CONTINENTAL COOK-UP

TitleCONTINENTAL COOK-UP
BrandUNILVER
Product / ServiceCONTINENTAL FOODS
CategoryA07. Use of Talent
EntrantPHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation PHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Media Placement PHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Production TEKNIQUE FILMS Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Post Production TEKNIQUE FILMS Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Jack Monro PHD Media Strategy Manager

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

This is the story of a supermarket food brand that cut through the COVID noise – creating a hilarious and highly watched content series that helped stressed Aussies create easy and delicious meals at home, using panic-bought pantry staples. It shows how the brand leveraged rapid increases in social media and digital video consumption, as well as careful selection of talent, to reach different demographic groups of grocery buyers. It proves the value of strong partnerships, outlining how close collaboration with some of Australia’s leading entertainers allowed the brand to increase product sales, and achieve lifts in brand equity measures.

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 pantries 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 them 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 creative idea

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 media dialling up serious and sombre communications during COVID, Aussies needed something to laugh about. What profession is most well-known for making people laugh, and least well-known for their cooking prowess? Comedians. They were a perfect subject to lift the spirits of the nation while demonstrating that literally ANYONE could master mealtime with Continental. We challenged 4 of Australia’s most recognisable comics to go head to head in an effort to recreate 4 recipes featured on Continental packaging. They would live stream their effort from their own kitchen, capturing the reality of life at home by including their family in each episode. To maintain a high pace and energy, each stream also featured a banter-laden, ZOOM-style drop-in from the following week’s contestant.

Describe the strategy

According to Deloitte, almost a quarter of the country signed up to new subscription entertainment services during COVID-19. Streaming video fast became a national past-time, and while the public couldn’t do much socialising in real life, their use of social media climbed by more than 25%. We wanted to leverage these new media consumption behaviours and deliver social content that would show a wide group of grocery buyers how easy it was to make meals at home with Continental. Live streaming meant we couldn’t fake anything – our talent actually had to cook the meals themselves, demonstrating that anyone could do it. As an emotional force, humour is a proven driver of brand salience and memorability, so using comedians was key to achieving brand saliency and consideration goals. Those participating were selected based on age, gender and household makeup, to closely reflect the grocery buyer audience segments we were targeting.

Describe the execution

Hijinks and hilarity ensued across all 4 episodes, with memorable moments including Hughesy’s failure to understand how to turn his stove on and Denise’s husband’s impromptu ukulele solo and plate spinning routines interrupting her cooking. We worked with talent to drive hype for the live streams, reaching their social followings with static and video piece-to-camera assets they shot themselves, pushed out from their social pages a week before each stream went live. 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 each comedian’s 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.

Describe the outcome

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 alone was a clear 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. On top of sales, we 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.

Links

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