A campaign that was hard to ig-Knorr

“Whatever you are cooking, there’s always a Knorr product that can turn it into a masterpiece” – this was the statement Unilever’s Knorr in the Philippines brought to life with the help of the team at GrabAds.

The brand known for its focus on data-led strategies realised that with more consumers staying at home and cooking its meals, there was a growing demand for quick and convenient meal ideas and recipes. As such the brand customised a campaign to transform home cooks into instant master chefs through contextual, shoppable content. 

In a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, in collaboration with GrabAds, Knorr Philippines’ category business performance manager, Marinelle Villanueva, said marketing executions at Unilever Foods had always been data and technology-driven and this campaign was no different in that aspect.

However, what did stand out for the Shoppable Recipes campaign, was how heavily the campaign leaned on digital behaviour of shoppers, especially when it came to search, to be formulated, shared Villanueva. 

Leveraging on Unilever’s ability to target high purchase-intent consumers, and Grab’s instant delivery capability, the team decided to monitor the search behaviour of shoppers as they looked for recipe inspirations, and hence, the campaign was culminated via the GrabAds platform. 

With the campaign, the aim was to bridge creativity with commerce by directing conversions through a one-stop recipe shopping solution.

The journey began with Knorr and GrabAds inspiring users with tantalising images of meals that they could whip up through the use of GrabAds’ “native image ads” on the home screen. With a tech platform backing, and clickable features, the ad directed users to click the creative to find a full recipe, all while leading them to “shop the recipe” on GrabMart. 

To further ease the process of purchase for consumers, the ingredients needed to whip up the dish were automatically populated on the user’s cart to break down the friction of a manual search.

Meanwhile, one key area Unilever was cognisant of was in delivering the recipes to homes on time. 

“We know that shoppers are adamant on the timing when it comes to online grocery shopping because of the ‘freshness’ of their grocery items, and are comparing it to how fast they get the items from the store,” Villanueva said. 

While traditional retailers are still starting to set up their online presence, she said Grab’s scale in having a sizeable number of merchants on its platform and logistical coverage gave the team confidence. 

Given that online grocery shopping was still a relatively new phenomenon in the Philippines, the team at Knorr decided to stretch its dollars by targeting early adopters who were already comfortable in conducting their grocery shopping online. Another key target audience was also home cooks who look for recipe inspirations online.

“The market for online grocery shopping is still nascent and Unilever Foods believes that it still has a lot of potential, not just as a new channel strategy, but because of the convenience it will give to the shoppers,” she said. 

She added that convenience was fast becoming the currency of the instant economy with consumers now wanting information, content and solutions, anytime, and anywhere. 

“As a business, partnering with capable platforms such as Grab, while remaining focused on the goal of putting the consumer first, and building an agile digital commerce organisation backed by data and new technologies, we aim to unlock the potential of this market,” she added.

Interestingly, while one might have expected the younger generation to be the more tech-savvy buyers, the campaign, which ran from 22 May to 11 July this year, saw a significantly higher engagement from older users aged 45 and above, with an average 1.25% click-through rate.

According to Manuel Cajumban, head of GrabAds Philippines, this finding came as a pleasant surprise to the team.

User performance and data from Grab indicated that families and parents were more likely to engage with the ad as they held the main responsibilities of preparing meals for their families.

All in all, the ad saw 1.18% click-through rates among active users of GrabMart and other Grab services.

“The results tell us that there are tremendous opportunities for brands to engage consumers through creative executions such as this, even as they remain at home. A campaign such as this not only inspires consumers, but also brings the ingredients and products they need right to their doorstep,” he said.

Bridging the gap between creativity and commerce

According to Cajumban, Knorr’s campaign was a good example of how Grab leveraged insights from its first-party data to creatively draw consumers into an inspiring environment that culminated into the development of a clear path to purchase. 

As a super app, given Grab’s services cuts across deliveries, transport and finance, it has a wide pool of rich data and insights at its fingertips.

With a data literate team, GrabAds is also able to understand consumer behaviours and transactional preferences to help GrabAds’ clients drive more effective advertising campaigns.

With multiple touch-points that span physical and digital realms, GrabAds is also able to reach consumers at the point when they are most receptive to an ad message, and move them further down the funnel to engage with the brand, and ultimately make purchases, explained Cajumban.

“With these unique strengths, we have the ability to dream of a wide variety of customer journeys and scenarios to help brands drive their objectives creatively,” he added.

“The possibilities are endless on the Grab platform, and we’d love to make use of every opportunity to harness these strengths creatively to set our clients’ campaigns up for success.” 

On the client front, to foster creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, the GrabAds’ team also often shares creative best practices and case studies with its clients to spark new ideas on making ads more impactful. 

Through its ads, it hopes to take its clients’ target audience on a journey that turns reach into engagement, and eventually, conversions. 

Understanding collaboration and communication is key, so a weekly report is also shared with clients, and the team at GrabAds works hand-in-hand with clients to dissect the trends and performance of the campaign, all while providing recommendations to further optimise the campaign for the best results.

Investing in the future

While markets are now starting to slowly open, Villanueva shares that Knorr remains confident of the power of digital. Today, a significant part of its marketing spend goes into digital channels, and this was also the case at the start of the pandemic.

She added: “We expect more investments in digital even as Filipinos start to be mobile once again.”

Beyond the rise of home cooks, the team at Knorr is also keeping tabs on trends such as user-generated short-form and long-form content on different social channels, live-streaming and search. Villanueva said:

The skyrocketing of digital media consumption, especially during the first lockdown, opened up plenty of digital-first opportunities, such as Shoppable Recipes, which allowed us to leverage on the defined search behaviour of consumers.