DANONE CLOVER Yogi Sip Case Study BY YOUNG & RUBICAM SA (Y&R)
This is the story of how one brand campaign transformed an agency client relationship, a consumer brand relationship and ultimately affected sales.
The Yogi Sip case study aims to illustrate how a small campaign became a massive multimedia success by handing the brand over to consumers. As a result, Y&R managed to create 328 TV ads for the price of one.
Yogi Sip, a fruit-flavoured drinking yoghurt was looking for a way to engage the youth market in an effective and long-lasting manner. Because drinking yoghurt tends to be viewed as the less refreshing drink option, Y&R had to re-position it as a delicious, fun and re-energising option.
But how? They knew they had to boost brand appeal and increase sales by expanding the drinking yoghurt market, but intended to resist the traditional above-the-line (ATL) route…
Diving deeper into the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) market, one begins to understand how highly competitive and cutthroat it actually is. Brand survival depends on a number of factors to remain relevant especially for those products seen as luxury or non-essentials: price, consistent branding efforts, promotional activities, innovation, new product launches and brand image. This becomes even more prevalent when youth is the core audience.
Today's youth are savvy, always one step ahead, belong to a wide variety of sub-cultures and are all about social networking. They want brands that entertain, delight and empower them, brands that stand for something and most of all brands that they can identify with.
By analysing the youth market Y&R found that Yogi Sip was already a well-established brand enjoyed by many, but that it had lost it's edge over the years as other brands came to the forefront of the "hip and happening". If the brand was going to survive or even get noticed within this market, it needed to become more relevant.
The agency began flirting with the youth market to start a conversation and a point of connection with them. That meant being prepared for the dialogue that would follow. Y&R decided to focus their efforts on utilising the web, social networks, mobile and digital media in conjunction with interesting ATL elements.
It was time to give the consumers a say in the advertising process and so they presented them with this unique challenge: Create your own Yogi Sip TV ad showing us how Yogi Sip is the sip snack that keeps you going and win R100 000! The winner would also get the bragging rights of seeing their ad flighted on TV.
As a result, the “Everybody’s Doing It For TV” campaign was born.
The first phase of the campaign was an announcement, declaring the competition open and encouraging consumers to enter. Y&R wanted to inspire the market to tell a story about Yogi Sip. It was important to show that everybody and anybody could be a part of this exciting idea, and budget need not be an issue. Entrants were directed to the website for tips and encouraged to shoot their ads on cell phones, digital cameras or whatever they could get their hands on. The agency created their own low budget TVC’s and flighted them as examples. They also made use of radio, outdoor and campus media to alert consumers to the mechanics of the competition as well as hints and tips on how to shoot an award-winning commercial.
Within weeks the website experienced a surge in uploads and the campaign started to gain momentum. Word quickly spread and website traffic increased exponentially as people directed friends and family to view their ads online.
Y&R then opened the voting, the second phase of their campaign a month later and launched a series of events in key cities around South Africa to promote and encourage the voting stage. They also created the Yogi character on Facebook who became a source of event and voting information. His status was regularly updated to include campus activation details and over the campaign period he befriended approximately 1000 loyal Yogi Sip fans who, in turn, passed on event information, allowing them to carry the brand message themselves.
The Yogi Sip events were star-studded occasions, resulting in massive press coverage, including features in Heat magazine, YoTV and gossip websites.
Once the voting opened, the response to the website began to take on a life of its own. Uploads grew into the hundreds and the videos were being viewed and voted for by thousands of fans daily. The average hits on the website per day went up to 50 000 and the number of unique visitors topped 65 000. Because website registration and the ability to vote required the purchase of a Yogi Sip for a unique code, sales were significantly boosted over this period.
Votes were coming in thick and fast and a few of the uploaded videos became clear frontrunners for the R100 000 prize. Four months after the competition began, only the three videos with the most votes were exhibited online as all voting stats were wiped clean and the top three began their final battle against each other for the R100 000 grand prize.
On 11 June 2009, after the website had experienced 4,362,341 total hits, Yogi Sip threw a huge, celeb-tastic party at FTV Cedar Square where the grand prize winner was presented with her R100 000 cheque.
By handing the brand over to the consumer, and letting them generate their own buzz around popular entries, the campaign was allowed to spread organically and effectively. Enthusiastic word-of-mouth, backed by fun-filled events around town, proved to be the key to engaging this tricky market.
Summary of results;
Instead of 100 ads for the price of one, Y&R exceeded their goal and achieved 328 adverts for the price of one.
The website had a total of 4 362 341 hits and 66 708 visitors including South Africans as well as visitors from other countries such as United States, Mauritius, China, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and Germany.
We built our client a database of 6481 unique registered users who were interested in the brand and whom they could tap into going forward.
We got everyone to “Do It For TV”, from the youth to their grannies
We got the media interested and thus generated free PR exposure
We recruited 795 friends, including South African celebrities, on Facebook, many of whom interacted with our profile and continue to do so.
Overall Yogi Sip increased in market share volume in a declining category during a recession.
But above all the campaign put Yogi Sip back on the map in the youth market proven by the Sunday Times Generation Next Youth Brand Survey 2009, where the youth voted Yogi Sip as one of their top 5 ‘cool’ drinking yoghurt brands, a vast improvement from having not made the list at all the year before.
