Vitamilk: 55 Provinces

Source: WARC Awards for Effectiveness, Entrant, Customer Experience,

2021
Downloaded from WARC

Vitamilk, a soy drink brand, launched a campaign in Thailand to increase out-of-home sales.

Thailand had one of the highest soy milk consumption rates in the world, but it was mostly
consumed at home, which had led to a sales decline because people had been spending more
time out of home.
Consumers interested in healthier products were also interested in travel, so Vitamilk changed its
packaging to depicts Thailand's 55 provinces and partnered with the Tourism Authority of
Thailand to develop a first-to-market image detection mechanism activated by the pack.
Vitamilk partnered with messaging platform LINE so that users could scan a bottle of Vitamilk and
receive travel tips, worked with YouTube Vogon to customise videos, used TV to drive awareness
and collaborated with influencers.
Value growth increased by 22% and all Vitamilk attributes jumped to the top of the category in
terms of brand love, out-of-home consumption and sales.

Campaign details
Brand: Vitamilk
Brand owner: Green Spot Company
Entrant company: MediaCom, Bangkok
Market: Asia
Sector: Milk & dairy drinks
Media channels: Merchandise & free gifts, Online video, Packaging & design, Social media, Television, Word
of mouth, influencers
Budget: 1 - 3 million

Executive summary
Thais don't consider milk and milk-like drinks as suitable for out-of-home consumption, so as more and more
time was spent on the go due to longer commutes and changes in lifestyle, consumption of our Vitamilk soy drink
was suffering. We needed to change that.

Market background & objectives

Thailand is amongst the top in the world in soymilk consumption per capita, with only two key players in the
market dominating almost 70% of the market.

For most Thais milk and milk alternative RTDs is consumed daily, however consumed primarily at home. And
with more time spent out-of-home and new RTD alternatives for today's Thais our market became stalled.

Introduction of Sugar tax highlighted to consumers certain products which had traditionally contained higher
sugar levels, resulting in slower or declining sales

Further this the category has continued to expand in terms of different plant-based solutions using ingredients
ranging from nuts and grains, therefore offering greater interest and variety compared to soy drinks.

Overall leaders Vitamilk and Lactasoy, was feeling the pressure. We need to change that and change
perceptions of the brand and remain our leadership status.

Insight & strategic thinking

Our Insight - Thailand is amongst the top in the world in soymilk consumption per capita, but most if not, all
consumption is traditionally done at home.

At the same time rapid urbanization, longer operating hours, rise in spending power and higher access to travel
is keeping more and more Thais away from home. This hindered the growth of the category as whole and was
especially painful for leading brand Vitamilk.

We needed to change perceptions and behaviors of Thais in order for them to start considering soymilk and
specifically Vitamilk as an on-the-go drink.

In 2019 the category landscape was changing dramatically and Vitamilk's leadership position was put in danger.

In addition to the stalled growth potential due to changing lifestyles, the brand was facing increased competition
in the form of new players entering the market. In addition, the introduction of "Sugar-Tax" meant many brands
revamped their products, shifted to healthier options and offered other product innovations. Consumers were
suddenly flooded with news and tempting propositions.

Our breakthrough moment came about when research revealed an interesting lifestyle correlation - consumers
who were seeking healthier dietary options also had a higher affinity to travel.

We realized that the growing trend of domestic travel (+7% annually) could serve as our platform for behavioral
change. Travelers could become ambassadors in proving that Vitamilk should not be restricted to home
consumption but is actually a legitimate on-the-go drink. Our objective was to ultimately become their travel
companion.
Our Strategy - We set out to change perceptions of the category, drive out-of-home consumption and make
Vitamilk stand out in a surprising way.

When our competitors leaned heavily on identical health claims, we took a different route, aimed to spark our
target audience's inner explorer.

We started out by giving a complete face lift to our packaging so that it now depicted 55 provinces across
Thailand. Through a partnership with TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) and Google we developed a first-to-
market image detection mechanism activated by the pack, all you had to do was log into the campaign LINE
account and scan to instantly get interactive maps and travel tips for each of these 55 destinations, designed to
serve as the perfect travel companion and making it a shareable conversation piece at its own right.

We would promote our unique packs at the height of domestic travel season across multiple paid media both on
and off-line.

Our communication strategy was enhanced by the following:

1. Socializing and stimulating organic conversations with paid and earned media to create buzz and spread
awareness.
2. Creating excitement and momentum – driving consumers' participation and creating a sense that everyone
wants to get involved and share genuine stories and feedbacks. We would leverage LINE, Thailand's most
popular chat platforms to build engagement.
3. Fueling the inner explorer – Sparking a sense of discovery and converting an in-home product to a popular
RTD on-the-go product that can be enjoyed any time anywhere by literally proving that it travels well and

Implementation
The campaign consisted of 4 stages:

1. Our target audience was social first for everything, so to make the campaign big we made it 'sociable'. We
partnered with LINE since our target relied on it for their daily communication, chats, news and promotions.
This enabled us to communicate to them on the go providing the most meaningful and relevant content.
LINE became our hub for the campaign. With the revamped packaging, our photo detection program
enabled users to instantly scan a bottle of Vitamilk and receive instant travel tips, guides, hidden gems and
an interactive map based on the destination that's on the pack.

For every map you download you would also receive a bonus stamp, which then became collectable and
redeemable for exclusive travel theme prizes (airline-tickets, gas vouchers, etc.).

2. Our video partnership with YouTube Vogon allowed us to customize videos and adopt a hyper-targeting
strategy enabling us to be at the right place, time and mindset to recruit targeted users to our LINE hub and
convert to engagement.
3. To maximize scale we used prime TV, driving mass-awareness prior and during the campaign, becoming
an anchor discussed and shared on and offline.
4. Finally, we amplified all activities with over 140 influencers in an authentic way, sharing their experience
with a local and prideful touch and encouraging others to check our hub and find their inner explorer using
#teamtravelthailand and positioning Vitamilk as the perfect travel companion.
Performance
Our challenge was simple – don't change a widely loved product but change the context of its consumption. We
recruited new prospects to our franchise in a completely new way which lead to a record-breaker: Highest sales
record for 2 months consecutively! We were officially sold out of products! Value growth went up by 22% versus
previous period.

All attributes jumped to No1 in the milk alternative category for brand love, out-of-home consumption and sales
in CVS!

TV Reach >> 29 million on A15-49NW (82%+)

LINE Fans >> Recruit 85,597 Fans from Line 55 provinces activation with lower block rate at 24%
(comparing to LINE TH benchmark 60%+)
LINE Engagement / Participants >> 27,988
400K new fans on the LINE Official within three months
Over 400k Bottle Scans
Drive traffic to Vitamilk Website to join activities>> 1,212,842 Page views
VDO Views : 67.4 million views (from YouTube (Trueview + Vogon), Line TV, Facebook) = 4 VDO versions
+ Vogon based on location and keyword targeting)
Total Digital Reach : 23,014,370 (65%)
Social Engagement : 1,161,406 – 45% more than planned

And finally, Vitamilk was awarded for the very first time as Thailand's Most Social Power Brand – BrandAge
2019!

Lessons learned
The integration of activity that combing product usage with IMC directly impacted on sales with an 18% lift
compared to it separately.

Creating a new purpose in a fun and surprising way and riding the social buzz travelgrammer wave gave
substancial brand value that lead to more TOM awareness (30% increased from 2018 to 2019, and continue to
increase in 2020 at 38%)

It also made the brand more conversational, approachable and immersive into popular cultures.
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