Background

When COVID-19 hit Australia, it sparked an almost overnight, population wide shift in FMCG purchase behaviour. By late March the average household had more than 65 days’ worth of pasta stocked in their pantry and up to 70% of cupboards had a Continental Meal Base or Side Dish product inside them. Massive spikes in sales might sound like a great thing - but stockpiling of Continental products meant that future demand was at serious risk. We were tasked with inspiring a wide demographic of household grocery buyers to cook with the Continental products they already owned, with the intention of leading to repurchase, as well as increasing Continental brand salience and consideration. The trouble: people were in no mood to be inspired. Threats to financial and employment security, rapidly introduced stay-at-home restrictions and constant, terrifying news broadcasts were heaped high on Australian’s plates, leaving little space for dinner.

Describe the strategy

It was the iconic trait of larrikinism – Australian’s knack for laughing in the face of adversity - that became our guiding light. With so many brands and channels dialling up serious, sombre communications, Aussies needed something to laugh about. As live events vanished, people turned to their screens for entertainment. According to Deloitte, almost a quarter of the country signed up to new subscription entertainment services during COVID-19. Streaming video had become a national past-time and while the public couldn’t do much socialising in person, use of social media climbed by more than 25%. We needed to leverage these new media consumption behaviours and deliver social content that would entertain a wide group of grocery buyers while demonstrating how easy it was to master mealtime with Continental. So, we looked for help from a group most well-known for making people laugh, and least well-known for their cooking prowess: Comedians.

Describe the execution

The Continental Cook Up challenged 4 of Australia’s most loved comics (each selected to appeal to a different demographic of grocery buyer) to go head to head each week, live-streaming their efforts to recreate a Continental recipe from their very own kitchens. Each Facebook live stream was promoted with a 15 second talent-produced piece-to-camera video asset and static tile, released from the talent’s account. To ensure audience numbers we promoted Facebook event page ads, with functionality that reminded people of the live stream shortly before it launched. Digital booklets featuring the comedian and their recipe were sent to attendees on Facebook, then promoted further across the platform using lead ads to capture audience data for future marketing. Two 30 second highlight reels capturing the very best bits reached audiences who missed the events themselves across YouTube and on popular catch up TV portals.

List the results

More than 7,300 viewers downloaded the recipes after the streams. Over 1.7 million completed views were achieved and over 5 million Australians reached with the live streams and pre-promotion assets, achieving the highest ever social viewability rates for Continental. A further 2 million video completions were achieved across the highlight reels. While this was an indication that our approach of entertaining Australians to encourage cooking and repurchasing behaviour was successful – the sales results backed it up. Post-lockdown value sales against Continental products featured in the streams were up, with the two featured in our most popular episodes beating goals by 10% and 18% respectively. We also saw a 2-percentage point increase in salience for Continental in 2020, on top of 5-percentage point increases in consideration against the population, and a whopping 10-point increase for consideration against family grocery buyers.