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How Birds Eye engaged with their customers via mobile
With the rapidly increasing level of mobile penetration and research showing that in the next few years, more people will access the internet via their mobile than via a PC, brands are increasingly realising the need to use mobile both as a response mechanic on their marketing collateral, as well as introducing it as a key tool in their battle to improve the way they communicate with their consumers.
Sponge is the mobile agency which has been developing mobile services for brands and agencies since 2002. One of these was Europe’s largest mobile campaign to date, “Win an iPod” for Walkers crisps. The promotion generated over 17m responses with over 5% of the UK population participating. Since launch Sponge has been behind well over 1,000 campaigns during this time. As a result we feel that we can claim to have learnt many valuable lessons along the way, many of which were put into practice with Birds Eye.
Birds Eye is one of Britain’s best loved brands with over 8 in every 10 households buying Birds Eye products; it is a key part of the Birds Eye Iglo Group - the market-leading frozen foods business in Europe.
When Birds Eye approached their agency, The Big Kick to develop an on-pack campaign they had a number of goals: increase sales, encourage purchase of multiple products, develop loyalty and win back lapsed customers. Sponge helped the company surpass their targets for each goal.
Brief/Strategy
Birds Eye wanted the campaign to focus on three main categories of customer:
• “Striving Mums” – under 44, C2D with children (13.1% of the population). This was a key demographic for the campaign;
• “Safety Seekers” – aged 45 -64, C1DE (12.9% of the population);
• “Great British Cooks” - aged 65+, E (20.2% of the population)
Birds Eye wanted to gain a deeper understanding of its customer base and capture information on purchase preferences.
One of the main objectives was to interact on a regular basis with the Birds Eye core consumer. For busy mums on the go looking to get a quick and nutritional meal ready for their kids, mobile was recognised as an ideal way to communicate with them. It was important that entering the competition took only seconds and the prize pool matched the aspirations of this target audience.
The plan was then to continue to communicate with the consumer throughout the promotion, rewarding them with additional information deemed to be of value to them.
A mechanic was chosen, based around a powerful concept - “Be Mortgage Free”. There were two tiers of prizes to be won: £1,000 daily over 106 days, with all entrants entered into a second draw for a monthly prize for one winner who would have their mortgage paid off for each of the three months the promotion ran.
The choice of mortgage was highly emotive – for most people their home is more than just a roof over their heads, it represents the opportunity for financial freedom. It was decided to use insurance for the top prize to ensure that there was no maximum limit to the value of the mortgage reimbursed, irrespective of whether the consumer lived in a studio or a stately home. Furthermore, if the winner did not have a mortgage they could choose a cash alternative of £100,000 or they could pass the prize on to their immediate offspring.
The promotion featured on 50 million units of Birds Eye products, across 42 different product ranges from Fish Fingers to Garden Peas.
A text-to-win mechanic was to be the primary entry method, although consumers were also able to enter via the web and by post.
Solution/Execution
Sponge worked closely with The Big Kick, and developed an innovative prize draw application which would receive entries from mobile, the web and by post.
To enter, consumers were directed to text in a unique code that was found in each product pack to a shortcode. Alternatively, consumers could enter online or via a ‘No Purchase Necessary’ route. As each product pack had a unique code printed on it, we were able to determine the exact product which had been purchased by the consumer.
One £1,000 winner would be picked every 24 hours for the main promotional period. Every month there would be a master draw of all entrants received during this period, giving one person the opportunity to win their mortgage paid off in full.
This mechanic gave us three touch points where we were able to communicate with the consumer:
• Immediately on entry;
• 24 hours later with the results of the previous day’s £1,000 draw;
• At the beginning of the following month with the results of the monthly mortgage draw.
As well as responding to the consumer on these three occasions with the factual information relating to their entry, we also used dynamic messaging to include a personal targeted message to the entrants. As Sponge tracked customer purchases we were able to tailor responses to each consumer.
These messages were selected from three different databases for each SKU with additional information of relevance to the consumer.
They were:
Nutritional advice:
Parents need reassurance when feeding their children and in this case comforting messages included “Peas contain more fibre than same amount of Baked Beans” or “Did you know 5 Birds Eye Chicken Dippers have less saturated fat than one Pork sausage?”
Recipe ideas:
As 70% of Mums don’t know what they are serving their family by 4pm the same evening, we added value by making the text response message more relevant and personal. One of the more popular messages was: “Have you tried making a Birds Eye Fish Finger Pie? Layer fish fingers, beans & mash!”
Cross Sell:
Most compelling were the cross sell messages, which were designed to fulfil Birds Eye’s goal of encouraging their consumers to buy across category. Messages included “Bored with chips? Try Birds Eye Potato Waffles” or “If you like our Steam fresh Vegetables you’ll love our Garden Peas”.
Results
Results were very encouraging and translated into a notable uplift in sales across key categories.
Furthermore over 5% of participants “made and played” – they followed the purchase recommendation and then entered a second time with the code from their new purchase.
The targeted messages allowed Birds Eye to build a dialogue with their consumers and win their confidence. This in turn led us to ask the consumers who participated whether they would like to enter into an ongoing conversation with Birds Eye and receive recipe tips and product information via email. 11% of all participants chose to opt in!
Campaign results
The campaign was supported by a £1.5m TV and radio campaign featuring Suggs from Madness, and reached 84% of the population and 98% of Birds Eye consumers at least four times. There was also significant in-store POS activity.
The campaign generated 1.8 million entries, representing a 3.6% response rate, making it the most successful frozen food on-pack promotion in the UK.
Each consumer entered on average 2.1 times and over 100,000 consumers opted in to receive ongoing product and recipe information via email.
Gratifyingly for Sponge, the majority of entries came via SMS (53% of all entries) – this was particularly popular with “Striving Mums”. The top two postal entry products were Roast Dinner varieties, reflecting the more traditional habits of the “Safety Seekers” segment.
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