The Campaign

For many years Horlicks Malaysia had been in a lopsided fight against a dominant competitor in the child nutrition category. While equipped with demonstrably better nutrition credentials (23 vital nutrients vs. the competitor’s 12), Horlicks hadn’t been winning mothers with its functional messaging. So in 2014, Horlicks decided to change the conversation – to champion a cause far beyond ingredients, namely, "nourishing the world’s potential." Starting in an isolated village in Malaysia where children lacked access to education. Here, by bringing 32 kids their first taste of school, Horlicks also generated highly involving content – engaging enough to be seen by more folks than the total population of Malaysia, and relevant enough to drive a 22% sales increase.

The Brief

Dwarfed in share, popularity, and volume, Horlicks needed to change the conversation from functional messaging about nutrition to an emotionally involving story about helping fulfil children’s potential. Broadly, to link the brand to the bigger theme of education, since children's academic success is important to every mother. More specifically, to demonstrate to mothers of primary school children how it’s making a meaningful difference in Malaysia. Ideally, this project would also deliver highly involving content for Horlicks’ digital and social channels.

Creative Execution

The Kampung Chuweh project showed the brand and its products in a totally different light: living up to a worthy cause and driving real change. Not only did Horlicks Malaysia initiate and operate the entire project on the ground, it also marketed the story itself became. The backstory to the project, branded documentary videos in multiple episodes, social media posts and regular updates, media events, banners – all these elements assured a constant flow of meaningful, interesting and engaging content. The theme of education was ever-present, linked to the Horlicks brand and its products (whose advertising, by the way, is built on the premise that kids want to grow “taller, stronger and sharper”). Meaning: the project’s roots in both brand purpose and product benefit gave it authority to act.

First, and most importantly, the 32 kids of Kampung Chuweh have now gotten their first taste of school. And despite very low paid-media investment, nearly 37 million other folks have seen, read about and/or shared the project and its campaign (Oct14 to Feb15) – more than the entire population of Malaysia. The content strategy clearly paid off: the website saw a jump in visits of +2147% after re-launch, with over 38% of all visits attracted by project-related content. The engagement rates with this content illustrate its power: organic reach of a single post 9.2% versus the average of 2-3%. But most importantly: in conjunction with product campaigning this entirely new Horlicks story not only linked the brand to education and made the brand tangible, it yielded solid business results. For the first time in years volumes in sales grew an impressive 22% year on year.

Horlicks had learned that around the world 57 million kids have limited or no access to education, and consequently launched the School Journey Initiative with the goal of to helping kids get to school faster and safer. The next step was to pilot this project in Malaysia. We identified Kampung Chuweh, an isolated village where 32 children had no access to school, and began working with the Malaysian Association of Social Workers to make a tangible difference on the ground. The plan was to document all the on-ground efforts, in phases, and share this out to Horlicks’ owned channels. To push awareness, limited paid online media would complement coverage by invited press reps.