Creative Execution

Start with an impactful image and fact (57 million children lack access to education, UN) to draw in. Use initial interest and engage users to take immediate action: bring this child to school. Then let them experience the barriers - by making the journey difficult and long in an expandable banner. In this case: the child's daily walk down a river including a dangerous cable car crossing - which surprisingly plays as embedded video. Along the way the user learns and feels: this is all wrong. The perfect trigger to link to the Horlicks School Journey Initiative page.

So far the Horlicks website saw a jump of astonishing +2147% visits after re-launch. Interestingly over 38% of all visits to the brand and product site were attracted by the story and content about the pilot project. Content engagement rates illustrate its power: organic reach of a single post 9.2% versus the average of 2-3%. In only 5 months (Oct14 to April 15) over 35.6 million people engaged through Facebook, YouTube, the new website and of course the interactive banners. It also yielded solid business results - volumes in sales in Malaysia grew 22%.

Horlicks is a family-nutrition brand by GlaxoSmithKline. In developing markets it helps mothers close their kids' nutrition gaps and fights "hidden hunger" (WHO term). But Horlicks is more than a good product - it is a brand with a grand purpose: to nourish the potential of children. In 2014 Horlicks brought this to life and went far beyond the category norm of functional benefit messaging: it launched the purpose driven Horlicks School Journey Initiative to give children access to an education they often lack and thus help them unleash their full potential. While projects on the ground make a tangible difference they also provide the powerful branded content for a digital centric campaign which included this interactive paid media banner campaign. The banners allowed users to experience the problem first hand - driving interest and increasing traffic to site. Horlicks changed the conversation and engaged with mothers like never before.