Tasked with elevating the brand of a relatively new frozen fruit snack in the South African market, Unilever and digital agency Liquorice went for an all-digital campaign that has successfully driven over 10,000 people to sample the product so far…with no manual distribution or mailing whatsoever.
“Fruttare has only been in South Africa for about 16 months and the campaign objective was to get mass awareness and encourage people to taste the product,” says Liquorice Digital Account Manager Andrew Paterson. “We decided to go with a mobile coupon offering a free sample, and created a fun, online mini-game based on fruit facts to encourage a memorable brand interaction.”
Visitors to fruttare.co.za/mobile are invited to “spin the Fruttare Fruit Wheel” on a mobi site and answer a simple question about fruit, after which they can enter their name, cell phone number and optional email address to get a unique wiCode mobile coupon SMSed to their phone. The mobile coupons could be redeemed at any store in the Shoprite Checkers retail group nationally.
“We were hoping for a 2.5% to 5% redemption rate, which would be the norm for a coupon campaign,” says Paterson. “But by mid-campaign consumers had redeemed over 10,000 of nearly 100,000 vouchers issued, an 11% redemption rate. It’s been so successful we have increased the budget and are considering a Phase 2.”
The digital-only campaign included Facebook engagement ads targeted to non Fruttare fans and a digital display campaign as well as the mobi site, says Paterson. “Over 85% of traffic to the mobi site was direct, which tells us that people were clicking on links they got from their friends. Even in mid-January, with little media running, we were getting hits. We had people posting the link on their Blackberry statuses, and one of our colleagues got sent the link by a friend who had no idea she worked at the company who was responsible for the campaign. We’re very happy with the way the campaign has spread.”
About wiGroup
wiGroup is a pioneering software business, with a focus on the development of mobile transaction and application technology, while specializing on the integration into a retailer’s point of sale software. The company was founded in 2007, has accumulated over 45 000 hours of development IP, provides mobile payment technology to over 40 000 retail lanes in South Africa, and has processed over R1 billion in transaction value during 2013. wiGroup’s clients include two of the largest mobile network providers in Africa (MTN and Vodacom), some of the largest media companies, agencies, brands and consumer applications, as well as enabling the two largest social network apps in South Africa (MXit and Facebook).
