Insight
Operating in a market where sachets dominate the retail landscape, Surf understands that identifying ways to sustainably bring down the amount of sachet waste through collection and recycling could potentially make the most powerful difference to the environment. Combined with the challenge of rejuvenating a large but declining market, Surf needed to find a way to delight its consumers, incentivise more usage, and positively impact the country’s communities.
Surf was able to mount its biggest laundry activation yet: the Surf Saya sa Surfiesta! With this campaign, Surf is able to bring delight to its consumer in their everyday was experience, increase loyalty and consumption as well as creating a sachet recovery model.
INCENTIVISE: Consumers were incentivised to purchase more Surf more often and collect their used sachets through the Free Text given with every pack.
COLLECT: Cebuana Lhullier then became the perfect redemption partner to collect these sachets with their 2,000 outlets nationwide.
CONVERT: Unilever partnered with an agency to convert all these sachets into pavers by pulverising the sachets and mixing them into cement pavers that were donated to Typhoon Haiyan affected areas in Tacloban.
Strategy
The Philippines has been known to be the text capital of the world. Not only teenagers are in to texting but mums as well. 78% of housewives own a cellphone and they send an average of 15 SMS per day.
Leveraging on the local insight of how mum finds importance in staying connected to her loved ones, Surf understood the value of a simple text message, the brand gave mums an exciting incentive by rewarding them with 5 free texts for every Surf pack purchased. The corresponding free texts could be redeemed by exchanging their used Surf sachets, allowing Unilever to then collect and recycle, rather than throwing it away and creating harmful environmental waste.
Execution
By understanding how a simple text message can brighten a mum’s day, Strategic Works provided a new incentive of 5 free texts for every 5 peso Surf sachet. That’s 100 percent of its value for free, and the equivalent of 5 free SMS on top of their daily habit – a deal that truly provided the best value for money and the gift of a fiesta in every pack. This unprecedented reward encouraged them to collect their sachets, thus developing the habit of sachet collection and recovery.
This experience was brought to life through a national campaign “Saya sa Surfiesta”, with an integrated brand campaign.
TV - Strategic Works aired a promotional TVC showing the mechanics of the promo, reaching 75% of housewives. It partnered with the number Soap Opera in the Philippines for a daily branded segment of the show to explain the mechanics of the promo, in a way that it was incorporated to the plot.
Radio - Created radio commercials played in different local dialects and in multiple stations.
Instore- Massive merchandising displays in over 2,000 trade accounts, and used the pack to convey “Free 5 texts”
On ground – The agency deployed a roving redemption that went around the province in 300 towns for 30 days – providing every barangay an opportunity to redeem their free load in far-flung areas.
Surfiesta 1st Day Deployment!
To create more excitement and awareness, Strategic Works utilised its own internal sales force to lead a street-marketing event across 18 areas all in 1 day, reaching one million people.
Results
One of the challenges in carrying out the campaign is forcing a habit on mums of throwing their used Surf packs and bringing it to Cebuana Lhuillier instead of throwing it.
However, it was evident that the campaign instilled a change in behaviour as the results of Saya sa Surfiesta year2 doubled compared to year1. The brand was able to collect 7.5 million Sachets, which is 70% more sachets collected compared to Year 1. A simpler mechanic led to a 215% increase in promo redemptions with 1.2 million transactions.
Through Saya sa Surfiesta promotion it was able to attain its highest ever share in laundry powders, and widen the gap as the market leader with 29.7% share, above the target. It was also able to attract more users to Surf as its 4 week penetration increased by +790bps, now at 47.2%
Surf increased its attributes on delight and fragrance. Moreover, consumers were able to associate the attributes, “Brings delight to laundry” and “Has a great fragrance” to Surf.
With Fiesta ng Surfresa, Surf was able to collect 4.5 million Sachets in 2013. These sachets were turned into 40,000 cement pavers donated to communities and schools that were highly hit by typhoon Hayan in Tacloban.
Through Saya sa Surfiesta promotion the brand attained its highest ever share in laundry powders, and solidly established Surf as the market leader with close to 30% share.
Finally, the success achieved in growing brand values also helped assure the sustainability of the activity, proving a continuous win in building the brand, a win amongst target consumers, and more importantly a win on its environmental impact around the nation’s communities.