Cassies 2009 Cases

Cassies 2009 Cases
Brand/Case: Only In a Woman’s World
Canadian Success Outside Canada—Gold
Client Credits: Frito-Lay North America
Gannon Jones, VP Marketing
Becky Frankiewicz, VP Portfolio Marketing
Julie Saliba, Marketing Manager
Marissa Jarratt, Brand Manager
Agency Credits: Juniper Park
Jill Nykoliation, President
Terry Drummond / Alan Madill / Barry Quinn, Creative Directors
Agatha Wronecka, Group Account Director
Francine Li, Account Director
Leanne Parnass, Account Executive
Dani Maisels, Art Director
Erin Kawalecki, Copywriter
Derek Blais, Art Director
Laurent Abesdris, Copywriter
Paula Purdon, Copywriter
Sara Atrvash, Designer
Bernice Allinson, Art Director (ACD)
Hanna Bratt, Producer
Anne-Marie Martignago, Producer
Crossover Notes: All winning cases contain lessons that cross over from one case to another.
David Rutherford has been identifying these as Crossover Notes since Cassies1997. The full set
for Cassies 2009 can be downloaded from the Case Library section at www.cassies.ca
Crossover Note 2.
Crossover Note 9.
Crossover Note 10.
Brand Truths.
Turnarounds.
Conventional Wisdom—should it be challenged?
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Crossover Note 11.
Crossover Note 12.
Crossover Note 16.
The Eureka Insight.
Changing the Goalposts.
When a Campaign Stumbles.
To see creative, go to the Case Library Index and click on the additional links beside the case.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Business Results Period (Consecutive Months):
Start of Advertising/Communication Effort:
Base Period for Comparison:
February 2009 – June 2009.
February 7 2009.
January 2008 – June 2008.
a) Synopsis of the Case
It’s a marketing truism that women are the most important consumers. And of course, this
is especially true when it comes to shopping for food. So when Frito-Lay found that
women were increasingly avoiding the chip aisle – which Frito-Lay dominates – we
faced a serious challenge. We had to give women a reason to come back. The reality is,
however, that women had been duped for years with overpromises of “made for you”
messaging, and with broken promises of “low calorie snacks you’ll crave.”
The challenge was bigger than any one brand could solve, so Frito-Lay tried something
bold: combining several female-targeted brands together: Flat Earth, Baked! Lay’s, Smart
Food, and 100-Calorie Packs. We needed to build a portfolio campaign that reflected this,
while ensuring each brand’s unique positioning and core attribute shone through.
This was no ordinary challenge. And neither was the solution. Our hypothesis was that to
gain women’s trust, we first needed to prove that we truly understood them. If we
accomplished that, they would view our product offerings with the sincerity we intended.
So instead of creating advertising, we created content. Crossover Note 12. “Only in a
Woman’s World” is a web-based comedy series that holds a mirror up to the strange and
funny language and rituals of daily life that every woman understands only too well. The
series is hosted on Glam.com, a major web portal for women.
The series is content in its purest form. It is only lightly branded in that it is ‘presented’
by the portfolio of brands. Crossover Note 10. The characters from the series are also
leveraged in TV and print ads and on POS materials. In its totality, the “Only in a
Woman’s World” platform clearly and uniquely demonstrates that Frito Lay understands
women, and by doing so, has created snacks relevant to women.
b) Summary of Business Results
Results have been absolutely spectacular! Through June 2009, they have far exceeded
expectations against all objectives. The webisodes have been viewed over 9 million
times, and cited by AdAge as one of the top viral campaigns in the world. The series has
been discussed on over 150 blogs, and covered in mainstream media such as CNN and
the New York Times.
Most importantly, women have returned to the chip aisle more than they have in 4 years.
Sales across the portfolio increased more than 10%, and the launch of SmartFood was
50% ahead of objectives—leading to supply problems. Market mix modelling has shown
that the campaign has driven two-thirds of these results, significantly more than any other
factor. And for a portfolio with annual sales in the hundreds of millions, these results
represent substantial revenue growth.
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SITUATION ANALYSIS
a) Overall Assessment
Frito-Lay dominates the chip aisle, with most of their products located there. But analysis
of grocery store data revealed a startling truth: it wasn’t just that women were buying
fewer products in the chip aisle, they were avoiding it altogether, and trips had been
steadily declining for four years. Since women account for the majority of grocery
purchases, a new strategy was required. Crossover Note 9.
Research revealed that women were turning to crackers, rice snacks, nuts, trail mix, and
cereal bars – all perceived as healthier snacks. However, in recent years, Frito-Lay had
launched its own healthier products for women, such as the Baked! line of chips and Flat
Earth fruit and veggie crisps.. These products were often healthier than the crackers and
other snacks women had turned to, and they had performed well in testing. But despite
healthy advertising and distribution, these products were underperforming in the market.
Crossover Note 16.
Frito-Lay decided that efforts by individual brands would not be enough to reverse the
decline in purchases by women. They decided to combine Flat Earth, Baked! Chips, 100
Calorie Packs and a re-launched version of SmartFood popcorn. This would be a
“Women’s Portfolio” with a mandate to find a way to get women back to the chip aisle.
b) Resulting Business Objectives
To reverse the multi-year decline in women’s trips to the chip aisle, and deliver 10%
sales growth for the combined brands of the portfolio.
c) Budget Range/Share of Voice
The annual media budget for the US was over $5 million.
STRATEGY & INSIGHT
a) Analysis and Insight
We quickly realized that this problem needed a bigger solution than talking about the
benefits of the individual brands. It wouldn’t be enough, as women had heard this type of
messaging before. And research showed that women – even when standing directly in
front of these newer, healthier brands in-store – said that they saw nothing in the chip
aisle for them. The challenge was that women had completely stopped seeing the chip
aisle as a destination for their snacking needs.
The portfolio target was women who snack but often feel conflicted about their snacking
choices. To solve this problem, we looked at women’s behavior through snacking
ethnographies, in-store shop-alongs, and metaphor elicitation studies that deconstructed
the images and language women use around snacking. We studied the way women’s
brains were wired to process information, make decisions, and feel emotions like guilt.
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The obvious conclusion was that women feel almost universally conflicted and guilty
about snacking, and that this guilt and conflict extends into virtually all aspects of their
lives: women are their own toughest critics. But it was also equally clear that this
observation was a well-travelled path for women’s snack food communication.
The real insight came when we realized that this sense of conflict produces an incredibly
deep, fascinating and rich amount of passion and rituals. The way women talked about
snacking amounted to a secret language, often with elaborate and funny rationalizations,
justifications, half-truths and white lies (“If I eat it standing up, it doesn’t count — wink
wink”). The women on the team realized that we all did this.
When women shared these moments with each other, something interesting happened.
There was a palpable release – a sense of “wow, that’s so me” and “I’m so glad I’m not
alone.” These were powerful, liberating emotional responses. Crossover Note 11. And yet
we realized that most competitive marketing effort treats women’s snacking behavior in a
superficial and inauthentic way. Crossover Note 2. This created a huge opportunity.
b) Communication Strategy
This was not just to show that we understand guilt around snacking, but to demonstrate
that we get the language and rituals. We wanted women to identify with and laugh at the
way we talk about ourselves, our bodies, and snacking. We believed that if we could
prove that we shared a deep and insightful understanding of this world, two things would
happen. First, it would help women believe that Frito Lay had designed snacks that truly
are made with their needs in mind. Second, it would create the same powerfully liberating
emotional release—the sense of “that’s so me” that we’d observed.
This would encourage women to share and discuss the work with others, and help spread
the campaign through word of mouth. In essence, becoming a medium for our message.
CREATIVE EXECUTION
We decided that the best way to demonstrate an understanding of women wasn’t to
advertise to them, but to create content.
Our target loves online content, from games,
to web videos to e-cards – and they share
these as a way of connecting with friends
and family. With this in mind, we created a
comedy series called “Only in a Woman’s
World.” It explores the strange and hilarious
moments and rituals around food, exercise,
relationships and life that make sense only
to women. It revolves around four female
characters, each representing a different side
of women’s lives.
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The series is presented by our portfolio of brands, but crucially it is entertainment, not
advertising. It is presented on the web, and new webisodes are released every few weeks.
A ‘season’ of 18 webisodes was created, ranging from 40 seconds to 2 ½ minutes.
Dozens of comic strips were distributed in magazine and newspaper comic sections.
For people who want to get more
deeply engaged, we also created a
website - www.awomansworld.com which features games, e-cards, the
ability to personalize an avatar in the
style of the series characters for use on
Facebook and other social networks, a
forum to suggest stories for future
episodes, and other interactive tools.
Because the series is only lightly
branded, to communicate product information we used these same characters and other
creative elements from the series in TV, print ads and in-store POS materials.
Example of Print Ad
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MEDIA EXECUTION
The creative and media strategies needed to work seamlessly together, placing content
where women already were, rather than asking them to come to us. The webisodes were
delivered via a hosting partnership with
TV star Brooke Burke (“Dancing with
uber-popular women’s hub Glam.com, a
the Stars”) at the red carpet premiere.
portal that receives more than 40 million
unique visits a month. The series appeared
as part of the Glam content; Glam staff
bloggers wrote about the series to integrate
it further into the content world, and created
their own avatars based on the characters.
The webisodes were also hosted in parallel
on YouTube plus other video sharing sites,
as well as on our own campaign website. A
Twitter account and Facebook fan page
allowed for further engagement with the
characters, and updates on the release of
new series content.
Our treatment of the series as content also
informed the launch strategy. For the first
two weeks we ran an unbranded trailer
online and in movie theatres. This was
followed by a red-carpet premiere in
Hollywood attended by celebrities and
covered by entertainment news shows.
Fifteen key female bloggers were flown to
the premiere in LA and given products to
review. An ongoing partnership has been created with them, and they have all provided
regular positive coverage of the series and products.
The series launched in February 09. It has received over 300 million online impressions,
plus support of 923 TRPs in TV, and 862 TRPs in print.
BUSINESS RESULTS
The campaign has been a massive success against all objectives, and through June 09, the
results have far exceeded all expectations.
Women have returned to the chip aisle more than they have in 4 years. Sales across the
portfolio increased more than 10%, and the launch of SmartFood was 50% ahead of
objectives—leading to supply problems. For a portfolio with annual sales in the hundreds
of millions, these growth figures represent substantial revenue gains.
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CAUSE & EFFECT BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND RESULTS
While there was other marketing activity occurring at the same time, analysis has proven
that “Only in a Woman’s World” is the primary driver of these results. Recent market
mix modeling has proven that two thirds of the total portfolio growth is due to the new
campaign, significantly more than any other factor including trade spending, innovation,
and packaging changes (source: IRI Drivers on Demand).
Consumer response to the campaign has been as follows:
• There have been over 9 million views of the episodes to date.
• The “Mother’s Day” episode was the 3rd most shared video in the world that
period (source: AdAge Viral Video rankings), ahead of Coke and T-Mobile.
• The campaign is among the top 10 most subscribed sponsored channels on
YouTube.
• Over 3,300 people have subscribed to follow the campaign on Twitter, making it
the second most followed PepsiCo brand after Pepsi.
• Media coverage has come from the NY Times, CNN, The Economist, E!
(entertainment news show) among others. This has resulted in 135,000,000+
earned (unpaid) media impressions (source: Ketchum PR Tracker)
Most importantly, our client is extremely happy.
“Our ‘Only in a Woman’s World’ campaign has been an unprecedented success. First,
the unique nature of this portfolio-based approach has allowed us to stretch our dollars
and maximize our ROI far beyond what any individual brand campaign could. But even
more importantly, it’s allowed us to speak with our female consumers like we never have
before... and demonstrate that we understand her like few companies do. Their on-going,
unsolicited responses continue to amaze us.”
Gannon Jones, VP Portfolio Marketing, Frito Lay North America