Advertising Case Study Unilever Facebook Executive Summary Company Background Client: Unilever owns 400 brands spanning 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products. These 6 7 ( ; 7 5 $ < ( $ & 7 brands range from much-loved world favourites including Lipton, Knorr, Dove and Omo, to trusted local brands such as Lynx and Persil. Marmite spread, derived from brewer’s yeast, introduced its Agency: Marmite Cereal Bar in October 2009, the world’s first savoury cereal bar. Objective Objective: To distribute samples of a new cereal In early 2010, Unilever launched a campaign bar and to drive awareness of the new on Facebook to distribute samples of its new product by increasing connections to Marmite Cereal Bar and to drive awareness of the new product. As part of raising awareness, the brand’s Facebook Page the company also sought to increase the number of users who connected to the Marmite Cereal Solution: Bars Facebook Page, the free public profile that A Facebook Sampling Ads campaign enables companies to share their business and to seed the sampling initiative that products with Facebook users on an ongoing let redeem a sample on the Facebook basis. The activity on Facebook was part of an Home Page integrated campaign that included print media to raise awareness as well as additional sampling Key Lessons: initiatives through digital Transvision screens and • Using Facebook to help launch a escalator panels. Mindshare served as Unilever’s new product can leverage both planning and buying agency for the campaign. the platform’s viral nature and the fact that users are more likely “Facebook offers a great to try products when they’re opportunity for us to recommended by their friends engage with our consumers in a place where they • Facebook can offer valuable are already spending lots earned media, as brand loyalists of time. The Marmite will continue to discuss products sampling activity is a great on Facebook long after an example of how we’ve worked closely with advertising campaign has Facebook to innovate in this area.” officially ended Amanda Smith Interactive Marketing Manager, Unilever Advertising Case Study Approach Unilever ran a heavy burst of activity on Facebook across a two-week period in February 2010. The company took advantage of Facebook Targeting to target its ads to mums and adults 16– to 44-years- old. Targeting on Facebook allows the most likely customers to be reached based on information they list in their profiles, without revealing the personal data of the people who fit into the targeting categories. Unilever ran a Sampling Ad with an ad headline that read “Free Marmite Cereal Bar” The Ad invited users to “Try the world’s first savoury cereal bar for free.” It also included social context, displaying the names of the users friends who had requested a free sample. • The overall engagement rate during the Once users clicked on the call-to-action in the Ad, campaign was 0.27 percent they were given the unique opportunity to fill out their shipping address, within the Ad Unit, providing • Through the Facebook sampling initiative, them with a quick and easy way to request a Unilever delivered 33,000 samples of the sample without leaving their Newsfeed. Marmite Cereal Bar in two weeks to the target audience of mums and 16 – to 44-year-old adults Unilever was the first UK Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company to run this format on • The campaign grew the Marmite core Facebook Facebook in the UK. Page by 10 percent, with a total of 300,000 people connected to the Page. By early October 2010, the number of people connected to the core Marmite Page had risen to more than 528,000 • 5,000 Fans were also generated on a tactical Marmite Cereal Bars Page • Status updates on the Page included comments such as “my free bar arrived, this morning, AMAZING! I’ll be buying lots of those” Results • Marmite took the unique approach of expanding • The campaign on Facebook generated 21.5 the campaign into the Marmite ‘Hate’ Facebook million impressions over the course of the Page with 160,000 Fans, where users could sign campaign up to ‘stop the spread’ ? 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