Breaking down Wall’s to sell ice-cream

Long hailed as the king of impulse purchases, the love for ice-cream solidified amid the pandemic when comfort food saw an incredible spike in demand as consumers remained cooped up at home.

Not wanting to miss out on the sudden peak was Unilever’s ice-cream brand Wall’s, which took up the challenge of expanding its physical retail network in Thailand to meet the growing consumer demand for ice cream. Wall’s then turned to Grab to shore up its presence online and offline, to satiate Thai consumers’ growing appetite for sweet treats.

In a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, in collaboration with GrabAds, Vorapol Leelavechbutr, head of ice-cream, Southeast Asia, Unilever, said the monotony of spending days at home during the pandemic saw consumer behaviours evolve. One such key change was the growing speed at which consumers made purchases when it came to food – and the premium price they were willing to dish out for comfort and security.

However, while delivery orders for ice-cream were picking up, ordering ice-cream online was still not yet a norm for many Thai consumers, and the awareness to do so was pretty low, explained Leelavechbutr.

Wall’s knew it had to put a fresh spin on how consumers could get their hands on the ice-cream they were craving, and to do so without breaking a sweat.

“We wanted to ensure consumers were aware of this possibility and try to order it for first time with Grab,” Leelavechbutr said.

This saw Wall’s run several campaigns with Grab to draw attention to its online store, which was different from what other merchants had to offer.

Shedding light on the partnership, Dave Yang, regional head of brand engagement for GrabAds, explained that the team at Grab first worked closely with the Wall’s ice-cream team to pinpoint potential locations where there was a high demand for ice-cream.

“Through our many distribution lines on GrabFood and a strong delivery network, we ensured a speedy delivery to consumers,” he said.

To enhance the accessibility of Wall’s ice-cream products within a short span of time, Grab mobilised mom-and-pop shops and chain retail stores under Unilever’s Thailand network to be GrabFood pick-up points to make Wall’s ice-cream products available to more consumers easily and quickly.

“No one likes melted ice-cream so it was important for us to ensure that consumers could enjoy frozen treats delivered in tip-top condition,” Yang said. As such, finding the right location was crucial.

Once the right partners were found, Grab and Wall’s needed to tackle the issue of lack of awareness and entice consumers to order Wall’s ice-cream on Grab. To do so, the team rolled out its “gifts with purchase” functionality where consumers could buy seven pieces of the Magnum Stick and get a free Magnum limited edition blanket.

To further raise awareness on product availability, Wall’s leveraged display advertising on the Grab app. Ads were strategically placed at various steps of the purchasing journey on the app, including native image ads on users’ home pages, and power banners while their order was in-transit.

Search ads also appeared when users searched for “dessert” and the ads directed users to participating merchants on GrabFood to order their sweet treats, helping Wall’s ice-cream to close the loop on consumer purchases efficiently.

How did the campaign fare?

Within the first week of the partnership, sales of Wall’s ice-cream already doubled. This was driven by the bundle set and the gifts with purchase, coupled with heightened in-app visibility for Wall’s ice-cream via native ads to enhance traffic and conversion rates.

The “always-on” campaign, which ran for a year, ensured continued consumer awareness all-year round, generating more than 52 million impressions, with a 1.43% click-through rate and 210% return on ad spend.

“Grab’s strong distribution network, with the ability to deliver ice-cream to consumers at its finest condition also helped to ensure customer satisfaction with their orders,” Yang said.

Yang explained that Grab wants brands to have the ability to reach consumers on the platform by targeting those who have an affinity with the products they offer. With Wall’s, the brand wanted to reach out to consumers who like dessert and sweet treats, such as those who have ordered these items previously on Grab.

“The affinity signals Wall’s found with Grab was rooted in real-world transactions, which increases the likelihood of their target audience ordering the products that we are offering,” he added.

Moreover, the seamless integration between driving awareness via ads in the Grab app to the point of conversion made this campaign an effective and efficient one.

Once the target consumers saw the Wall’s ice-cream ad placement and clicked on it, they were directed to the brand’s virtual stores to select the product, before checking out and redeeming the exclusive deals and discounts in a few simple clicks.

Yang said that advertising on most platforms typically requires consumers to go on a few different platforms which ends up being more cumbersome and less intuitive.

“Grab enables consumers to shorten their journey and go from awareness to conversion quickly,” he said.

Enablement for all

Yang also shared with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that the success of any brand on the platform isn’t attributed to the size of its marketing team, but the willingness to experiment and embrace change.

Today, GrabAds has a variety of solutions to cater to the needs of businesses of different sizes. For smaller players, it typically recommends a pilot campaign to test out the return on ad spend before expanding the scale of the campaign so the returns justify the investment.

Additionally, Grab also has several self-serve tools on the GrabMerchant app under the “marketing” tile where smaller businesses can participate in on-going merchant-funded promotions, or even run their own banner and search ads to enhance the visibility of their products and services on the Grab app.

This is supported by a team of account managers across the region that are readily available to support any queries these small businesses have. The team at Grab organises monthly webinars to educate these businesses on how to better optimise their ongoing ads with Grab.

“With ads that create awareness, inviting users to click on them, and moving them on to virtual stores to select the product, this seamless link between creative and commerce enables any brand to turn traffic to sales in a few simple clicks by the consumer,” Yang said.