Nestlé Fruita Vitals: Fruit Fuel

Source: Warc Prize for Asian Strategy, Entrant, 2011

Downloaded from WARC

This case study describes how Nestlé achieved ambitious growth targets in Pakistan for its packaged-
juices by radically repositioning its brand, targeting a lifestyle market segment and creating the Fruita
Vitals sub-brand. In a soft drinks market dominated by colas, this new brand from Nestlé emerged as
the strongest brand in the health and naturalness category, by using a 360-degree campaign targeting
young, upper-class urban consumers. As a result, the brand enjoyed more than five times the category
growth in terms of sales volumes in 2010 and its market share rose by seven index points.

The Warc Prize for Asian Strategy is Asia’s first competition set up to reward brilliant strategic thinking in
marketing. Marketers and agencies across Asia (excluding Pacific Asia) were asked to submit case studies
that demonstrated how insight and strategy had solved a business problem. The cases had to show what the
problem was, the strategy that was developed, how that strategy was brought to life and the results it delivered.
The prize was judged by a panel of senior clients and agency-side strategy experts, using the following
weighting: quality of insight (15% of marks); quality of strategic thinking (40%); implementation (15%);
performance against objectives (20%); lessons learned (10%).

For more information on this annual prize, please visit www.warc.com/asiaprize.

Campaign Details
Advertiser: Nestlé Pakistan Ltd
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather
Brand: Nestlé Fruita Vitals
Campaign duration: March 2010-September 2010
Country: Pakistan
Media budget (USD): $1m-$3m
Channels used: Events, In-store, internet display, newspapers (national), out of home (all forms), packaging,
public relations, product placement, radio (national), sponsorship (event or property), sponsorship (media),
television (broadcast)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This case study describes how Nestlé achieved ambitious growth targets in Pakistan for its packaged-juices by
radically repositioning its brand, targeting a lifestyle market segment and creating the Fruita Vitals sub-brand. In
a soft drinks market dominated by colas, this new brandfrom Nestlé emerged as the strongest brand in the
health and naturalness category, by using a 360-degree campaign targeting young, upper-class urban
consumers. As a result, the brand enjoyed more than five times the category growth in terms of sales volumes in
2010 and its market share rose by seven index points.

MARKET BACKGROUND AND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

In a country in which 70% of the population is under 30, it is only to be expected that more hip and cool
carbonated soft drinks will occupy the largest share of the market.

With a population growing at 2.6% per annum, coupled with global warming, particularly in tropical areas, cold
beverages were registering impressive growth, fuelled primarily by CSDs. The packaged-juices category (juices,
nectars and fruit drinks) was growing at 6% per annum.

Our business objective was clear – we needed to expand our brand at least twice as quickly as the overall
packaged-juices category, if we were to become a significant competitor to the colas.

Nestlé Fruita Vitals, a premium-priced brand, enjoyed a 10% share of the packaged-juices market. With
consumption occasions for premium-priced being limited to lunch times or with evening snacks, we saw little
chance of meeting our targets by competing within the packaged-juices category alone, as it was difficult to
upgrade consumers from middle- and low-priced segments under times of high inflation and a poorly performing
economy.

Clearly, we not only needed to stay relevant to our core consumers (ie packaged-juice users who primarily
choose the category for health and naturalness reasons), but to also appeal to more hip and cool consumers
who choose CSDs, particularly colas, as a lifestyle choice. Our challenge was to communicate a more
emotional/ lifestyle benefit rooted in the health and naturalness product attributes.

INSIGHT AND STRATEGIC THINKING

Our previous target consumers were our brand’s core users. Demographically, they were upper-middle class,
urban males and females between the ages of aged 21 and 35.

We aimed to target our growth consumers, who like to consume CSDs as a lifestyle choice, through this
campaign. This meant that we needed to study their specific values and lifestyles in order to get under their skin.
A detailed segmentation study was carried out and we found that these consumers could be segmented into four
values and lifestyle segments.

We targeted “Purposeful Go-getters” because getting more of them to buy our brand would help us in our
objective of achieving growth that would be twice as fast as the category growth itself. It was the largest
segment and we knew that every beverage brand would be competing there, but we felt that it had the best fit
with our category for several reasons:

Juices in this part of the world weren’t treated as “social glue”, so “social bonding” wasn’t a good choice.

Our highest selling one-litre SKU, enough for four servings, meant that our brand wasn’t being consumed
as on-the-go refreshment.

Juices are hardly preferred over colas, coffee and tea for self-pampering in this part of the world.

We did in-depth qualitative research with consumers within this segment to gain understandings and insights
about their lives. Seeing them in the larger context helped us to get to know them better.

The country was facing economic meltdown, having just moved transitioned from a dictatorship into another
corrupt regime, with rampant terrorism and rising prices. This created an environment of insecurity and
instability. But after talking to consumers, we found that they were determined to create a happy and fulfilled life
for themselves, no matter what. They worked hard to protect themselves against insecurities. They had no role
models and could not relate to their parents, but that made them even more focused on their goals. They knew
that they could not depend on anyone to get them the life they wanted; they were in control and were fighting
against the odds.

Purposeful Go-getters looked for little things that give them the assurance of a good life. They worked hard,
played hard and made each moment of every day count. They were driven by what they wanted out of each
moment, rather than big achievements. They were ambitious, smart, diverse and fun-loving, yet they wanted
every moment of their life to be productive in some way. Being optimistic was not a matter of choice; they had a
long way to go and were the future of the nation. They did whatever it takes to stay positive, be it yoga, reading
inspirational books or adopting a Zen philosophy. Their insight was: “The world is a mess but I will not give up
on it. All I need is my daily dose of ‘fixing up’ to continue to tackle life with a positive outlook.” In summary, they
are progressive self-driven individuals who make choices that help them achieve their ambitions.

The next step was to develop a brand proposition. Our challenge was how to develop a more emotional
relationship with our target consumers that is rooted in their deeply held beliefs about the health and naturalness
benefits in fruit extracts. We used a three-pronged strategy to meet our challenge.

Ownable Brand Idea: Our usage research told us that out of all cold beverages, juices elicit the most “positive
attitude” on a consumer’s body and mind. And that is where the fit came in. We couldn’t fix the government, nor
guarantee them a good life, but we could be that daily dose of “fixing up”, both in terms of our product, as well
as our philosophy.

From this, our creative team developed the big idea – “No matter what life throws at you, Rise and Shine to
Life”, which was a message to our consumers to stay positive in every situation. The tone was light-hearted and
upbeat, to contrast with the dreariness of news channels and to fit in with the vibrancy of juice.

Until then, our packaged juices were part of the branded “house of Nestlé”. The radical repositioning of our
packaged juices product line necessitated the creation of a sub-brand, as our new positioning went beyond
Nestlé’s core promise of “good food, good life”, and we could not alter what Nestlé stood for worldwide. We
therefore created the Fruita Vitals sub-brand under the Nestlé umbrella. Fruita Vitals’ role was to act as the “co-
driver” brand to drive purchase decisions. This approach was also in line with Nestlé’s hybrid brand architecture
that it used worldwide.
Our radical repositioning of Nestlé Fruita Vitals, targetting a new “growth” audience defined by their values and
lifestyle, and creating a new sub-brand, wouldn’t work unless our executions supported our bold strategy and
stood sufficiently wide apart from the run-of-the-mill juice communications, to signal real differentiation while
maintaining enough association with it to retain category membership. Therefore, we decided to deliberately
avoid all category clichés while showing enough product shots.

IMPLEMENTATION
For this campaign, the 360-degree marketing concept was approached to be holistic at all touchpoints
surrounding the consumer, wherever they may be. We opted for this plan as it was focused more on being a
consumer-centric media strategy and less on being a media-integration effort. It not only included a heavy online
component, but also television, radio, print, POP and other mass-media elements.The touchpoints utilised were
television, radio, out of home, digital, PR/events, retail and press.

Our marketing spends rose from PKR138m in 2009 to PKR171m in 2010. The breakdown remained roughly the
same: 41% on TV airing; 31% on the TV commercial; 23% on outdoor; 3% on web; and 2% on radio.

PERFORMANCE AGAINST OBJECTIVES

Nestlé Fruita Vitals enjoyed more than five times the category growth in terms of sales volumes in 2010.

Nestlé Fruita Vitals’ market share rose by seven index points (2009 taken as 100).

According to our conservative estimates, the Nestlé Fruita Vitals campaign activity helped raise the brand’s
sales volume by about 7,500 tonnes (21%) compared with the pre-campaign sales forecast for the period
(which assumed that there had been no communication activity).

Nestlé Fruita Vitals enjoyed the highest conversion ratios within the category, as illustrated by a
comparison with its closest rival Shezan.

Nestlé Fruita Vitals’ new positioning (a hitherto unmet consumer need) has almost transformed the
category, becoming the second-most-important category driver behind “naturalness”.

The tracking study shows highest scores for Nestlé Fruita Vitals on all brand health indicators – sufficient
evidence that the communication campaign changed peoples’ perceptions.

The tracking study conducted by AMRB also shows that Nestlé Fruita Vitals came as strongly differentiated
on the intended benefits of “naturalness” and “gives me the power to shine every day”.

Nestlé Fruita Vitals not only came across as well differentiated on key functional and emotional benefits,
but also on intended personality traits.

(source: AMRB)

LESSONS LEARNED
The strategy in this case scenario was very much based on an understanding of the Pakistani market. Every
decision was made in accordance with local trends, in terms of juice intake and what consumers perceive juice
to be. The strategy can be taken into perspective in a similar market or culture, where juice habits are of a
similar nature. But overall, it is unique to the Pakistani environment.
© Copyright WARC 2011
WARC Ltd.
Americas: 2233 Wisconsin Ave NW, Suite 535, Washington, DC 20007, United States - Tel: +1 202 778 0680
APAC: 20A Teck Lim Road, 088391, Singapore - Tel: +65 3157 6200
EMEA: 85 Newman Street, London, United Kingdom, W1T 3EU - Tel: +44 (0)20 7467 8100

www.warc.com

All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing
company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets or the internet, e-mailed, archived or shared electronically
either within the purchaser's organisation or externally without express written permission from Warc.