Developing a digital campaign for Lion Just Wild Peanut

Task

Lion is the number two brand in the chocolate bar market in Ukraine (11.6% market share) as of 2018.

The bar category experiences seasonality, with sales declining in summer as consumers switch to ice cream.

To mitigate this ‘negative’ summer trend and maintain Lion’s relevance, a new peanut bar, Just Wild Peanut, was launched. This is a new permanent SKU in Lion’s product line, not a limited edition.

Our task is to build awareness of the new product through a digital campaign for Lion Just Wild Peanut. The goal is for consumers to remember Lion even during the least favorable season for bars, perceive it as a cool youth brand, and continue to buy and consume its products.”

Target audience

The Lion audience consists of young, socially active individuals who cannot imagine their lives without the internet. Being online is critically important to them.

They react negatively to advertising that tries to invade their lives or pretend to be their friend, quickly blocking such brands or advertising communications.

This audience is most prone to Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) — the fear of missing out on interesting events or opportunities, often triggered by social media browsing.

Therefore, they are constantly engaged online — following, hating, liking, posting, reading, and watching top content. Bloggers and channels on Telegram and YouTube are their main media sources.

Goals

The primary objective of our communication strategy was to build awareness of the new product and engage consumers with the brand. It was crucial for our target audience to notice, react to, be intrigued by, and share information about the new product.

We aimed to create content and construct a communication ecosystem designed to attract a substantial number of consumers, achieving digital reach of at least 30% of the audience. Organic reach was prioritized over paid media reach, as organic reach was considered a critical measure of content effectiveness and virality.

Insight

As a rule, brands offer users/target audiences polished and boring advertising content that forcibly and awkwardly speaks in the user's language. This often triggers a strong negative reaction.

On the other hand, bloggers address the same target audience in a way that resonates with them.

Based on qualitative research into the lifestyle and interests of the young audience, we knew that bloggers in their world enjoy high levels of trust and organic engagement.

To capture the insight of the target audience's "I want to be like him, but I'm afraid..." mindset, we needed an absolutely interactive, unpredictable, and "live" format for the interaction between the brand and the audience.

Realization

To dramatize and convey the essence of the brand “Відкрий дику натуру” (Explore the Wild Nature), we decided to combine all the trends, formats, and activities that captivate our target audience: unconventional and popular bloggers, “Versus battles” formats, cosplay, video games, and hate watching.

The centerpiece of our communication strategy became a promotional website styled like a fighting game. On this site, we featured challenge videos of our two heroes – wildDurnev and wildMurafa.

Throughout the month, users invented challenges of various levels of wonder, difficulty, and incredibility for our heroes. Each hero received one challenge per week from a user-generated list.

We developed a large amount of creative content tailored for each social media platform, adapting messages throughout the promotion and based on the battle’s progress. Durnev and Murafa supported the promotion by posting announcements of new videos and calls to support and join the battle on their social media.

The winner was determined by voting results, and the loser had to bathe in a bathtub filled with thousands of Lion bars.

Result

Results of the campaign significantly exceeded all planned KPIs, largely due to the engaging content and organic reach. The project became so viral that it served as a prototype for the popular show "Durnev Watches Stories."

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If you have any questions, please write to sayhi@havaswwdigital.com.ua
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