Insight
If P&G could make its products a must-have in call centres – an untapped target market – that success would cascade across the wider population.
The Philippines has been booming in recent years due to the rapid growth of call centres. 1.5 million Filipinos are now employed, making calls on behalf of telecommunication, pharmaceutical, healthcare, satellite cable and appliance brands. Thanks to their language skills, they earn good money.
For P&G, these young single adults represent a huge, untapped target market for beauty and wellness products such as Olay and Gillette.
Although well established in the Philippines, these products were regarded as relevant to an older demographic. P&G needed to build appeal among younger consumers - and call centre workers represented a perfect target.
Not only did they have good salaries, but as affluent, white-collar employees, they were also huge influencers of other young consumers. If P&G could make its products a must-have in call centres, that success would cascade across the wider population.
The challenge was that call centre workers lived odd lives, often working at night to ensure they are on call at peak times for their target markets half way round the world.
A traditional strategy for reaching out to affluent young women was reaching everyone but call centre workers.
On top of their odd hours – which meant they didn’t consume traditional media – they also worked in a media-starved environment and were not allowed to use their mobiles or browse the Internet during their work hours.
MediaCom's mission was to enable P&G to find a way in to the call centre fortress.
Strategy
There was a community of 1.5m consumers who were being missed by traditional media plans, consumers who had not yet heard what it had to say about P&G’s proven and effective products.
This untapped audience posed a significant new Source of Growth audience for P&G.
The solution needed credibility to earn space in the limited media windows of the audience, and it had to deliver on their passion points of beauty, fashion, health, lifestyle, and travel.
Equally, it also needed to have a digital element, given the dominance of mobile in their media consumption habits outside of work, and allowing it to deliver targeted content for the participating P&G brands.
The only media that would satisfy these demands was a very traditional one: it was time for Print to enter the call centre fortresses of the Philippines.
Execution
The agency created the first-ever customised content and distribution strategy aimed exclusively at call centre workers – a previously untapped target audience.
In partnership with Cosmopolitan, the country’s leading fashion and lifestyle magazine, it created the "Cosmo at Work" magazine.
The publication delivered content on the target’s interests, including articles about the how to dress at the workplace, or tips how to solve office related beauty problems, creating a strong platform for P&G brands – the only brands featured in the magazine.
It gained unique access for the title in call centres across the country (without paying for the privilege), creating a unique community of exclusive Cosmo at Work readers.
Copies were distributed quarterly to more than 50 call centres across the nation, making the magazine the ONLY media targeting this burgeoning new audience.
To give the content an added digital targeted element, it created a call centre community of users on Facebook – the target’s key social network. This included all related companies such as credit cards and consultancy firms ensuring it could build a strong list.
This allowed the agency to ensure that P&G content would always be in their feed at break times during their working “day”, not to mention when they left the office and spent most of their time on their mobile social feeds.
Nine P&G brands were supported by this uniquely targeted promotion – Olay PCC and Skin, Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Safeguard Derma Sense, Oral-B, Metamucil, Vicks, Gillette and Whisper.
Results
This campaign successfully took P&G into a previously sealed off environment, enabling it to reach a hugely attractive, new target audience.
P&G’s brands are now part of the conversation among this critical community, used, discussed and now part of their daily lives.
To date, nearly 400,000 copies of Cosmo at Work have been distributed to call centre offices.
Cosmo at Work is now the biggest circulation title in the country. It has been so effective that P&G Philippines has committed to a quarterly publication on an ongoing basis.
It has driven huge business rewards for the company, helping to drive usage among this upwardly mobile, young audience, helping to change perceptions of its brands.
Awareness has increased for all participating P&G brands by an average of 7% for Top Of Mind Brand Awareness. Unaided brand awareness has risen by 8%.
Trial has increased by up to 20% with even the least successful brand gaining a 12% rise on this score.
Scores for Brand Used Most Often are up 6% among the participating P&G brands.