Background

Indomie is Indonesia’s most beloved instant noodle brand. Despite its iconic and market leader status, Indomie continues to experience an annual dip in its sales during the holy month of Ramadan. The practice for Muslims to refrain from eating, a cluttered media landscape and the lack of strong association between Indomie and Ramadan eating occasions became contributing factors to this decline. These challenges were heightened further last year due to the unprecedented situation of COVID-19 Pandemic. The objectives for this campaign were straightforward: Indomie wanted to capture people’s attention and create a reason for people to purchase the brand during Ramadan. From a business perspective, Indomie wanted to generate higher incremental sales compared to last year. To achieve this, the campaign scope includes product packaging, purchasing points materials, digital and national television spots. Media budget for ATL is around 93% and 7% for digital platforms from all total media spent.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

Given the context, the campaign’s main audience are Indonesian Muslims, particularly aged 18-25. They are people who see Ramadan as a time for respect, kindness and greater community values. One of the customs that is unique to Ramadan in Indonesia involves food establishments covering their stores and hiding their food to respect fasting Muslims. They do this usually by putting curtains on their doors and windows displays. This is a contrast to the behavior on TV and mass media, where appetizing foods commercials can be found everywhere. Tapping into the local custom to cover up food as a sign of respect became the anchor for the Indomie’s campaign idea. For the first time in the brand's history, we replaced the iconic appetizing noodles pictured in Indomie's packaging and communication with an image of an empty plate, alongside a seasonal greeting for everyone to start their Ramadan worship.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

The design involves a small but monumental tweak to the Indomie iconic packaging, where we erase the tempting food picture in the front and replace it with a picture of an empty plate along with a Ramadan greeting. Doing so reinforces Indomie’s superiority and relevancy towards the Indonesian culture. It became Indomie’s way to demonstrate respect and support towards fasting Indonesian Muslims and cemented the brand's familiarity for all Indonesians. The special Indomie Ramadan “empty plate” pack was not only utilized in communications. They were printed and made available to buy in bundles of five. The touch points include offline and online channels. Consumers in Java were able to buy them in modern and general trade stores, and those living outside of the region were able to purchase the bundles through online stores, where Indomie worked with top three e-commerce platforms in the country.

List the results (20% of vote)

From a business point of view, Indomie achieved a 5% Y.O.Y increase compared to last year's Ramadan sales. This is a significant win for Indomie considering the overall decrease in Indonesia household consumption during last year’s festive period. Not only did the empty plate campaign result in double the awareness score compared to last year’s effort, it also became Indomie's most recalled advertisement. This all contributed to a 4 percent point increase in consideration to buy Indomie during Ramadan. Being respectful and relevant to local culture also captured people’s attention. On digital, a picture of the Indomie special packaging circulated organically and when combined with the other campaign material, were able to generate 266% more impressions compared to last year’s Ramadan campaign. Our empty plate videos collected 17,529,325 views and 5,495,724 engagement rate, mainly on Facebook and Instagram. Various national news portals also covered the campaign organically.