Quaker Oatmeal
Events, Seasonal and Short-Term (BRONZE)
Client Credits: PepsiCo Foods Canada
Nancy Rooney, Director of Marketing, Quaker Snacks
Agency Credits: Juniper Park
Jill Nykoliation, Partner, President
Alan Madill, Partner, Executive Creative Director
Terry Drummond, Partner, Executive Creative Director
Barry Quinn, Partner, Executive Creative Director
Caroline Hart, Group Account Director
Stephen Bennett, Creative Director
Jessica Lax, Account Director
Greg Bolton, Copywriter (ACD)
Neil Gunner, Copywriter
Yuko Brown, Designer
Alexis Gropper, Copywriter
Johnnie Ingram, Art Director
Revital Grunberg, Producer
James Demello, Producer
Crossover Notes:
Crossover Notes: All winning cases contain lessons that cross over from one case to another. David Rutherford has been identifying these as Crossover Notes since CASSIES 1997. The full set for CASSIES 2012 can be downloaded from the Case Library section at www.cassies.ca
Crossover Note 1. What a Brand Stands For.
Crossover Note 2. Brand Truths.
Crossover Note 12. Changing the Goalposts.
Crossover Note 16. When a campaign stumbles.
To see creative, click on the links that are embedded in the case.
Section I — BASIC INFORMATION
| Business Results Period (Consecutive Months): | Jan 17, 2011 – March, 2011 |
| Start of Advertising/Communication Effort: | Jan 17, 2011 |
| Base Period as a Benchmark: | Calendar 2010 |
Section II — SITUATION ANALYSIS
a) Overall Assessment
This is the story of how a 135 year-old brand that had become stagnant transformed itself to achieve tremendous growth in both volume and brand equity by dramatically reframing the lens of how consumers viewed its product. [Crossover Note 1]
Quaker Oatmeal has long known the importance of a healthy breakfast. Quaker, the leader in hot cereal, has helped generations of Canadians start their day with its nutritious oatmeal. However, despite the fact that the Quaker brand is held in high regard and its oatmeal is well liked, oatmeal had come to be perceived as “boring”. Have you heard the phrase “as boring as oatmeal”? Exactly.
The average person eats breakfast 314 times per year, but oatmeal was only part of 7 of them. So what were Canadians eating for breakfast? The dominant choices were cold cereal (32%), coffee (31%) or juice (24%)– not mutually exclusive. In addition, other options had gained significant momentum: over the past 10 years, yogurt had increased by 340%, and non-toasted bread products by 167%.
Breakfast fragmentation aside, breaking through in the cereal category is incredibly tough. Quaker competes against the cereal giants, Kellogg and General Mills, who outspend Quaker 10 to 1.
So with a fraction of the dollars we had to make Quaker Oatmeal “hot” again!
b) Resulting Business Objectives
Resulting Business Objectives
•Increase 2011 gross sales by +7% vs. year ago
•Increase share by 1pt (from 66.7 to 67.7) in calendar year 2011
Resulting Marketing Objective
•Increase purchase frequency of current consumers.
oIf current customers purchased one more box per year we would increase our sales by $51 million.
c) Annual Media Budget
$3 – $4 million
d) Geographic Area
National
Section III — STRATEGIC THINKING
a) Analysis and Insight
To win in this massively fragmented category we needed to understand not just people’s view of oatmeal, but their views around breakfast and morning. There were three pillars that formed the foundation of our strategy:
1.Consumers have a deep rooted universal truth around morning and breakfast — “Every day is a new opportunity to realize your true potential. The secret lies in starting right. Breakfast is a key part of that; how you fuel yourself sets the trajectory for what you can achieve each day.”
2.There is a massive dichotomy between consumer beliefs and behaviours around breakfast. While 93% of Canadians believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, only 44% were eating a healthy breakfast. Why?
•The time pressure to get ourselves, and our families, out the door in the morning causes us to compromise. Consumers said, “I often end up just grabbing something.”
•Confusion around what really makes a healthy breakfast.
3.Encouraging new behaviour in the morning was going to be hard. Mornings, and breakfast, are very habitual. Each of us has a routine to get ourselves and our families out the door. We generally wake up at the same time and from Monday to Friday we tend to eat from the same narrow repertoire of options.
If we wanted to create a habit of eating Quaker Oatmeal for breakfast, we needed to give people a highly compelling reason to change their behaviour.
b) Communication Strategy
Consumer behaviour was in stark contrast to the truth of Quaker Oatmeal. What other breakfast choice can provide the nutrition that Quaker Oatmeal does?
•Whole grains that fuel your body
•Fibre to keep you feeling full
•Oats that contribute to heart health and lowering cholesterol
•Grounding warmth
•150 calories
Quaker Oatmeal is quite simply a perfect start to the day. In fact, this was the message and proud tone that Quaker Oatmeal had shared with consumers for its first 90+ years! Yet over the following years Quaker’s tone had become warm and sleepy, and had stopped leading with the nutrition message. [Crossover Notes 2 and 16]
To break through, and combat the competition’s massive 10x investments, simply saying we were a healthy choice wasn’t going to cut it. We needed people to ask themselves: “Is what I’m reaching for going to fuel me for what I need to accomplish today?” This would take a
massive “wake up call.” So we asked Canadians a bold question:
Does Your Breakfast Make You Amazing?
Section IV — KEY EXECUTIONAL ELEMENTS
a)Media Used
TV
Social media program
Facebook engagement ads
Celebrity partnership
b)Creative Discussion
Our budget was small, so every piece of communication had to work extremely hard to break through and inspire people to rethink the choices they were making.
Gone is the sleepy tone. We would instead bring the energy and confidence that Quaker Oatmeal brings to people each morning. And we would proudly make sure that every Canadian knew that there was no better way to start each day than with the nutrition of Quaker Oatmeal.
i. An anthemic emotionally driven :60 second TV spot launched Quaker’s new platform. Vignettes featured Canadians fueled and ready to take on the day – an early morning skating practice, a run through the city at dawn, the first to turn the lights on at the office, a welder sitting high above the city. People seizing the day by starting it off with the right breakfast. This cinema-graphic spot was elevated by the music “Hoppipolla” and the voice of a Shakespearean actor. And it builds to a crescendo by asking: DOES YOUR BREAKFAST MAKE YOU AMAZING? [Crossover Note 12]
ii. A product-focused :30 second TV spot clearly put Quaker Oatmeal in “every day” context. It focused on the young girl from our anthemic spot while she eats her Quaker Oatmeal for breakfast. The same dramatic voice explains that the Canadian oats in Quaker Oatmeal will not only fuel the big day she has ahead, but the even bigger life that awaits her. The takeaway was simple – when you choose Quaker, you are helping to set yourself and your family up to achieve your potential. This spot also builds to a crescendo and asks: DOES YOUR BREAKFAST MAKE YOU AMAZING?
iii. Our social media program engaged Canadians to help us deliver Quaker to those in need.
Quaker so strongly believes that eating a nutritious breakfast is critical to setting you up to achieve your best, that we wanted to ensure that every Canadian had access to the amazing nutrition of Quaker Oatmeal. Our “Build a Bowl” program on Facebook was built with the goal of delivering 2 million bowls of Quaker Oatmeal to Canadian families in need, along with Food Banks Canada.
Here’s how it worked:
•We invited consumers to join us on Facebook to help “unlock amazing for all Canadians.” Here they could build a customized bowl of oatmeal that best matched their personality – colours, designs, eyes, mouth, flavor of oatmeal, etc.
•For every bowl created, a real serving of Quaker Oatmeal was donated to a family in need.
•To help spread the word, consumers could share their “bowl” with their Facebook friends, or by making it their profile photo.
•As incentive to spread the word rapidly, we structured it so that as more bowls were created, more and more prizes were unlocked.
To quickly build exposure of the “Build A Bowl” Program, we engaged 2010 Olympic Gold Medalist, Alex Bilodeau, to help spread the word. As the 1st gold medal winner at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games, Alex’s race down the mogul run was a defining and proud moment for Canada. His love for his family became an equally defining Olympic story and made Alex an endearing example of a person reaching their potential. Alex has been eating Quaker Oatmeal since he was a child, and continues to do so as part of his world-class training regimen. Alex eats Quaker Oatmeal to fuel his “Amazing!”
c)Media Discussion
The campaign was launched in mid-January 2011 – a time when people are highly receptive to making healthier changes in their lives. Our media plan was created to “own the morning”:
•A media partnership with Breakfast Television involved a nutritionist to help people understand the virtues of oatmeal and how it can help people on their journey to a healthier lifestyle.
•TV aired during key morning shows across several National networks.
•The :60 second ad, “Wake Up Canada,” ran for 4 weeks for a total of 100 GRPs
•The :30 second ad, “Big Day,” ran for 8 weeks for a total of 1,410 GRPs
•Facebook Engagement ads ran for 8 weeks
Section V — BUSINESS RESULTS
a) Sales/Share Results
•Quaker Oatmeal grew +18% vs. year ago (Jan – March 31 2011). This far exceeded the goal of 7%.
•Quaker’s share of oatmeal grew by +1.7 points, from 66.7 to 68.4 (Jan-Mar 31 2011). This exceeded the goal of +1.0 point growth.
•Purchase intent went up from 31% to 55%. (Source: TNS Performance tracking 2011.)
•Quaker reached the #1 spot for “Manufacturer I trust” at 73% ahead of Kellogg, Nature Valley and Kashi.
•Quaker grew to #1 as “The Leader in Nutrition,” from 59% to 63%.
•Quaker grew to the #1 “Manufacturer of high quality products,” from 68% to 71%.
•“Worth paying more for” increased significantly from 19% to 40%.
•“Brand purchased most often” reached an all time high of 22% (from a base of 6% in Feb 2010). (Source: TNS Performance tracking 2011).
b) Consumption/ Usage Results
c) Other Pertinent Results
d) Return on Investment
Section VI — CAUSE & EFFECT BETWEEN ADVERTISING AND RESULTS
a)General Discussion
i. We achieved above-norm scores in TNS ad tracking (Source: Advertising tracking January – March 2011):
• “The ad was enjoyable to watch” (above norms at 33)
•“The ad made the brand appear to be appropriate and fits with my lifestyle and needs” (above norms at 19)
•“The ad gave me a good feeling about the brand” (above norm at 21)
ii. Consumer response echoes the brand’s new strategy. The following quote on our Quaker 1-800 line illustrates the impact we’re seeing in the hard numbers: “I want you to know how much I love your new TV ad and how inspiring it is to me. This morning I went to grab my normal cereal. I thought of your ad and asked myself, will this make me amazing? I put it back, and made some oatmeal.”
iii. We achieved overwhelming response to the digital engagement program:
•2 million breakfasts donated through the Food Bank of Canada
•21,000 Facebook “Likes” (from a base in January 2011 of 2,500)
•22,000 virtual bowls made
•11 million media impressions earned
•Facebook showcased our program as an example of how to produce innovative Facebook cause-marketing programs
“We are proud of the business results, and equally excited that Canadians are increasingly starting their day with amazing Quaker nourishment. In doing so, we were able to unlock millions of amazing Quaker breakfasts for Canadians in need.”
~ Kathryn Matheson, VP Marketing Quaker Canada Marketing
b)Excluding Other Factors
Spending Levels: Quaker ad spend remains the lowest in the category.
Pricing: None
Distribution Changes: N/A
Unusual Promotional Activity: N/A
Other Potential Causes: N/A