Having been on the market since 1927, Vimto is the traditional Ramadan drink on Iftar tables across the Gulf region. While the brand is highly regarded for its heritage, stature and authenticity, the Vimto team wanted to be sure to drive relevance among younger Arabs.
Goals
Drive relevance among younger consumers
Approach
Created interactive YouTube Masthead
Ran TrueView ads before and throughout Ramadan
Used positive and negative remarketing
Results
10.3% uplift in ad recall
7.3% uplift in brand awareness
10% uplift in sales in Kuwait and 4% uplift in UAE
Masthead reached over 12 million unique users
TrueView ads reached 11.6 million unique users
Campaign delivered 166 million impressions, 8.1 million video views and 3.3 million clicks
TrueView ads delivered view-through rate of 24.3% and completion rate of 72.6%
“YouTube consumption increases during Ramadan and is one of the key platforms where our core target audience spends time. It also allows us to build incremental reach over TV. Thus for Vimto to achieve mass reach and build initial awareness levels, YouTube becomes an important media partner.” – Nojoud Radwan, Digital Media Manager, Aujan Industries
Consumers typically share messages of hope, encouragement and love during Ramadan. With Vimto representing reassurance, security and familiarity, the marketing team set itself the task of creating a spike in online engagement using the symbolism of light. They developed a digital campaign – Messages of Light – to enable digital audiences to “light up” each other’s lives.
The campaign included a platform on the brand’s website enabling a user to write a message or greeting and share it with their friends, family and community. This concept was replicated within a YouTube Masthead that invited users to create their own messages.
The 10-frame YouTube banner included an introduction followed by an interactive widget where audiences could write a message on a Vimto bottle. Users could share their message either by entering a mobile number to send it via WhatsApp, or by designating a geographical area to serve their banner message to. The message feed was then captured at the backend, linked to Google’s API and converted into banners that were displayed programmatically to audiences in the city designated by the message sender.
In the pre-Ramadan period, Vimto ran TrueView pre-roll ads for 11 days. The interactive YouTube Masthead ran on the first and second day of Ramadan across KSA, Kuwait and UAE. Then for 20 days Vimto amplified their key video asset through TrueView. They used a mix of positive and negative remarketing, where they excluded the audience that they had reached through the YouTube Masthead and targeted only the core audience of women aged 25 to 34 for the following week. Once they had maximized reach within the core audience, they opened up the targeting to men and women aged 18 to 55 across markets.
Overall, the results showed cost efficiency in reaching the audience before and during Ramadan, while a Brand Lift study demonstrated best-in-class benchmarks, including a 10.3% lift in ad recall and a 7.3% lift in brand awareness. What’s more, Vimto sales in Kuwait went up by 10% and in UAE by 4%.
In total, the campaign reached over 12 million unique users through the Masthead activation across two days in three markets, and it reached 11.6 million unique users through the TrueView ads. As far as engagement goes, the Masthead and TrueView ads together delivered 166 million impressions, 8.1 million video views and 3.3 million clicks. The TrueView ads had a view-through rate of 24.3% and a completion rate of 72.6%.
“Our key success factors were reach and engagement in our top three selling countries, which resulted to an uplift in sales.” – Nojoud Radwan, Digital Media Manager, Aujan Industries
“Our key success factors were reach and engagement in our top three selling countries, which resulted to an uplift in sales,” says Aujan Industries’ digital media manager, Nojoud Radwan, in summary. “Our key learning was to provide users with unique content and not replicate what is shown on TV, especially during the month of Ramadan when both mobile and TV penetration is high. We will continue to tailor-make content for users on different channels and provide users with content that they can engage with.”
