winner case summaries 2019

In today’s cluttered media landscape, an ad that resonates with its audience, built on actual consumer insights is rare. Add to this, an emotional success story, advocating a social cause. Sarsabz Fertilizer’s ad achieves this, featuring Rabia Sultan, a progressive female farmer. The degree of restraint in product placement is noteworthy. Instead of putting spotlight on Sarsabz, it is the catalyst and we show Rabia as the hero. From being highest rated on Nielsen’s ratings for fertilizer industry to achieving record-breaking sales on Cotton crop; we’ve set the bar high.

A trucker’s livelihood is closely tied to efficient up and down movement on long routes, while complying to safety regulations. Delays very clearly equate to financial loss. Money taking priority on safety is the biggest threat and the behavior that Shell Rimula aims to discourage. The gray imports promoted by illegal reclaimers, selling at low prices make up the biggest challenge in category faced by legal players, making it difficult to sustain preference for quality brands, in 2017/18, Shell Rimula grew its brand preference from 14% to 21%

The Coca-Cola Food and Music Festival is the biggest celebration of food and music in Pakistan which targets youth families to come together in a safe environment. Coca-Cola brought people together by offering a perfect combination of festivity to our entertainment starved public. With over half a million visitors, It has proven to be the Largest/Most Entertaining and Successful Series of Branded Events across Pakistan. Creating a new trend of gathering consumers in large scale events, under International Health and Safety Standards, making the experience, one of its kind.

Sprite Spicy 6 was effectively able to build frequency differentiate from the competition in order to drive volume growth and build brand health by tapping into a new food trend that was relevant to its platform.

Flavored milk is a small segment within packaged dairy. To grow, the way forward wasn’t to grab a greater share of a smaller pie. Growing kids don’t like milk thinking it to be kiddish rather they opt for more “in” drinks with the youth. Competing with energy drinks and sodas wasn’t easy.  We needed to transform the category. To do so, we positioned Dayfresh FM as a ‘cool’ drink for the youth. Our efforts paid off. We gained a 222% volume growth and were well differentiated on all coolness attributes

Coca-Cola has been exploring the music platform effectively for a decade now, through Coke Studio. However, this was not directly proportional to the transactions. Starting this year, the brand initiated a parallel campaign celebrating Pakistani music, through all mediums available. This impact was phenomenal in terms of recruitment and driving the BLS score to an all-time high.

While music is the pulse of the Pakistan’s youth and is being exploited by global brands with big-budget platforms, there exists little-to-no functional connect between brand and platform.
Amid this content clutter, no brand had a more direct connect with singing than throat-soothing lozenges. So, we got rid of the instruments to focus on what was relevant to our Brand: VOICE.
Rather than latching onto an existing trend, we collaborated with a leading artist/label to launch Pakistan’s first Acapella music platform which racked up 14.3 Mn views by Q3 2018

With Coke Studio Explorer, we dove deeper into our cultural DNA to introduce our youth to the sounds and music of Pakistan – the 4 provinces and Azad Kashmir. We explored their indigenous sounds, instruments and ethnic music from each region and took it to a global stage. With the immense critical and international acclaim, Coke Studio Explorer was truly an embodiment of Passion for Pakistan generating immense pride for Pakistan and Coke (Studio) among the Target Audience

Shan Foods, a food mixes brand that tops the list in Pakistan’s progressive South, managed to take over the reluctant and tradition-proud Punjabis by challenging the patriarchal splits in the region through their communication and accomplished an astounding 26% sales growth and a 2.7% increase in its national market share that successfully turned them into a national leader in the category

“Crispy Fry launched in September 2016 and was competing against a giant like Knorr. Its biggest challenge was competing with Knorr’s R&D, sales, marketing budgets and experience. Both were launched within a year of each other, with a challenge to convert non-users to branded solutions.
With a SOS of just 28% Crispy Fry
managed outstanding Penetration at 117% compared to Knorr’s 66.7% grew 59% more whereas Knorr grew 49% less than the category rate
Crispy Fry, with a fraction of the resources of Knorr, became the market leader in 2018.”

The packaged cakes market is dominated by large players like Hilal and EBM in Pakistan. Being a new player, entering the market as the challenger to these giants, Good Goodies decided its success would be through strategy, not brute force. Using novelty in product, communication, and channel strategies, the brand effectively expanded the pie instead of sharing the existing one with the players fighting over market share. Within 10-months of launch, Good Goodies sold 15% of Hilal’s sales volume and captured over 11.57% of the market share.

Knorr Noodles built itself on a fun and adventure based positioning. All communications have focused on highlighting Knorr as a fun filled snack with its animated characters.Given the competitive heat around our differentiated positioning, simultaneously evolving media and entertainment landscape it was imperative that we take a leap in the way we communicate. We needed to come up with a new way of communication to reinforce and further strengthen Knorr Noodles.We developed a platform which could take over as the natural evolution from Knorr’s original stand point of eliminating boredom.

“The Edible oils category in Pakistan is driven by emotion-heavy communication, revolving around Pakistanis’ relationship with home-cooked food.
Mezan broke the clutter by picking a cliché in the culinary category, motherhood, and, flipping it on its head, reached out to not just mothers, but all women in our families who are “mothers-at-heart”.
Mezan was not only able to organically influence the social-media conversation on the depiction of motherhood in mainstream communication, but also reaped considerable growth in sales, compared to previous years, for its main brands Cooking oil and Banaspati.”

“Over the years, National recipes became a traditionally skewed brand. As Pakistani women embraced modernity and a younger cohort emerged as decision makers for the category, the persona of National was limiting its brand appeal vis-à-vis emerging needs of the consumers.
With ‘Nayi Soch ke Naye Zaiqe’ campaign, National broke societal stereo types around gender roles and successfully re-hauled the brand image into a modern and progressive one consequentially gaining considerable growth in Sales and user ship while laying the foundation for transformation of the National brand.”

Chai is the love of the nation. For NESCAFÉ, we have no choice but to gain share of throat from tea, other than inducting new users. Instigating a behavior change in the face of such statistics makes coffee an underdog beverage with a herculean task at hand. So, we placed NESCAFÉ into the consideration set of our desired audience via a conversation where an underdog challenges Pakistan’s king of hot beverage and the love of the nation: Chai through an online election.

“Aaj Kia Pakaein?”, a question asked by homemakers daily. The endless explorations result in several experimentations which often end up as disapprovals from the families. Mario’s Pasta decided to equip the homemakers with a world-class quality pasta available in different SKUs spiced with desi flavors. As a result, not only did Mario’s Pasta, a beginner become the fastest growing brand in the category within a year of launch, but also forced its competition, the giants, to work harder on their products and react with marketing campaigns clearly stating their anxiety.

Novella being an indigenous Pakistani brand of milk chocolate, despite being at par with the competition in quality, was struggling to gain share of the market. Competition being Cadbury, a global brand with years of legacy, has a strong distribution muscle and deep pockets for buying much higher share of voice on media. By understanding the TA precisely, we brought innovation in the product and created communication that resonated with the TA. Novella was able to stay on top of the consumers mind, doubling its market share in one year.

“Pakistan has a mobile penetration of 72% while only 15% of the population has access to formal banking. Mobile is an opportunity to convert people to the banking fold, since it allows remote account opening. 
Konnect launched in 2018.
While competition focused on agents and feature phone transactions, we were the first ones to make the Konnect app the hero.
Konnect acquired 1.5 million customers in just 6 months (which is 14% of HBL’s total customer base).”

Considered incurable and odious for decades in Pakistan, the seriousness of TB was never discussed on a mass level before. The 360-degree campaign launched as a movement, dared to de-stigmatize the disease, spread awareness of its extremity and how it could be eliminated through a timely treatment. Deliberate fear was created to take its symptoms seriously and getting it checked with specialized TB mobile-vans. This campaign has not only managed to unearth an issue nationwide, it also made the public an active part of this movement.

For the first time in Pakistan, an organization was tapping into the opportunity of regulating the highly unorganized form of donations given daily in the name of Sadqa.
A mobile-based solution was developed for harnessing these donations, and by spreading awareness through the campaign donations received in the name of sadqa doubled compared to the previous year. Just as significant, the amount of pledges for monthly donations all the year round increased to 5000.

“Air- Conditioners category has highly active competition where there is very difficult to differentiate and position your brand.The campaign was in continuation to Kenwood’s 2017’s commercial because of its effectiveness. This campaign is unique, a perfect example of how you communicate functionality of product while keeping your audience engaged with a story. Because of its witty insight and entertainment value, it went viral instantly and achieved great impact in proportion to media spending. 
This campaign further strengthened the consumer’s emotional bond that the brand started establishing in 2014.”

Genuine effectiveness test for this campaign was whether our innovation & campaign was successful in converting consumers from traditional taped diapers to the new Pampers pants.
The results speak for themselves, not only did the consumers love our product but our campaign exploited the insight & big idea well enough for people to start converting to Pants after being exposed to our message.
�Given that our Pants business has continued to grow since launch beyond the expected rates, we strongly feel that we are able to revolutionize the diaper industry

“Lemon Max has always been affinitive towards women and revolved its communication around them. This time it aimed to change to address one major issue; spouse-support in chores.
It wanted to create association of heroism by linking men to daily heroic-acts, like dish-washing, without considered negative. Campaign was communicated using all consumer-touchpoints resulting collection of 800,000+ stories, #2 Twitter-trending, 20% growth in top-end retail. 
It challenged long-standing notion that we, as a society, can beat this stereotype–today’s husbands do treat their wives as equals and feel responsible in sharing load.”

The Pakistani middle class believes in constantly calculating all their belongings and expenditures which leads to stress. We reinforced befikri (peace of mind) as Super Card’s USP and validate through BHT imagery parameters & revenue growth. 

Careem realized that in the digitalized world, consumers yearn for authenticity from brands. Monotonous, one-way pandering of content was not setting us apart from the crowd. We needed to break the clutter. Unlike traditional usage of social media by brands, Careem opened the channel for genuine, empathetic and relevant conversations. We found that anything that sparks a real connection is valued and translates into a more humanized experience for the audience.

The Wall’s Sandwich FIFA Campaign was the First Ever Sports Sync campaign in South East Asia that utilized the 4C Platform on Facebook and ULTRA Program. The platform allowed us to capture and build upon the live key moments throughout the tournament to stay relevant and create real time excitement for the consumers.

Coke Studio is Coca-Cola’s largest youth recruitment campaign and with Coke Studio’s primary business objective being ‘Uplifting the Nation’, the prime challenge for Coke Studio this year was to ensure it sustained the leadership position by reaching out to 100% of youth active on digital and uplifting them throughout the season by disrupting the entire digital space thus being top-of-mind to guarantee benchmark breaking viewership & engagement and guaranteeing Coke Studio’s leadership position amongst other branded music platforms.

“In a country where reliable and authentic sources of medicines are not easily available, even in the top urban centers, DVAGO was launched as the neighbourhood health and wellness experts, a novel concept, that trumped even the established local pharmacy chains.
By tackling people’s apprehensions about counterfeit medicines, expert medical advice and consistent availability, DVAGO was able to gain consumer’s confidence in a very short period.
DVAGO achieved 18% MoM growth, tripled its retail footprint, and surpassed social media targets, all within 40% of the prescribed budgets.”

Till 2015 Tarang was Pakistan�s largest dairy brand and contributed around 50% of Engro Foods� topline. But recurring product quality issues and growing competition resulted in mass consumer lapsing, causing a 42% market-share loss over two years.
To recover a declining consumer base, the entire marketing mix had to be revamped. A new product, packaging and 360-degree campaign was launched to drive the message, �Tarang makes tea so delicious that it makes your heart want to dance�.
The campaign significantly outperformed industry norms, Tarang regaining 88% volumes and 3% market-share.

The objectives were to create news around the world wide consumption and to connect to a younger audience through its global presence. The results successfully impacted upon the sales number and gave the global campaign the talk of the town.

This is a story of a brand that has become the most loved in a highly competitive category by driving aspiration and building consumer relevance. PSFW is an engagement platform that has become the biggest fashion collaboration in the country and not only gives the brand leadership in equity (+500 bps) and market share (market leader at 24%) but also made it stand out as the biggest beauty brand in the category.

“Calcium deficiency is a growing issue among women in Pakistan however awareness on the consequences of calcium deficiency is critically low. In 2017, being a socially responsible brand, GSK took the initiative to drive awareness & launched a public service campaign with a slogan “Strong Bones, Strong Future”.
Series of TV Commercials, Digital Films and Radio Spots featuring most prominent opinion leaders was developed and aired. The campaign was widely acknowledged nationwide and is an on-going campaign.”

“In Pakistan, only 27% people ranked education in their top 3 causes. We took on the challenge of creating awareness on education and partnered with the well-respected NGO, TCF (The Citizen’s Foundation) to increase awareness on education. We tied this cause with Lipton’s BCI of ‘being awake to what really matters.’Through our CTA towards the end of the film and our digital media assets, we were able to make consumers actively make a  difference in the lives of at least one child who is out of school in Pakistan. ”

Pakistan has the second highest number of out-of-school girls in the world. Only 15% of girls of a school going age complete secondary school, and 21% get married before they are 18.As a brand that believes in giving strength to our daughters, Lifebuoy Shampoo wanted to raise awareness on the importance of girl child education and enable them through scholarships.We were able to educate 1500 Girls, reach 6 million people and now we look forward to giving brighter futures to more daughters of Pakistan in the coming years.

Putting Pakistan on the global football map by creating a beacon of hope for all Pakistani football fans

POND’S changed the narrative of its Platform POND’S Miracle Journey from celebrating miracles to making miracles. Targetting the younger girls and helping them harnessing the 330 accomplished women from previous years to PAY IT FORWARD by mentoring the younger lot and creating a chain reaction of social change. 

“In January 2018, when the 6-year-old Zainab Amin was raped and murdered in Kasur, it sent the whole nation into shock and outrage.
Parents all over Pakistan were in a dilemma – how can they inculcate safe practices in their kids while talking about a tabooed topic like sexual abuse.We leveraged our mascots Chuck and Chatty to deliver the message of child safety while ensuring the comfort of parents and the ease-of-understanding for kids.

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While brands think of partnering with NGOs and social change organisations for seasonal campaigns, we reached beyond and aligned ourselves with those who stood for causes we cared about and worked to incorporate them into the fabric of how we operate.
Along with being mutually beneficial, this has also helped us with positive brand association and was so effortless for customers as they didn’t have to go out of the way and had the option to select a cause close to their heart through the app.

To raise awareness against child marriages in Pakistan, we created a first-of-its-kind “Bridal Uniform” — one that highlighted the true cost of an early marriage for girls: education. Collaborating with the country’s leading bridalwear designer, we designed a dress which merged a school uniform with traditional embroidery patterns shown by Pakistani brides on their elaborate outfits. We launched the dress by hijacking the country’s largest Bridalwear fashion show. The PR resulted in members of parliament taking notice and the country’s Islamic Council reviewing the previous law to now protect girls.

It was a tough year for McDonald’s due to restricted budgets, aggressive competition and price wars in the fast food business. Our strategic challenge was to attract new SEC Segments (SEC C) and people from small towns having preference for local food, without alienating the existing customer-base. We ventured into the untapped food category of street food and launched the first ever localized menu product Chapli Burger. A 360-degree campaign infused with Khyber Pakhtunkhawa cultural elements was launched with an intriguing social media stunt, ATL, BTL and Activations.

Restaurants, including international chains, were being raided and fined because of poor hygiene and food standards making people apprehensive about eating out. We used this concern to our advantage, building confidence in our Food Quality and Hygiene Standards by showing how our food is prepared following stringent hygiene and quality protocols.
We leveraged the human insight of on-going mind and heart conflict when it comes to choosing between delicious vs. quality food. The core idea of visualizing the internal conflict resonated with the consumer leading to break through results.

Ramzan is cluttered with many feel-good advertising campaigns that end up being merely motivational, the focus shifting from doing actual good. For Samsung, that wasn’t enough- the brand set out to feed 1 million people over the course of Ramzan and wanted to involve as many people in this initiative as possible. #DekhoMeriNazarSe encouraged Pakistanis to forget their discriminations and differences and help out those in need. Samsung’s pledge of the “Million Meal Challenge” was completed within the first 20 days of Ramadan, with over 1.1 million meals served.

“We relied on local insight and facilitated our customers to solve a common pain point while using social media effectively to communicate our proposition. This also served the dual purpose to align our brand with our people and help us effectively become part of the local narrative.We created a ‘Bakra’ Car Type with a pickup truck transporting a range of goats to customers to be selected, communicated on social media.We facilitated the transfer of several goats and grew our installs weekly active users and trips.”

“Genesis of the Surf Ramzan campaign dates back to 2016, when the brand, having cemented itself as the most loved detergent of Pakistan, now looked to elevate its philosophy of ‘Dirt is Good’ to not only defend this market and thought leadership against competition, but also to take its equity to another level. There was a natural association with Islamic values that consumers already saw in Surf Excel, featuring kids pulling off small acts of heroism. Ramzan, hence became the perfect occasion to convert brand affinity to unflinching brand love. “

“Canbebe celebrated Mother’s Day by honoring the efforts of mothers and by reminding everyone that society needs to be more understanding about their roles now than ever before.
The campaign brought forth a change in the orthodox perceptions about a mother’s role and responsibilities and established Canbebe as a socially responsible brand that values strong support frameworks within families that help a mother raise a child in a loving environment.
It gained virality on Mother’s Day and became a topic for discussion among women across Pakistan”

“* To achieve sales worth PKR 1 Billion end of launch year by building usage frequency in the cupcake category
* Get market share of 10% in the first year – the KPI was set on the benchmark that in biscuits category with 1500 players brands achieved 1-2% market share in 1 year, Cupcakes was a 6billion market with 1 player
* Establish “Cake Up” as the preferred choice that not only offers wholesome goodness but creates emotional relevance and differentiation for the brand”

Shoop, a local player was competing against MNCs enjoying an accumulated market share of over 90%. The brands had been targeting the kids segment for the past 20 years and have driven the market to a point of saturation. To stay afloat, Shoop needed to create a blue ocean which it did by successfully repositioning itself and coming up with an all-inclusive norm breaking campaign that does not limit instant noodles to being an ‘only-for-kids’ snack. The results showed a growth twice as fast as the category.

RIO is the country’s largest cream-biscuit brand. Despite years of communication for rallying the brand under the ‘fun’ banner, fun remained strongly associated with the rival cream-biscuit brand. Changing RIO’s story from fun to something else would be too risky. So we kept the story; changed the storytellers. An entire species of playfully mischievous characters was developed to captivate the attention of kids. This outlines a clear fact: it’s not just the story, but also the storytelling that can have huge impacts on brand metrics.

Having cemented itself as the most loved detergent of Pakistan, Surf Excel looked to elevate its philosophy of ‘Dirt is Good’ to not only defend this market and thought leadership, but also to take bolster further its equity. There was a natural association with Islamic values that consumers  saw in Surf Excel, thanks to its legacy of communications featuring acts of heroism and goodness by kids. Ramzan, hence became the perfect occasion to convert brand affinity to unwavering, unparalleled brand love and the brand embarked on this journey in 2016.

Shan had the position of market leader for several years but was losing out to its biggest competitor, National who had been investing heavily in its brand equity through a more emotional positioning. 2014 onwards Shan lost its leadership position to National. The gap between the two brands started widening with National going on an upward and Shan on a downward trend. Things didn’t seem good for Shan but it made a comeback with a campaign that spanned over 3 years and regained Shan’s position of dominance over National

Nestle Bunyad, founded on the insight that every third child in Pakistan is micronutrient deficient, has come a long since out inception. Nestle Bunyad, with its super clear proposition that tackles a real world issue has shown sustained success over the last decade. Our brand purpose of strengthening emerging families by fighting iron deficiency gave rise to stellar performance where we challenged the incumbent, grew on the basis of our relevant benefit territory and stayed on strategy of raising awareness and fulfilling our promise of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Ufone was no. 4 in a 4 player market. The market was extremely competitive with over the top advertising, crazy price cuts and unkept promises. There were also very strong internal and external rumours about Ufones sell off as well, which was hurting employee morale, and general public confidence.  Ufone needed a product and communication to bring it back from the dead. Something that could win back customer trust, and help us regain share in an extremely competitive price sensitive market. 

Over the last 4 years, Coca-Cola became the #1 sparkling beverage brand in Pakistan delivering high double-digit growth and share-increase. Coca-Cola is 1.3X bigger than the next Sparkling brand. Coca-Cola has continued to drive its association with music and meals whilst entering the uncharted territory of Football association. At the same time, Coca-Cola challenged tea moving beyond Cola-wars and making it a truly beverage war. Using innovative methods to drive consumption and association, Coca-Cola rapidly outpaced other Cola-competitors gaining an unprecedented leadership margin while reaching the pinnacle of Brand Love

The oldest financial institution in Pakistan, HBL’s growth is synonymous with Pakistan’s own. Around 100 million adults don’t have access to formal regulated financial services, accounting for 5-6% of the world’s unbanked population*. In May 2015, State Bank of Pakistan launched its Financial Inclusion strategy with a target of expanding financial access to at least 50% of adults including women by 2020. HBL made the highest level of commitment to achieving this goal by making it the core of its corporate brand strategy and demonstrated measurable impact through multiple initiatives.

This was our first Elections Campaign and we raised the bar higher for all. While other political campaigns have offered their customers commercial incentives, our campaign focused on long-term national impact.
Big Idea: Ungli Uthao – #VoteForDemocracy
Breaking through political noise by Speaking Like a Person, we used edgy slogans to come into the limelight.
Faced with a #BoycottCareem movement, we utilized this opportunity in disguise and educated the masses about their civic duty.
We rounded off by launching Jamhuriat Car Type inviting volunteer Captains of the Day, to #DriveForDemocracy

We took over the football conversation across touchpoints keeping the biggest challenge in check; Pakistan did not have a football team and additionally Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) was suspended. Coca-Cola made every football moment special for football fans starting from bringing the Trophy to Pakistan for the first time and activating the stadiums in the international arena, driving brand love and consumption.