Episode 84 - Lay's Flavours of China Ad Reviewed by Paddy Power, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson and Sky
How would you feel if a flavour of crisps existed that was the same as food your mother used to cook you? That’s the feeling Lay’s has tried to elicit in China, launching six new flavours and creating a social media campaign to underpin it all.
In this week’s Advertisers Watching Ads, we review the ad chosen by Contagious, and ask whether it’s a successful advocacy campaign that seized the feeling of the younger generation. How do the impressive campaign results stack up? And how repeatable is this digital campaign for Lay’s and for other brands?
Tune in to the latest episode to watch the ad created by Mindshare China and hear from our guests Emer Mc Carthy (Head of Brand for Paddy Power), Scheila Barboza (Global Media Director for Sanofi Consumer Brands), Chloe Chevalier (Digital Marketer at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Brands for Asia Pacific) and Sunny Bhurji (Marketing Director of Sky).
Transcript
The following transcript is automatically generated so may not be 100% accurate, but will give you a good idea of what was discussed.
Tom Ollerton 0:07
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and this is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads and discuss what's good and bad about them. We are brought to you as ever by contagious.com who has helped choose the other week, so please go and check those guys out after the show. But before we get to this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Emer Mc Carthy 0:30
I am Emer Mc Carthy. I'm Head of Brand for Paddy Power.
Scheila Barboza 0:34
Hi, I'm Scheila. I'm Global Media Director for Sanofi Consumer Brands.
Chloe Chevalier 0:38
Hi, I'm Chloe Chevalier, and I'm a Digital Marketer at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Brands for Asia Pacific.
Sunny Bhurji 0:45
Hi, yeah, I'm Sunny Bhurji, and I'm the Marketing Director of Sky.
Tom Ollerton 0:49
What a panel! Can you believe it? What a lucky audience we are today, and let's see this week's crazy ad.
Sunny, what's going on? How did that actually play out for the audience?
They have created a truly organic advocacy campaign, you know, really utilizing that insight in regards to 200 million people who move away from their hometowns and have created social currency by talking about the flavors from their hometowns they love and then wrap that into these limited edition flavors. And I think what they've done, as well as look at really the target consumers, these young people who are moving away, maybe going to university or moving for work and actually using a platform, I think it was that first co-created platform with TikTok. It's obviously done really well. You know, they've got huge uplift in sales, good brand recognition. Overall, a really great advocacy campaign.
Emer Mc Carthy 3:38
Really strong campaign. But my God, there was work going into that. I can see the hours that went in on the agency side. I can see the hours on the client side. Lay's initiated something from scratch and activation from scratch based on an insight around tastes from home. And that's hard. It's very hard to initiate an activation from scratch, rather than jumping on one that already exists.
Chloe Chevalier 4:01
My first reaction when I saw the ad was like, "Wow, just impressive scale, impressive numbers." I mean, it's kind of every marketer's dream, right? An impact on sales, an impact on the brand equity. I think it's just a great example of a Western brand that have localized their strategy for the Chinese market. I mean, as marketers, maybe we underestimate sometimes the learnings that we can get from China because they have such a different digital and media ecosystem that we might think that it's not replicable for our Western cultures. There's so much we can learn from them, and they are building new competencies every day, and it's such a fast pace.
Scheila Barboza 4:43
Wow, they really nailed a very good promotional campaign model. It's like the amount of awareness that you get, the interest, the opportunity to really embed the brand into a different culture in a very relevant way. I really think they nailed a template with this like that can be exported. As they export this model, they can always like make sure that they reflect local nuances being the media that they choose or like, or the consumer insight. More, more relate to the passion of the markets et cetera. But I, for me, I was really impressed by the format and the model, really. Really like it.
Chloe Chevalier 5:19
I also see that they really connected with values that are deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, which is to celebrate the heritage, but also to celebrate like the ambition in life of those young people like moving to different cities, probably to get jobs, et cetera. So it really resonates.
Tom Ollerton 5:38
Does anyone have a view on the paid media element of this? They said that 4 billion views. How much of these crazy numbers do you think are from the kind of groundswell of the 600,000 UGC moments? Or how much of that was just the fact that they carpet bombed TikTok? Probably incessantly...
Emer Mc Carthy 5:57
Yeah. I'd be quite skeptical when I guess 600 UGC videos is some amount of reach, right? 600,000. But I would question even the quality of that reach. What constitutes that 600,000? Is it just simply a hashtag? And if that's the case, then and what quality of engagement are we getting from that? So I guess that would be my challenge to this. And also, I'd like to see how traditional media could have potentially scaled this up or maybe... I felt like it existed within a digital world and didn't become something more real and more of a water cooler moment rather than a TikTok moment. And I would have liked to see how traditional media could have scaled up and even elongated the campaign into something kind of more than just a short lived stunt activation.
Tom Ollerton 6:48
And Chloe, I'm interested to get your pure innovation perspective. What builds would you've like to see in here? Emer, You made a great point about traditional media and extending it beyond TikTok. But as an innovation person, what would you like to see done differently here?
Chloe Chevalier 7:02
I feel like they could take it even to the next level in terms of co-creation, and maybe they should have just asked to their consumers, "So what is the next flavor?" So allow a bit of crowdsourcing and getting the consumers to really create with them.
Tom Ollerton 7:19
And how about you, Scheila? What would be your builds on this idea?
Scheila Barboza 7:22
One element that I would bring if was not COVID times, I would definitely bring up some outdoor media and some like, get it out. I would really like the Asia environment for outdoor media. It's so dynamic. But I guess because the timing was 2021, right? So maybe it was COVID times, they didn't like... Obviously, I would not sign off for outdoor if I was the marketing person, of course. I think in terms of platforms, in terms of TikTok, they chose quite well because despite the, you really get very high consumption there. I would say they chose well, really.
Tom Ollerton 8:01
So Sunny, I'm keen to know what, what can your team and what can the industry learn from this execution?
Sunny Bhurji 8:06
Number one is the kind of clarity of message and just staying true. So although I don't necessarily disagree, I do sometimes think certain campaigns do just need, can live in just one world. I think the other stuff would be to not be afraid of the unknown because you know, there was an opportunity here where, you know, different areas of China, you know. Was there enough of a difference in flavors of foods to be able to actually make, you know, six plus flavors? And there was probably an element of kind of, is this going to work and actually need to be brave sometimes and give it a go? And actually, if it didn't work, then the bonuses, it was only on TikTok, and you can take it down. And if it did work, then you know, you've got opportunities to think about a year or two.
Tom Ollerton 8:53
So unfortunately, guys, we are at the end of the recording now, so what I'd like you to do is give this campaign a vote and that's a vote out of five with your fingers. One, two, three... A three, a four, a four, and a four. That's a decent score for the Lay's guys in China. So thank you so much for joining us this week. What a fantastic panel, and we will see you all next week.
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