Developing a digital campaign for Lion Just Wild Peanut

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.”

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.

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.