The Campaign

In an April 2014 study 70 percent of brands and 77 percent of agencies respectively – say they have used branded content for marketing or advertising purposes in the last year. 83 percent of brands said they’ve used it for their website or email. But more than two-thirds have partnered with content providers and agencies to create and distribute branded content beyond their own websites. And, it seems to be working, particularly as a brand-building mechanism. Brands are citing Branded Content as a most effective tactic, virtually tied with Video as either “most important” or “more important” than Social, Search, Email, Mobile or Display advertising. Branded content is now as acceptable to consumers as editorial because they are aware of the biases within the media, regardless of the organisation that is producing the content. In fact the prevalence of partisan editorial has eased the acceptability of branded content into consumers’ media intake.

Results

Our campaign focused on providing restaurant Chefs inspiring content, as well as strong service and product utility. We utilized the UFS WeChat Account to reach our Chefs. We created regular WeChat posts to drive Chefs to our H5 Campaign Website. We created a Mobile Optimized H5 Campaign Website to house our content (inspiring video content and interactive recipes), that could be viewed on the go by time poor Chefs. We encourage Chefs to sign-up for the sample packs so they could trial Knorr for themselves, and entry a competition to win various service prices including chef training.

We utilized UFS’s WeChat Account as the main reach channel for our campaign. And over the course of 3 months we created regular WeChat posts that drove Chefs to a Mobile Optimized H5 Campaign Website where they could view inspiring video content (the personal stories of 3 Chefs in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing who upgraded their kitchens and menus with the help of Knorr Sauces and the UFS Chefs). After viewing the videos the Chefs could also access interactive recipes (that utilized Knorr sauces), sign-up for Knorr sample packs so that they could trial the sauces for themselves, and enter a competition to win other service prizes.

Campaign exceeded KPIs for video views, sampling pack orders, competition and new WeChat fans, all with very limited media spend. Video Views – 5 million Sampling Pack orders – 55,000 UFS Upgrade Entries – 89,700 New WeChat Fans – 118,700

Chefs need constant inspiration, skill upgrades and new ingredients to keep their menu fresh. Based on this consumer insight we created inspiring video content (the personal stories of 3 Chefs in Shanghai and Chongqing who upgraded their kitchens and menus with the help of Knorr Sauces and the UFS team), together with interactive recipes, samples packs and training services to provide Chefs service and product utility.