The Campaign

Memphis Meltdown is New Zealand’s biggest ice cream. We needed people to eat more of our giant ice cream, so we encouraged them to eat less of everything else. To do this we launched five miniature meals. All totally edible and all pathetically small, each one designed so that people could still leave room for a Memphis. They included a single Two-Minute noodle, a Baked Bean, Spaghetti and Meatball, Rolled Oat and, our favourite, Corn Flake– full of the nutritional goodness of a single grain. Ice cream advertising in-store is focused on one place – the chiller. This makes it a cluttered environment, where every ice cream brand fights for the customer’s attention. By creating miniatures that existed on shelves beyond the chiller, we were able to directly engage, disrupt and influence the customer in their purchase process, and drive them towards the chiller, and towards Memphis.

Creative Execution

To create the miniature products we enlisted the help of a specialist machining company. CAD software ensured that our products were identical to the full sized items we were replicating. No detail of the 1/12th scale packaging was overlooked. From tiny nutritional information to cooking instructions, we even wrote the complete history of the Corn Flake company. Cans were pressure sealed and our corn flake packaging ensured the flake stayed fresh. We created hundreds of mini cans of beans, twice more tiny pots of noodles and even more cereal boxes. These acted as perpetual in store advertising, as each one was returned to the shelf after being scanned at point of purchase, which disrupted our shoppers when deciding what to have. We also created our own full-scale food truck, and handed out our mini meals at universities, concerts and sporting events, all supported by billboard and radio executions.

Results

In 2015, we were selling 1,000,000 less Memphis Meltdowns than in 2013. In a country of 4,000,000 people, that’s a lot. This was costing the company millions of dollars in potential profit. Our ‘Leave Room’ campaign did more than merely halt the decline - we saw a jump in sales in both singles and multipacks over the campaign period, and more importantly, this continued after activity had ceased. We transformed an 8% sales decline into an 11% sales lift directly after the campaign (a 19% turn around), with a massive increase in sales in the out of home channels. Surprising, given it was during New Zealand’s cold and rainy spring months. Two years of declining sales, reversed by a simple strategy. Keeping a nation hungry with small meals so they eat bigger ice creams.

When shifting brand perceptions, it’s very easy to tell audiences what to think. But it’s far more effective to deliver something tangible – a way they can interact with our idea that leads them towards our product. For Memphis Meltdown ice creams, we created miniature food products that were stocked in convenience stores and petrol stations, just a few aisles away from the chillers. Demonstrating that when they’re hungry, a Memphis Meltdown is so big and indulgent, you should ‘leave room for’ it. With sales volume as our measure, they became a tangible reinforcer for the campaign message.

Memphis Meltdown is 115 grams of pure indulgence. It’s big and it’s bold, and therefore we’d been pitching it exclusively to men in an irreverent tone for the past decade. But research showed us that women were eating them too. So, we decided to broaden our target and find an insight that would resonate with all consumers. Our sales were strongest before meal times (in the middle of the day and in the early evening) - when people were at their hungriest. At these times, both genders are looking for a quick and easy bite to satisfy their cravings and they’re often searching in supermarkets or convenience stores. So we called out Memphis’ size, and stopped positioning it as just an ice cream – but instead, as a whole meal. One that you need to leave room for.