2011 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Quaker Oats are an exceptionally versatile foodstuff that can be used to prepare a multitude of dishes. However, in KSA the brand is almost exclusively used to add flavoor or texture to soup, during the Holy Month of Ramadan –very functional usage. Our problem was that whilst Quaker was top-of-mind during the 30 days of Ramadan (85% of annual sales), the brand rapidly lost relevance and saliency afterwards. The challenge was to breakthrough this inertia and encourage Saudi women to use Quaker regularly throughout the year, not just during Ramadan. Through research we found that the sales outside of Ramadan were being generated by a group of ‘female food fanatics’ who enjoyed impressing peers with their recipes. This led us to create the ‘World’s Largest Oats Recipe Book’ – an opportunity for foodies to share their oat recipes and then inspire others.

Success of the Campaign

- 2,872 unique oat recipes were uploaded, making Akbar Kitab the largest Oat-based recipe book in the World, 44% higher than targeted. - 70,000 unique visitors to the site, spent an average of 5 minutes interacting with the content. - Post campaign and half of women now agree Quaker Oats are ‘for everyday consumption, whilst 42% agree the brand is ‘modern and up-to-date’. - Finally, 55,000 cases of Quaker Oats sold during the campaign, five times greater than initial targets.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We began the campaign by joining forces with ‘Fatafeat’ – the number one Arabic food network in the Middle-East. 15” TV trails and branded segments within programming were then used to drive would-be recipe uploaders to the microsite. Once campaign momentum began to gather and the number of recipes started to increase, we started spreading the books content to a wider audience. In addition to TV advertising, we also featured a ‘recipe of the day’ on Fatafeat. Editorial content was spread across a number of food related sites and portals. SMS, social networks and email were also used to encourage people to participate and voting. Together with Fatafeat we created a series of ‘live cookery shows’ across KSA and ran recipe display stands at universities informing students on the benefits/versatility of Quaker. Finally, educational POS and sales promotions were used to prompt trial of Quaker and drive shoppers to the website.