The Campaign

Food was the perfect context to increase the relevance of Talcid’s message because it’s the only thing that causes increased gastric acid and that Chinese are passionate about. We focused on 3 specific food-related aspects: trigger foods (e.g. deep-fried, spicy, fatty food), irregular eating patterns and alcohol. The key insight that we leveraged was that China’s food delivery industry is growing fast with daily orders going through the roof. The thing with food delivery is that it encourages behaviour that’s prone to cause gastric acid. User data from ele.me, the biggest of the delivery APPs in China, showed that the aforementioned trigger foods and irregular eating are very popular. Deep-fried chicken is the most ordered item for afternoon- and spicy soup for mid night-snacking. So, a partnership with ele.me was the perfect way to get our messaging in front of our audience in the right moment.

Creative Execution

The food store campaign happened in two main buckets: 1. In-APP activity A Talcid-branded H5 presence was established on ele.me that mimicked the design and functionality of an actual store front, typical for restaurants. The items ‘on sale’ in the store were popular trigger foods. Once a user decided to purchase, she was served a short and fun video, educating her about the risks of gastric acid. Traffic into the site was generated through in-APP promotions and display advertising and ele.me’s WeChat account. 2. Ele.me breakfast packs Ele.me delivers breakfast packs to thousands of users daily, packed in branded bags that all look the same. We leveraged these bags as highly visible media for Talcid by adding the brand’s logo, colours and educational message. Since each bad is seen on average by 7 people according to ele.me, this increased brand visibility to a broader audience.

Ele.me food store delivered impressive results: • Talcid sales grew by 18% and outperformed the category (+5.3%) • Trial increased by 33% among the younger demographic of the audience (25-34, those most active on Ele.me) The campaign managed to generate a total of 1.8 billion impressions. 60,000 breakfast packages were delivered to hungry consumers across a 2 weeks period.

Because many Chinese neither know nor care much about gastric acid related diseases and problems, Talcid’s food store campaign focused the one potential trigger that people spend much time on every single day: food. Modelled after engaging and entertaining initiatives typical for the FMCG category, we broke with pharma conventions and embedded Talcid and its educational message seamlessly into the food delivery behaviour of millions of Chinese. This helped the brand build strong associations between gastric acid, food and Talcid as a potential remedy.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The partnership with ele.me allowed us to reach consumers with contextually relevant messages in the right moments. To further increase impact we decided to not just bombard consumers with simple educational banners but to surprise them with an H5 presence that mimicked the looks and functionality of an actual shop front through which restaurants sell their food on ele.me. This presence was call the “super heavy taste food shop”, alluding to specific trigger foods that cause gastric acid.