2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Coffee drinking habits start at the age of 18, hence a key strategic pillar for NESCAFE over the last decade has been to drive trial through sampling where most 18-year-olds are -- in universities. However, youth’s attention has become more fragmented than ever. They are more likely to run (straight) into a sampler than stop for a coffee. Even a free one. The challenge was to find an engaging way to sample NESCAFE in universities, and encourage CONNECTIONS, which is at the heart of NESCAFE strategy, while creating content that we could use on a mass (digital) level. We know that tensions run high during the first week of university, not due to academic pressures but because students find themselves outside their comfort zone. We designed an activation that could help freshmen students get to know each other, through a pop up café where we sampled free coffee. On each cup, we printed different questions as inspiration for conversation starters. Once students chatted, they could “connect” by tapping their RFD bracelets to become friends on Facebook. The campaign kicked off in Q4 2015 in Lebanon and the execution entailed: - Step 1: Choose a university, and collaborate on the ground with the sampling team to plan the event. - Step 2: Design the social media aspect, and produce RFD bracelets. Step 3: Coordinate with a production crew. A director with multi-camera crew was used to capture event on camera. - Step 4: Implement event, edit and post video. Engage with audiences and push video through online media. - Step 5: Pool answers, and plan the next activation based on answers and learnings (which is currently where we are at).

The objective was to create engagement, assess the likeability of the activation and determine the next location. On Facebook the video had over 6.5 million views, and 244K organic views. In fact, this was the best performing piece of video content NESCAFE has posted on Facebook. Engagement has been overwhelming with over 70K interactions and 62K likes. We also sampled DOUBLE the average number of cups of coffee. We’ve had great feedback from social media: Ayman Salah Al-malik?: ? “I loved it. If only they had this when I was in university I know things would be different. I really loved it.” Dina Alassaad:? ? “Lebanese American University-Beirut, would set a perfect socializing environment. SO. SO. Brilliant Nescafe! Wow, coming from a psychology major and being a positive psychology advocate, I say this is just inspiring!” Ghassan Assi?: “this is just too awesome!! so happy seeing things like this happening in the Arab world!?” The next activation is being planned as this is being typed…