THE LAST LOT OF HALLS MINI
In the beginning of 2015, the candy brand Halls replaced its line product called XS, which doesn't have sugar, for the Halls Mini, a sugar version with modified package.
The new package and the addition of sugar made the product very sticky, even making the candies hard to take out of their boxes, besides restricting the consumption of the diabetic and sugar-free consumers.
This product change became one of the biggest negative consumer perceptions, bringing a lot of furious complainings to the SAC and even in the brand's Facebook page, with many disappointed fans saying they would buy from competitors because of this.
>> Thus the challenge came up: “Relaunch” Halls Mini and give an end to the tough reviews from the consumers.
Around half of the Facebook page comments were negative and they were asking for the return of Halls XS. The reputation of the MINI brand was very bad among our fans. But we decided not to come back with XS because people don't understand its meaning in Brazil, which is related to "Extra Small". On the other hand, the MINI name was more intuitive and made clear the concept in Brazil.
Instead of pretending that nothing happened and leave the problem fall into forgetfulness or justifying without assuming the error - as Brazilian brands are used to, keeping its corporative speech -, we decided that was necessary to assume the mistake.
We figured out a path to express Halls' bold attitude in a way that would become a motivation for people to love the brand even more, surprising them with an action with the same level of seriousness as the unsatisfied consumers demands to relaunch the sugar-free formula.
We created “The Last Lot of Halls Mini” campaign with a movie starred by the fictional character called Almeida, the Halls SAC manager. In the movie, Almeida shows that he heard the complainings and “to take the product out of the market”, he decided to explode the last lot of it and announces the new NEW HALLS MINI - now with the sugar-free formula that so many people asked for.
Besides launching the movie on the brand's Facebook and Youtube pages, we sent e-mail marketings to all of the consumers who complained, showing them the movie in first-hand, and also delivered them a kit with new Halls Mini.
We also got close to consumers through a war room with the Social Strategy team to respond to the comments about the movie in real-time on launching day. One more time, the Halls SAC manager, Almeida, appears to take care of the interaction through a voice tone obsessed to listen, attend and please the consumers. This strategy of holding the engagement in real time helped to manage the different fans' reactions, that showed excitement and encouraged more images and customized messages in the comments.
When the smoke set down, the results came:
+ We eliminated the perception that Halls doesn’t care about consumers and became a positive reference to people;
+ We reverted the negative comments. From 46% negative sentiment to 99% health of positive and neutral.
+ In addition, we had a significant increase of 107% on Halls Mini sales. (Source: Nielsen, JUN-2015 VS DEC-2015)
How exactly did the Business Intelligence / Data Strategy work contribute to the campaign?
+ Through social listening, we made the diagnosis about people's perception, contributing in the planning and creation phases, besides being fundamental to align the client's vision with the way we perceived the situation.
+ The Listening & Reponding strategy came from the cooperation of planning, social and data strategy teams. The collected data indicated paths that we could approach in the interactions in different contexts, helping to finalize the voice tone and the interactions tactical.
+ In order to defend the creative idea (after all, it isn’t every day that the client agrees to blow up the product itself), we raised material based on the brand data and Wieden+Kennedy São Paulo itself, which was presented immediately following the creation team, responding to client doubts and generating greater confidence in the agency proposal.
Awards:
+ Social CRM - Case E-life 2015
+ Gold Effie Awards Brasil 2016 (and I have to say that never before I thought to be awarded working as business intelligence - which excited me even more to spread the data message through agency)
Strategy partners:
Diego Santos and Mariana Emy