The Brief

Increase sales of NESCAFE Dolce Gusto to 120% of the previous year. Strategy: Made two challenges in the infomercial - to create a heavily-talked about TV infomercial, and also drive people to stores to efficiently increase our customer base. We aimed to acquire new customers and create further cost efficiency by using direct sales as a trigger to increase sales in the retail channel as well as in the direct sales.

Creative Execution

We made the concept easy to understand and easy to spread by using the celebrity’s name together with another key word—such as “Ayaka Seto and Dolce Gusto,” or “Ayaka Seto and Price.” Ayaka Seto was not selected simply because she was a celebrity, but because she was a loyal user of the product. We used the persuasive power of Ayaka Seto to depict a stylish lifestyle with the product.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

In order for the target to relate to the infomercial, we used the celebrity Ayaka Seto. Ms. Seto was widely-talked about at the time since she had just returned from maternity leave. And in order to create a word-of-mouth phenomenon, we offered free capsules too all purchasers. The goal was to have people blog about the infomercial and for news to spread about the infomercial on PR programs. Also, by introducing a completely different product in the infomercial (a product sold only at stores), people were driven to stores to see the product for themselves.

Results

If one includes the halo effect that the infomercial also had on in-store sales, we surpassed our goal of 120% of previous year’s sales to reach 150% of sales. Thanks to having successfully linked the direct sales channel with the retail channel, sales surpassed costs substantially.