Background

Lindt chocolates have been present in the Taiwan market for a while, however this was the first time they decided to foray into leveraging influencers to create buzz for their offerings. Coupled with the fact that their marketing team operates regionally, they had no context to the category, available talent or methods of association and were starting off with a clean slate. Lindor chocolate truffles wanted to position themselves as a premium offering in the market, that is better than Ferrero Rocher, the market leader in the category while also showcasing it’s accessibility rivaling more expensive brands like Godiva. The focus of this campaign was to call our audience’s attention to the product and its availability at the 7-Eleven chocolate festival.

Describe the strategy

Our content planning tool was deployed to understand annual content marketing trends in the chocolates category, namely which brands are communicating through influencers and when, while preforming a deep-dive into activities conducted by our immediate competitors Ferro Rocher and Godiva. This was done by scanning for category and competition/product keywords across social posts from all top KOLs in Taiwan for the preceding 12 months, with all hits being screened from the lens of creator and content outcome statistics. The data being aggregated through APIs meant we were able to view top-level summaries and identify patterns such as campaign spikes, best performing content formats and platforms of choice for each brand. These readings were then filtered with a focus on our TA 25 – 54 YO adults. They were assumed to be from social economic strata with disposable income, people who aren’t impulsive but occasionally indulgent by nature.

Describe the execution

The category scan data showcased video as a reach driver, while static content facilitated engagements. Our aim as a new entrant was to achieve significant SOV while engaging with our audience. To fulfil dual targets, we deployed long-form video with a sizable influencer to drive awareness while sustaining visibility through image carousel posts with smaller KOLs. The campaign launched around Double 11 also known as Single’s Day which was popularized into a shopping holiday by Alibaba CEO Jack Ma. Riding the wave of indulgence prevalent in this season, we created content showcasing influencers enjoying Lindor truffles as a means of self-reward. The long-form video focused on indulgence with a high tea theme to showcase premium-ness, while the KOL reviewed each of the chocolate truffles flavors in detail. A total of 32 creators came together to share their Lindor Moments with our audience during this campaign.

List the results

Our data showed competitors governing around 8% to 10% SOV in the chocolate category in Q4 2019, which had an avg. of 7.6mn monthly reach. While planning for the November campaign, we compared Q3 2019 reach (5.6mn) with Q3 2020 (8.2mn) and noticed the category was 1.45 times more active vs last year. This YOY increase as well as the 35% higher activity in Q4 versus Q3 was factored in to predicted average reach of 11.07mn for Q4 2020. Our aim was to achieve a 10% SOV within the category, setting our minimum KPI at 1.1mn reach. We ended the campaign with 1.8mn overall reach across Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, with 44,000+ engagements and 340,000+ video views. During our post-buy analysis, we found the Lindor campaign had the highest engagements and higher reach when compared with our competitors, proving to be a well-planned and optimally executed content marketing campaign.