Nescafe launches first global campaign for younger consumers

Nestlé, the world’s leading food and beverage company, is launching its first ever global integrated communications campaign aimed at recruiting new consumers to the Nescafé coffee brand.

The $30-million global campaign is specifically aimed at younger consumers and involves a unique combination of integrated marketing communication platforms, including a global advertising campaign, a multi-faceted and groundbreaking global MTV sponsorship, events, Web-based radio via Rhythm Radio and digital consumer relationship marketing. It has been developed by McCann-Erickson WorldGroup through the collaborative effort of all its units, and is the result of a year-long research study into the global youth market.

"Global changes among young consumers have presented us with additional new opportunities for the Nescafé brand," comments Olle Tegstam, senior vice president, Coffee & Beverages Strategic Business Unit, Nestlé S.A., in Vevey, Switzerland. "We now know young people have a refreshing new relationship with coffee and Nescafé is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this."

The research study, conducted via McCann Pulse™, McCann’s global proprietary consumer insight tool, provided extensive insights into the new world of coffee being experienced by young people. This research, which also explored how young people respond to advertising and other communications, led to decisions to develop a more open-ended creative approach — "embedded interactivity."

"Coffee is now the beverage of choice amongst young people," explains Andrew Ward, world-wide account director on Nescafé. "The role of coffee for young people has fundamentally changed from one based around functional needs to one which allows them to participate in an exciting and provocative world, and which offers friendship and sociability, inspiration and creativity, opportunities and possibilities.

"Our goal was to create a new generation of Nescafé drinkers around a common global brand idea focused on youth. We want Nescafé to be an active participant in the full fabric of young people’s lives — to reflect how they feel about and view life."

The new campaign is built around the proposition that Nescafé is ‘Life’s Agent Provocateur’. The brand line ‘One Thing Leads To Another’ reflects the essential truth that anything might happen over a cup of coffee. Each of the communication strands has been carefully planned to support this brand idea and complement one another in ways that will appeal to the youth market.

The communications campaign, which broke globally on June 7 features four TV spots and 12 new print executions. Each advertisement has its own special story and builds upon the theme that ‘One Thing Leads To Another’. The TV ads are all mini-films which pull the camera back on what might happen after drinking a cup of Nescafé. The audience enters the ad at the end, before having the storyline unfolded step by step. Vaughn Arnell (Brit Award for Robbie Williams’ ‘Rock DJ’) directed the commercials to give them a strong MTV feel. Similarly, the print campaign shows a snapshot of a particular story where Nescafé was an active participant, allowing the reader the pleasure of filling in what happened before and after the story.

"Young people today live in a world of infinite possibilities," comments Marcio Moreira, chief creative officer, McCann-Erickson WorldGroup. "The Nescafé campaign recognizes their lifestyle and the fact that life can lead you down many different roads."

MTV and Nescafé — a strategic alliance

A key part of this program is a unique deal with MTV.

"When deciding upon a global strategic partner, there were a number of important considerations," comments James Ringshall, client services director, Universal McCann EMEA. "We needed to attract a media owner with global distribution and a consistent global positioning."

This strategic alliance, the largest ever multi-million dollar, multi-platform sponsorship deal, will culminate in the first ever global sponsorship of MTV’s Video Music Awards.

The partnership with Nescafé is also MTV International’s first and largest sponsorship deal across all of the network’s international channels in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Japan, Australia and Russia, covering 260 million households in 139 territories.

Nescafé on-line

The third element of the campaign involves the web and features ‘Nescafé Live’, an additional youth focused site enabling young people around the world to gather and share the information and data that fuels their lives. In addition to this, Nestlé is launching ‘Nescafé Pod’ a unique web application to provide young people with an amazing tool with which to communicate with their friends and exchange messages, data and even video images instantly.

"This new site is a totally branded Nescafé environment", enthuses Olle Tegstam at Nestlé. It fosters interactive communities and at the same time, enables us to generate important information about our customers. The long term health of any brand is determined by how consumers feel about it. We are determined that Nescafé will win a special place in the heart of the global youth community."