#MarketingExcellenceAwards SG 2021 highlight: Yeo’s celebrates NDP by honouring local unsung heroes

The pandemic has been especially challenging for the F&B industry. With ever-changing dine in restrictions, Yeo’s daily on-ground engagement with consumers was severely impacted. Even with new product launches, in-store activation opportunities were limited and did not reach full potential. Working with Mashwire, Yeo’s launched a campaign to strengthen brand engagement and increase awareness for the newly launched products. The campaign was well received and impressed the judges, winning the gold award for Excellence in Sponsorship Activation at MARKETING INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore 2021.

Challenge

Yeo’s headed into the second year of the pandemic facing great challenges. The evolving dine-in regulations greatly impacted Yeo’s distribution channel and in turn, Yeo’s daily on-ground engagement with the consumers. Yeo’s saw a decrease in brand presence in the daily consumer journey and in consumers’ perception of the brand as a festive drink. Wanting to maintain top-of-mind awareness, Yeo’s swiftly reacted to the situation, with three new product launches with variants on its Chrysanthemum Tea in Less Sugar, No Sugar and with Wolfberry, intending to expand current users’ basket size and recruit new users. However, limited in-store activation opportunities meant that the new product launches did not reach their full potential. 

With the NDP approaching, Yeo’s wanted to ride out of the disruption with its elevated social footprint and their learnings from the previous year’s successful NDP association. However, the NDP 2021 celebration was once again dampened due to the rise of COVID-19 cases and ever-changing safety measures. 

Yeo’s also faced intense competition from industry heavyweights such as Pokka, Marigold and F&N Seasons. Yeo’s needed to refresh its engagement with the target audiences and create consumption growth.

Strategy

Yeo’s research to uncover customer insights revealed that Singaporeans were more empathetic to social causes and group behaviour could convert empathy into action to support the local community. In addition, with the government pushing the #SGUnited narrative for NDP 2021, many Singaporeans have started to show support for local businesses and frontline workers, resulting in a sense of camaraderie amongst all Singaporeans. With this insight, Yeo’s decided on two main strategies:

1. Reinforce new consumption occasion by creating awareness 

Create, curate and share content to inspire “feel good” emotions

2. Strengthen relatability of brand with target audience through engagement 

Creating “feel good” experiences through meaningful sampling, paying it forward and supporting local 

Execution

Yeo’s strategies translated into four main approaches and to kick off the campaign, Yeo’s created a teaser post on social media that was accompanied with a microsite to garner excitement. To pique community interest as well as to get consumers to anticipate the upcoming series of campaign surprises, Yeo’s included dates of surprise launches for their savvy audiences. The creation of the microsite provided Yeo’s a space to house all communication for the #NDPWithYeos campaign. This allowed the audience to sign up for notifications for every surprise launch at different phases of the campaign and stay well informed instead of trying to navigate through a highly cluttered digital space. 

1. Sampling through exclusive partnership

Yeo’s created two special edition cans for its newly launched Chrysanthemum Tea variant, one of which was exclusively designed with FairPrice to thank the #UnsungHeroes. The can design allowed the target audience to pen down words of encouragement to share on social media. These special edition cans were given out with every purchase at FairPrice, enabling sampling of the new product while creating a buzz on social media. 

2. Supporting local 

In collaboration with local musicians and artists, the team created a Yeo’s NDP Mashup (an audio mash-up with four popular NDP patriotic songs) and conducted an IG livestream to inspire the “feel good” emotions amongst Singaporeans. The mash-up was integrated into an AR Filter to drive engagements with audience digitally, encouraging and enabling them to share the “feel good” emotions.

Yeo’s collaborated with renowned local musician and artiste, Benjamin Kheng, for the NDP Mash-up to target the younger audiences who were more inclined to support local creatives. Prior to this event, Yeo’s dropped hints on social media to create interest and excitement. 

With the Yeo’s NDP mash-up launch and call-out for the audience to sing along, Yeo’s then launched the Yeo’s NDP 2021 AR Filters. The Yeo’s NDP Mash-up was then integrated into the six filters, depicting six different iconic places in Singapore - North, South, East, West, Central and Pulau Ubin. 

Attractive prizes were also given away to individuals who took part in the mash-up sing along and sharing of words of encouragement online.

3. Paying it forward

In light of the tightening of Safety Management Measures, local hawkers’ businesses were affected tremendously. To support these businesses, Yeo’s reached out to The Federation of Merchants' Associations, Singapore (FMAS) to donate over 92,160 Yeo’s latest launched Chrysanthemum Tea in Less Sugar and No Sugar. With’ every purchase of the hawkers' dishes/items at the selected 29 hawker centres, consumers received a canned drink for free. The giveaway included a total of 19,200 NDP 2021 special edition cans to show support for Singapore’s heroes while encouraging product sampling. 

Yeo’s also donated over 240,000 cans to Grab Riders, Hospitals, Comfort Delgro, Jurong Health, NHG and Central CDC to show appreciation to these unsung heroes who kept Singapore going in the toughest times. 

To support local musicians, Yeo’s collaborated with local acapella group, MICAPPELLA, to host a pre-NDP sing along session to drum up the celebratory mood within the community for NDP. Although NDP was postponed, the sing along session proceeded as planned on IG livestream. 

4. Sharing of encouragement 

A one-of-a-kind sing along media kit was prepared for influencers and celebrities to further amplify the campaign’s objective - sharing of encouragement on social media. The karaoke-themed media kit consisted of a bluetooth karaoke mic and two special edition cans of the all-time favourite Yeo’s Chrysanthemum Tea with less sugar and with Wolfberry. This activation created buzz within the social space, piqued the interests of consumers and increased the campaign awareness for the brand. 

Results

The campaign successfully leveraged on NDP and Singapore’s gratitude for the unsung heroes of the pandemic to execute a campaign that resonated well with Singaporeans. The campaign achieved more than 13 million impressions and a PR value of more than SG$80,000. In addition, there was a significant engagement rate with its target audience and greatly increased sampling rate of the newly launched products. Yeo’s ultimately converted the extended reach and engagement to category growth and maintained its market leadership position.