The Campaign

The ice-cream category is a fiercely fought battle every summer between local and foreign brands. Our challenge was to make Nestle’s newly launched ‘BenNaNa’ the must-have ice-cream treat of 2012. This unusual ice-cream is eaten like a real banana - you take a bite from the top of the peelable jelly shell, then roll it down like a banana skin to reveal an ice-cream core. We developed a social media campaign that invited China’s creative youth to ‘get on the BenNaNa boat’ sharing original tweets, photos, and stories that reflect the fun and whimsical aspects of BenNaNa’s unique peelability. Brilliant pics of ‘kidults’ all eating and playing with their BenNaNas made this a highly visual campaign with 86% of original tweets also sharing a photo. Viral videos of BenNaNa pranks and a design competition for the next generation BenNaNa continue to draw fans across China with over 4.6 million tweets so far. Within 3 months Nestlé BenNaNa became the company’s number one ice-cream product in terms of sales volume, unseating 8Cube which took 8 years to become the leading Nestlé ice-cream. In fact, stores ran out so often we added tips on where to find it on the BenNaNa microsite.

The Brief

Nestle objective was straightforward: grow BenNaNa from launch to become a best-selling ice-cream for Nestlé in 2012. We identified BenNaNa target consumers as “kidults”. Aged 18-31, they love food, follow fashion, try to keep up with the latest trends and are always afraid that they might fall out of fashion. They use Sina Weibo obsessively to stay up to date. Agency research indicated our target would respond to fun BenNaNa concept if we could get them to engage with the product. Sina Weibo was the perfect platform for sharing customer experiences and uploading user generated content.

Results

Our campaign met Nestlé’s business objective – BenNaNa became Nestlé’s number one ice-cream product – within 3 months of launch by sales volume and overtook Nestle’s former number one ice-cream treat in China, 8 Cube, a product that had been in China for eight years. Local brand Yili spent 26 times the Nestlé campaign budget on digital alone in just 2 months, while Mengniu Dairy spent 20 times our budget in the same period. Clearly we were heavily outspent by competition yet the campaign still had greater impact. Our understanding of social media shaped the campaign and drove brand love and success came in bunches! - over 4.6 million Weibo tweets about BenNaNa - over 2.1 million Baidu searches - 7 times ranked in Weibo top 10 searches - #1 Weibo trending topic in 2 weeks - 86% of original tweets about BenNaNa also uploaded a photo

Execution

Beginning with the official Weibo site, we designed the BenNaNa campaign to be a comprehensive interactive social media initiative: Hashtags: The most re-tweeted hashtags we created were based on famous Chinese tongue twisters, folk adages (#EatingABananaWithoutSpittingOutTheSkin), or other hot topics. This fun material helped attract followers to the official site and encouraged fans to tweet about BenNaNa on their own. Photos: Offering a modest banana-shaped pillow prize, Weibo exploded with pictures of ‘kidults’ peeling, eating, and playing with their BenNaNas. This user generated content made tweeters become credible brand ambassador. Videos: Three viral videos of BenNaNa pranks were created to fuel fans contributing their own videos. The three initial videos enjoyed over 150,000 views. Competition: We called for BenNaNa fans to design their own next generation BenNaNa for the chance to win an iPad and a mini fridge. Over 3,000 have entered with over 10,800 re-tweets about it so far.

The Situation

Nestlé has a longstanding presence in China, but every summer their ice-cream products are up against fierce competition, especially from local brands. To make things harder, sales channels for impulse ice cream in China are dominated by mini-marts and street stores where many different brands occupy a single fridge. With so many options in any given store, we needed to position BenNaNa to stand out in people’s minds before they even got to the fridge. We needed to generate the kind of buzz around this new product that would send consumers in search of Nestlé BenNaNa.

The Strategy

Ice-cream is a highly seasonal business. We had to make BenNaNa the “in” ice-cream of summer 2012. As the product’s unique ‘peel-able’ format was inherently fascinating to tactile ice-cream lovers, our strategy was to encourage consumers to express their own personal creativity with the product on Weibo. Our campaign would attract consumer interest and allow them to become brand ambassadors for BenNaNa, spreading the word to followers and friends. We created the official Nestlé BenNaNa Weibo site to reflect the amusing aspects of the ice-cream treat. Original copy, entertaining pictures, and stories of BenNaNa’s unique peelability inspired BenNaNa fans to get creative with their own ice-cream. Our social media strategy was to create a site that was constantly generating new content, especially from consumers who submitted their own content and photos. The result was a highly interactive and consumer focused PR campaign.