The Campaign

‘Free your voice!’ – Strepsils gives you a clear throat, allowing you to express yourself freely with instrument-less Acappella music.

Creative Execution

IMPLEMENTATION & TIMELINE Consumption of Strepsils increases in Fall leading upto winter. Strepsils Stereo was launched in mid August with a contemporary rendition of a classic patriotic song on Pakistan’s Independence Day 2 more songs, followed, each a different flavor, for a different season: RANG DE, Pakistan’s first instrument-free wedding track was released in time for the local “wedding season”; DIL JO CHAAHE, A more rebellious, youth-centric song came in the new year. PLACEMENT •A digital-only initiative, the content was distributed across key music portals: Patari, Tapmad, soundcloud, bestsongs.pk •Native articles in leading local publishers, Parhlo, Dawn and Mangobaaz to maximise exposure •The brand’s own Facebook and Youtube assets. SCALE Each song aired with BTS and supporting content that leveraged the social following of the artist/label and the celebrity talent, giving them immediate traction, especially at launch, despite it being released amid strong competition from more established music platforms.

Business: •Strepsils sales grew by +26% during the Aug ’17 – Jul ’18 •Strepsils remained #1 in its category ‘Pharyngeal Preps’ by taking its share upto 51.2% •Strepsils market-share improved by +400 bps (+4%) as early as Q4 2017 Communication: •Revamped its Facebook page and went from 280k likes to 380k •Introduced a Strepsils Stereo YouTube page yielding 13.5k+ subscribers •89.6Mn+ impressions on the page in the year, with 10.7M+ engagement •2.9Mn+ Youtube views Following the success of Strepsils Stereo in Pakistan, three other Reckitt Benckiser markets, Malaysia, Middle East and Mexico, expressed interest and are in the process of rolling out similar initiatives in their regions. The initiative won “Best Healthcare Campaign” and declared “Campaign of the Year-runnerup” at the Pakistan Advertisers Society Awards 2018. Season 2 rolled out on Independence Day 2018 to much acclaim. References: 1. Research Agency: IMS Health Pakistan Ltd. 2. https://www.facebook.com/StrepsilsPakistan 3. Youtube

While music is the pulse of the Pakistan’s youth and is being exploited by global brands with big-budget platforms, there exists little-to-no functional connect between brand and the platform. Amid this content clutter, no brand had a more direct connect with singing than throat-soothing lozenges. So, we got rid of the instruments to focus on what was relevant to our Brand: VOICE. And rather than latching onto an existing trend, we collaborated with a leading artist/label to launch Pakistan’s first Acapella music platform; a first-of-its-kind for the Brand, not only in Pakistan, but also worldwide.

Strepsils has always been about conventional advertising formats focused on functional benefits. However with traditional marketing messages falling on deaf ears with the millennials, we had to take a very different approach Research and a Google study of the Pakistani millennial’s content consumption habits helped us lock into their biggest entertainment weakness: an insatiable appetite for music. constantly craving new genres, sounds and celebrities. While music is the pulse of the nation’s youth and is being exploited by brands with little to no functional connect to it, no brand has a more direct connect with singing than throat-soothing lozenges. Rather than latching onto an existing trend, we launched a new music genre in Pakistan: Acapella, instrument-less music, where every sound is produced vocally. We collaborated with a leading artist/label who would, not only embrace the brand vision, but also successfully introduce and sustain the Acappella genre in Pakistan.