Insight
Many of us grew up with chewing gum, or at least we watched movie stars and characters in teen dramas chewing it with considerable panache. It would be easy to assume that this was everyone’s understanding of gum, but it isn’t.
In Indonesia this category is very new. Indonesians don’t yet understand the specific reasons why one chews gum and as it stands the category has little or no cultural cachet.
In most markets it is common for gums to claim the usual - and pretty well trodden - product benefit of ‘fresh breath’. However in Indonesia this emotional high ground is, very uniquely, owned by candies (such as Mintz and Lotte) and not by gum.
Happydent wanted to steer clear of this territory.
The delivery of white teeth and a dazzling smile shone through as relevant and motivating drivers for Indonesians. As the product’s key benefit, this would allow the brand to differentiate itself from both candies and from its key gum competitors.
However the existing assets for Happydent both for communications and packaging were dated and pigeonholed as a dental health product, so Happydent looked to refresh these significantly along with the brand imagery overall.
The objectives were therefore as follows:
1. Awareness: Grow brand awareness amongst youth
2. Differentiation: Create a differentiating functional benefit in consumers’ minds and own white teeth
3. Modernisation: Drive modernity and relevance
4. Sales: And as a result of the above, sell more gum
Strategy
Given the nature of the Indonesian marketplace - from stalls in wet markets to large hypermarkets - and the fact that we are operating in an impulse category, the brand needed a targeted idea that would cut through in the crowded point of sale environment, but also extend across all channels.
BBH looked to target connected, urban youth - an audience that has strong local voices and a desire for experimentation. In order to create relevance for Happydent amongst our audience, we knew it was not enough to simply advertise to them. Instead we needed to become embedded in their everyday culture. Indonesian youth were going through a major transition. While TV was still the dominant channel, digital media was growing rapidly. Our audience was looking for moments of light entertainment, something they were finding in droves via social media. The internet had provided endless opportunities for self expression. Blogging communities were growing rapidly and mobile internet meant that people were more connected than ever.
But the reality of this hyper social society has added pressures because teens are always on display. There is a pressure for their status updates, their profile pictures, and blog posts, to be consistently sparkling and witty.
The agency positioned Happydent as a brand that understood the pressures our youth audience were under, and gave them an ally to help them be their best self in a way that would be both entertaining to the audience, but also educational, so it could communicate the functional benefits of chewing Happydent gum.
BBH's proposition:
Happydent whitens your teeth and leaves a dazzling smile.
Creative expression: “When your smile dazzles, so do you!”
We re-established Happydent as an outlet for self-expression. No longer was Happydent simply a confectionary product, but a brand to help its audience be at their best.
Execution
The agency defined the role for communications as: “To provide a platform for Indonesians to be dazzling”
To execute this idea, it tapped into the pinnacle of self-expression in pop culture – the talent show.
But given how crowded the market was, simply recreating a talent show would not just be predictable, but likely to get lost in the clutter of the oversaturated reality show landscape. It needed to ‘turn things on their head’.
Enter the Dazzlemouth - literally an upside-down head, which became the unique brand character, which starred in The Dazzlemouth Show. The agency created six films of The Dazzlemouth Show to drive viewers to the Happydent Facebook page. Here it created an engagement platform that could be used to flex between brand building and product promotion.
It built an ongoing brand narrative via an ‘Access All Areas’ scoop into The Dazzlemouth Show. This was essentially a story of the characters in the show – where did they come from? How did they end up on the show? Where are they going next? Meanwhile, our judges encouraged our fans to show off their dazzling skills too.
The content was designed to tell a long-term brand narrative in a way that was highly recognisable as Happydent content, while being extremely engaging.
To allow our audience to participate in the brand narrative, we developed a Dazzlemouth avatar builder on Facebook. This allowed fans to create their own Dazzlemouth profile pictures to be used to show off their creativity.
The results
The brand refresh was a dazzling success, shifting awareness, imagery, emotions and lots of packs of gum!
1. Grow brand awareness
Total brand awareness reached an all time high and led the category with a clear 17 percentage point lead on its nearest gum competitor.
2. Create a differentiating functional benefit in consumers’ minds
The functional proposition was delivered with laser precision through the work. Happydent’s “can whiten teeth” measure jumped significantly to 38 percentage points ahead of its nearest competitor – an index of 141.
3. Drive modernity and relevance
In terms of modernity Happydent’s “Innovative brand” metric shifted significantly and resulted in an index of 115.
The relevance of the concept is also proven by a brilliant set of social metrics: Fan growth and engagement rates have been excellent.
And the page has repeatedly been ranked the most engaging Facebook page in Indonesia according to Socialbakers with an engagement rate of over 33 times higher than the average engagement rate.
4. Sell more gum
In comparison to the same quarter in the previous year Happydent delivered a 37.9% increase in total sales volume.
Overall the campaign has set the foundations to change the gum category in Indonesia and drive sustained growth for Happydent with an engaging brand identity and clear functional proposition.