2017 Winners & Shortlists

LABANITA - THEY ARE JUST COWS

BrandLABANITA
Product/ServiceLABANITA YOGHURT
EntrantINITIATIVE MENA Cairo, EGYPT
CategoryFast Moving Consumer Goods
Idea Creation INITIATIVE MENA Cairo, EGYPT
Idea Creation 2 FP7/CAI Cairo, EGYPT
Media Placement INITIATIVE MENA Cairo, EGYPT

The Campaign

Labanita was doomed to be a ‘thing of the past’, once a market leader, but today standing for nothing against competition. Consumer and brand research showed that the consumers had no clear reasons to favor the brand over competitors. There were no clear distinguishing factors within either the product or the brand. The one thing consumers positively associated with the brand, were 2 old cow mascots from back in the day. If this was what data told us would resonate with our audience, it made sense to base our communications around this key insight, something that none of the brand’s competitors could claim. We would revive the brand’s tarnished mascots, with a fraction of competitors’ budgets; our challenge would be to compete and win in the cluttered Ramadan communications race by leveraging our prized assets.

Creative Execution

We gave our cows various jobs that we know cows just can’t do…selling medicine only to get the prescriptions wrong; working as mechanics and ending up blowing up cars…the cows were a public hazard! This gave Labanita the opportunity to become the savior! We created video stories for each of the scenarios and used video inventory to promote them on YouTube and Facebook. Targeting key terms who were more active in Ramadan, we leveraged on the high traffic the holy month presents to video platforms, our videos gaining viewership faster than usual. To the support the media execution, and to help bring out the personality of the cows through organic conversation, we set up social profiles for the cows to represent their story. This meant that the brand was able to respond as if the cows were responding Regular social media users and celebrities were both part of the conversation

Our videos reached 40% of our total target audience on Facebook through our paid campaign; Our video was shared organically by more than 4k users, achieving a good completion rate of 34%. View rates of our videos reached an average of 30%, well above the industry average; After only 2 months from the campaign, the sales of Labanita yogurt increased 70%. Top of mind awareness trackers soared up by 60%, brand love was at an all-time high, up 70% from the previous year and purchase intent likewise increased by 80%. The campaign’s positive impact spread to other Labanita products, increasing Labanita brand sales by 25%. Our gals were such a hit, top entertainment TV program, “ArabWood” featured them on their “trending online” segment and asked the cows to call-in to the program for a special interview!

As Labanita was once a market leader, we wanted to revive the brand with a fraction of competitors’ budgets*, our challenge was to compete in the Ramadan race. And after only 2 months from the campaign, the sales of Labanita yogurt increased 70%*!! To our surprise, the campaign’s positive impact spread to OTHER Labantia products, increasing Labanita brand sales by 25%

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The Labanita cows had stopped representing the brand in 2012. When we looked into the historical communications, we found that no explanation was given for their absence at the time or since. This gave us a perfect communications strategy with which to run our campaign. Since the research told us that people recalled our mascots and would be curious about their story, and since no explanation had been given about where they had gone, our campaign would be based around providing an explanation as to where the Labanita cows had gone when Labanita dropped them back in 2012. Humor and playful messaging was the natural route for our communications. We developed a series of stories that showed the cows had decided to branch out from representing Labanita to getting ‘real’ jobs being ‘COWS’, in all sense of the word.

Credits

Name Company Role
Adham Ayman Initiative Cairo Digital Media Director
Mostafa AbouHussein Initiative Cairo Digital Supervisor
Sherin Jalanbo Initiative Cairo Digital Media Planner
Mohamed Attia Initiative Cairo Performance Manager