2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

Puck had to cut through the clutter of Ramadan recipes and brands’ promotional content to earn attention. While most brands encouraged mothers to buy and cook more, we sent the opposite message to repurpose meals and glam up leftovers to help save the environment from excessive food waste. We partnered with MBC to leverage from their production and distribution. We produced an 18-episode branded content cooking series with celebrity influencers and distributed edits on Puck’s social platforms. We asked people NOT to buy more Puck - the opposite happened. Consideration, volume and value shares went up, while food waste dropped.

Background

In Ramadan, food waste increases by 55%. Yet, about 25% of unused or leftover food from Iftar meals are of good quality and fit for human consumption. Ramadan is an important season for Puck, with 40% of its yearly sales typically taking place at that time. It’s true for a lot of food brands who compete heavily to claim market share. In a noisy Ramadan content landscape, Puck needed to work extra hard to capture the attention of buyers who are bombarded by seasonal advertising across many categories. Objectives - Improve brand growth by 10% in Ramadan 2019 vs Ramadan 2018 - Increase brand consideration by 10%, trials by 5%* and volume and value share by 10% - Reduce food wastage in the GCC

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

• Every year, 250 kilograms of food per person is wasted in the GCC. (United Nations) • In Ramadan, food waste increases by 55% in the GCC, as people feast and host lavish iftars to impress their guests. (Ecomena) This year Puck broke category norms with a focus on reducing waste rather than encouraging overindulgence, as it’s usually the case in Ramadan campaigns. We surprised our target audience (Arab women) with a branded cooking series that showed how to make delicious meals from leftovers that would have usually been thrown away as food waste with Puck. Celebrity influencers in the show helped spread the word.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We recognized Arab women (20-44) in the GCC/Levant take great pride in hosting Iftars and so we targeted our campaign towards them, by creating our own branded content series with MBC. We partnered with MBC due to their strengths in production, distribution scale and access to our target audience across their online platforms. We hosted the branded content on a Puck microsite and distributed episode edits on Puck’s social media platforms and MBC’s network to amplify reach. The viewers were educated on how to make delicious meals that not only looked and tasted good but helped them do good environmentally. Realizing we were going against the grain and tradition; we used the power of MBC and social to make this approach socially acceptable. The episodes were fronted by influencers and were promoted through a social ecosystem to take our audience to Puck Arabia’s site for more info and to store.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The hero for this campaign was the branded content series, created with MBC and promoted on Puck’s social media channels and through MBC's digital network. Puck created an integrated social-ecosystem to reach and engage modern Arab women. The media spend was similar to Puck’s competitors that were also active on digital. We led this campaign during the pre-Ramadan and Ramadan period, releasing episodes over two months. The distribution strategy was equally strong. Puck was visually dominant on shelves across all major store types in all the GCC markets. There were no other marketing efforts promoting Puck during April 2019 to June 2019.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign delivered an increase in all metrics: o +30% Consideration o +5% Trials o +25% Volume Share o +15.98% Value Share o An estimated 1.7 million kg of food was saved from ending up in waste bags and landfills* *Calculation: 10 kg food waste per individual in 30 days x 5.95 size per family = 59.5 kilograms. 59.50 kilograms x 30,000 people who pledged = 1.7 million kilograms.