Here’s a summary of what Chen and the Whittard Team did to drive strong results:
Tmall, the Chinese e-commerce platform, was seeing costs increasing approx. 18-25% year-on-year during Double 11 for the same ratio of sales last year. Whittard needed to build up brand awareness outside of the platform ahead of Double 11, rather than continue to depend on high CPMs and big discounts which would harm brand equity.
Whittard dominates the Hot Chocolate category in China. So we knew if you’re searching for Hot Chocolate, you’ll come across the brand. There wasn’t depth of understanding though, and the challenge was to maintain high sales across their product portfolio.
Far from having a lack of awareness of Whittard, the insight was that the target audience did not have as great an understanding of the many ways in which you can enjoy Hot Chocolate authentically as first thought. Whittard primarily needed to educate and deepen understanding of Hot Chocolate’s versatility, and Whittard, given its dominance as a Hot Chocolate brand, would see growth as a result.
We analysed and ultimately chose Douyin’s new interactive ads, targeting baking and hot chocolate interest segments. This helped us to tell a deeper brand story, as well as drive traffic towards the Whittard Tmall store.
If those hot results steamed impressive, and you’d like us to help your brand see similarly strong digital marketing results in China, get in touch with us at nihao@hotpotchina.com