Cornetto "Love Sparks" Campaign

Campaign Title : CORNETTO LOVE SPARKS CAMPAIGN

Client : WALL’S ICE CREAM SDN. BHD.

Product or Service being featured : WALL’S CORNETTO ICE CREAM

Summary

‘Two Become One’ was the perfect embodiment of ‘the conduit for love’ as it seamlessly weaved both functional and emotional aspects into 1 campaign through the universal expression of love – music. Encouraging consumer engagement with the brand and ultimately reach 15 million people while achieving impressive sales results.

Campaign Background

Wall’s Cornetto ice-cream is the market leader in the impulse, cone ice-cream segment of the market. Innovations are introduced on a yearly basis, each time coupled with thematic and tactical activation to support the new variant launch.

Nestle Drumstick takes its place as the strongest competitor to the Wall’s Cornetto brand; innovating and enhancing its product offerings approximately every 6 months with new ice-cream spinoffs that are more often than not, supported with a new awareness campaign.

Nestle Drumstick and other competitors have attempted to mimic Cornetto’s product and brand strategies with the support of a lower price point. This created a need for Cornetto to break away from the clutter while remaining distinctive and relevant to consumers.

Cornetto has always positioned itself as the ‘conduit for love’ – a social lubricant to enhance the bonding experience between opposite genders. We need to refresh and reinvent the positioning to fit in with the launch of 2 new variants – Sweetheart Brownies and Almond Praline Love.

Marketing Objectives

Hence, the marketing objectives outlined with the new variant launch were:

1. To successfully launch the 2 new variants and create a 15% increase in sales over the next 6 months.
2. To create strong brand recall and further reinforce Cornetto’s platform as ‘conduit for love’

Campaign Strategy

The Target

A conscious effort was made to focus on a campaign that would target the mass Malay youth segment aged between 15-25 years, as they remained the staunch supporters for Cornetto.

The Strategy

In order to understand them even better, an extensive qualitative study was conducted. One very dominant behavior that emerged was their affinity with Indonesian movies, music, artistes and even fashion. The singers and actors were idolized and their songs are placed on repeats whole day long. It became really cool to be mimicking what they did and how they conducted themselves – from dressing to choice of food and beverages.

Based on this insight, the client and agency collaboratively unveiled the nexus for this regional campaign - ‘Two Become One’.

Campaign Concept

‘Two Become One’ stays true to Cornetto’s essence as the ‘conduit for love’ while exploiting the key behavioral insight that is dominant in the Mass Malay youth segment – idolising Indonesian artistes and songs. In this instance, the concept resonates from both a functional and emotional standpoint.

Functionally…

- ‘Two become One’ was the manifestation of the product itself, two flavours in one ice cream cone (Sweetheart Brownies variant is made from Butter Vanilla + Butter Chocolate Hazelnut ice cream and the Almond Praline Love variant is made from Caramel + Chocolate ice cream)

Emotionally…

- Music is an expression of love. Effectively communicating the essence of the brand while engaging and resonating with consumers. It formed the affinity conduit between Wall’s Cornetto and the youth, providing a platform to bring people together.

- The concept was then given even more traction by getting talents from both Indonesia and Malaysia to collaborate in producing a hit song that would help generate buzz as well as create goodwill between the people from both countries.

To seamlessly blend the brand’s essence of ‘conduit for love’ with the concept of ‘Two Become One’ – we created a campaign creatively expressed as “Cornetto Love Sparks”.

Campaign Execution

The concept was brought to life through a theme song “Dua Hati Menjadi Satu (Two Hearts Become One)” performed by Dafi of Malaysia and Gita Gutawa of Indonesia. They became Cornetto’s brand ambassadors and played an active role in a 2-phase holistic campaign.

Phase 1 – Piquing the curiosity

Sparking off the ‘romance’ between our two celebrities.

We sparked rumours that Dafi & Gita were coming together and officially becoming an item.The story was seeded via an exclusive partnership with the No.1 Malay newspapers in Malaysia – Harian Metro.

Phase 2 – Building awareness and consideration through presence and sampling

Introducing the conduit that sparked it all off.

30-sec TVC

Thematic ad in the form of a music video showing how love sparks (Cornetto) brought 2 people together.

30-sec promo TVC/ Radio ad

Communicate the nationwide activation (SMS contest) where consumers only needed to text in the unique code on the ice-cream lid to stand a chance to win exciting cool prizes.

OOH and roadshow

Bus wrap and TVC-on-wheels for high visibility due to its mobility and street teams accompanying the ambassador on a nationwide roadshow to various locations to promote the campaign.

In-store

High visibility for the campaign at all cabinets at trade with sampling at selected retailers to encourage trial.

Website

The latest news of the ambassadors’ involvement in the campaign and the many activities/promo the campaign has to offer. The campaign generated high talk value as illustrated in the forum with overwhelming coverage on TV and print.

Phase 3 – Bringing the brand to LIFE

The consumation of love – the big concert

Promo TVC / print

Promote the concert as well as the mechanics to obtain the concert tickets.

Collaboration

We partnered with the number one radio station for Malay youth in Malaysia, Hot.FM to further promote the concert by having a singing contest where consumers may call in and sing the theme song for a chance to win tickets and even sing with the ambassadors at the finale concert. The music collaboration also gave way for the 1st time ever music video creation for Wall’s Cornetto, featuring our 2 brand ambassadors, performing their hit song together.

Roving Team

Street teams went around the country promoting the concert and generating hype by giving out tickets for every purchase of Cornetto Royale ice-cream.

On-Ground

At the concert finale, we brought together a group of artist from different music genres to entertain a crowd of over 3,500 people proving that music does actually bring people together.

Results

• From the business perspective, the Cornetto Love Sparks campaign gave Wall’s Cornetto a 25% sales spike in just 1 month during YTD Mac/Apr 2008 (Source: Internal sales data)
• Achieved RM3.5mill worth in PR value. Thanks to the uniqueness of this Indo-Mal music collaboration and partly to the allusion of a possible 'love story' blossoming between the 2 young artistes; the campaign received over 50 great, influential and memorable stories over 5 months – in mainstream newspapers, lifestyle magazines, entertainment magazines, television and online media. News coverage received hit total circulation rate of 5,147,670 with an estimated reach of approximately 15 million readers (Source: Perception Media)
• Over 190,000 SMS entries for the contest utlizing the code from ice cream lids (Source: Mobile Entertainment – delivery note report from Maxis, Celcom, DiGi)
• A whopping 3,500 entries for the 3-week long radio call-in singing competition despite the relatively small token RM150 prize money (versus past Hot.FM contests which offered up to RM16,000 in prize value)
• Online alone, the TVC garnered 147,943 views and the music video garnered 386,751 views. (Source: www.youtube.com)
• The Cornetto Love Sparks theme song “Dua Hati Menjadi Satu” reached the top 3 on Hot.fm Carta 30 (Top 30) for 4 weeks and stayed on the charts for a total of 18 weeks. On the other hand, “Dua Hati Menjadi Satu” had been on Carta Era (Era Hit List) for 9 weeks in total as well as having hit the no. 1 spot on Era’s Indonesian chart show, called Ngetop@Era. (Source: Hot.fm chart show and Era ngetop)