to bring the ice cream experience to life.
#2 Further engaging consumers through brand videos
The company invested in creating relevant and interesting bits of content that one again brought out the pleasure of indulging in Magnum.
#3 Engaging consumers through brand curiosity
#4 Engage consumers through national movement
For the first time pleasure seekers took part in a national movement in various markets in Indonesia as part of the campaign.
#5 Magnum as the source of latest lifestyle information
The final move was to entrench Magnum in the aspiration lifestyle section of Indonesia.
With a combination of activation, media, digital and PR, the brand had reached 18 per cent penetration in year one by building the ultimate ice cream chocolate experience. Unilever Indonesia created a pioneering and repeatable model for the rest of Southeast Asia market with this launch.
Mr Aidan and Ms Noviarti were addressing a gathering of 700 strong at the recently concluded APMF 2014 in Bali.
