#Hashtag Asia Awards 2021 highlight: Glico's sweet recipe to draw Malaysians during Raya

Wanting to create relevance in the Malaysian market for Pocky, Japanese snack maker Glico, together with Radarr Technologies, decided to launch a campaign backed by data to drive overall sales and increase engagement with its target audience of Malaysian Muslims. The campaign managed to achieve a significant number of social media engagements and established Pocky as a relevant Ramadan snack, thus winning gold for Best Social Media Channel Campaign: Facebook and taking a finalist position for Best Use of Social Media for Campaign at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Hashtag Asia 2021 Awards.

Challenge

Although Pocky, a signature snack from Japanese snack maker Glico, was well established across Asia, it had struggled to become relevant in the Malaysian market. The team faced the challenge of increasing awareness of Pocky as a relevant snack during the Ramadan period and establish Pocky as a suitable ingredient for Raya recipes. The team also needed to increase Pocky’s brand equity among Muslims in Malaysia and increase the purchase of Pocky among the Muslim community.

Solution

To address these challenges, Glico worked with Radarr to uncover insights regarding the increase of interest in snack recipes during Hari Raya season with the use of social listening and search data analysis.

Several insights found directly influenced the creative idea for Pocky’s campaign. These included: 

1. Google searches for snack or dessert recipes increase during the Hari Raya month and continued to spike in the following months. 

2. Social conversations revealed that people started discussing recipes two months before Hari Raya, implying that many prepared in advance when seeking out new recipes for the festive season.

3. Both Google searches and social conversations concurred that Hari Raya prompted the spike in interest for DIY snacks and desserts in Malaysia.

4. During the festive period, many preferred local delicacies and often looked out for recipes that used local or cheap ingredients and did not require baking.

With these insights, the team identified snacking occasions that Pocky could leverage on and came up with a two-phase campaign that was launched two months before Hari Raya to engage young, Muslim mothers who enjoy preparing food at home as a bonding activity with their children.

Execution

Phase One: 

The brand focused on enhancing Pocky’s equity of “Share Happiness” in the context of family connections. The team first drove awareness by creating a video to celebrate family snacking. A Pocky Ceria photo contest where mothers could send in family we-fies while snacking on Pocky was launched to increase association with in-home consumption. Lastly, a series of original Pocky dessert recipes was pushed out through various KOLs to encourage the use of Pocky as an ingredient in home baking.

Phase Two: 

The team focused on increasing Pocky’s relevance to Hari Raya celebrations. Another video was created to highlight Ramadan as the perfect occasion to enjoy Pocky. A “Cooking with Pocky” contest was held to increase the association of Pocky with baking and DIY recipes and this contest was promoted with the help of food content creators. Attractive POSMs were also displayed at supermarkets to encourage purchase. 

Results

The campaign successfully achieved a significant number of engagements on social media with recipe-related posts attracting the most attention. Outside of Hari Raya celebrations, many people were also keen on trying out the Pocky-inspired recipes for other occasions such as birthday celebrations. This showed that the campaign was able to resonate with Glico’s target audience and garner awareness and engagement within the digital space. 

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