Campaign Summary

To stand out in the year of many birthday celebrations, Nestle's campaign for its packaged water brand, La Vie, aimed for insightful creative strategy to celebrate its own 30th brand birthday. While other brands highlighted the big impact that they have brought to consumers and the country, La Vie celebrated small daily moments that it has with consumers.

Strategy

Objective

Nestle's campaign objectives included breaking the stereotype of birthday celebrations to turn around business and brand performance.

Successful metrics were three-fold:

• Business growth with double-digit growth rate versus YA
• Increase brand power and attribute of "meaningful brand"
• Media metrics garnering effective reach at efficient cost (below the normal benchmark)

Context

COVID-19 disrupted the meaningful connection between La Vie and consumers, negatively impacting the brand and business metrics. To turn around on brand and business, La Vie took the milestone of its 30-year birthday celebration to revive the meaningful connection with consumers.

Creative and Media Strategy

How would the La Vie's campaign stand out? The approach focused on the idea that while other brands celebrate their macro impact, La Vie would focus on the small daily moments with consumers.

Execution/Use of Media

The campaign targeted consumers between the ages of 25 to 35 who have used La Vie for the last 30 years.

Overall, the campaign leveraged four levers to increase three key metrics by two times to be the No.1 brand in packaged water. The levers included:

• Insightful creative
• Personalized communication
• AI-empowered reach and frequency media planning
• Full digital funnel strategy

The execution of the 4 levers included:

• The team built a 45-second hero video that rewinds the small daily moments with consumers and promises to continue with them in the future.
• The team developed different cuts of 15-second versions to target different audiences. For millennials with kids, the team used the cut that reminded how meaningful La Vie can be for kids' development. For gen Z, the team used the one that celebrated La Vie's healthy hydration in their daily active life.
• To maximize reach and frequency, La Vie decided to experiment with the AI-empowered Video View Campaign provided by YouTube, on top of standard platforms such as YouTube True View. The solution enables assets to be delivered across YouTube's inventory, both In-Stream and In-Feed, and tap into Shorts as a new and important source of inventory.
• The team completed the campaign funnel by driving consumers further to the engagement and consideration stage — in which the brand asked consumers to submit their own small yet meaningful daily moments with La Vie. For the purchase stage, the company leveraged advanced social commerce and CRM tools such as the chatbot conversation to drive for e-commerce conversion and grow business.

Business Impact

The campaign was designed with a mobile-first approach and the majority of the media budget is spent on mobile. Besides, the campaign successfully applied the new technology and tools designed for mobile with:

• Video View Campaign Platform of YouTube. The platform ensured the maximized reach and frequency at right moments and no matter wherever consumers are browsing with their mobile devices.
• Social Commerce and CRM. Eighty-five percent of the social commerce budget was allocated for mobile, given consumers' behavior of shopping with their phone. The campaign is a top-of-class campaign in social commerce and CRM (reported by BCG) by leveraging the advanced personalization and tools on social commerce to achieve the very high conversion rate (20 percent), increasing the number of new users on social commerce by 10 times.

By 2022, the COVID-19 had disrupted the La Vie business and brand power significantly, as business had a double-digit decline, as well as a decrease of brand power and "meaningful connection" score.

The campaign exceeded its target setting. By leveraging the levers, the brand was able to bring impact to the three metrics — media, brand and business, including:

• The campaign reached 87 percent of the target audiences and was listed in BSI Top 10 social media campaigns in March 2023.
• Its video assets achieved 43 percent view rates — 1.2 times the norm.
• The Video View Campaign enabled the brand to gain 29 percent more views at 22 percent less cost. Also, the La Vie campaign was highlighted as the case study of Google's VVC application in APAC.
• The brand increased its metrics in both the Kantar Panel and Google's Brand Lift Survey. In Kantar Panel, La Vie gained 190 bps for brand power and 19 points for meaningful score. In Google Brand Lift survey, the brand gained 365 points for ad recall lift and 135 points for brand consideration
• Thanks to its gain in brand power, La Vie increased its position from No. 2 to the No.1 brand in packaged water.
• Total La Vie business outgrew the category by 12 times — significantly transforming its year-to-date performance.
• La Vie's e-commerce business doubled its size and its growth rate during the campaign was four times higher than pre-campaign.