CASE STUDY: MAMA LUCCHETTI CAMPAIGN
The great challenge presented by the agency MOTHER consisted in building a new identity for Lucchetti that would allow a relaunch, helping it grow and privilege it as a brand.
HISTORY
Lucchetti arrived in Argentina in the 90s to compete in Pastas, a category characterised for having plenty of brand competition but insignificant differences between them, since their efforts to commune and innovate are poor.
Nevertheless, Lucchetti was able to position itself at a good price-quality ratio, and by the year 2006, it had turned into a strong brand: it had 7.1% of the share versus Matarazzo -another brand of Molinos, leader of the market with 7.9%-. Including its slogan, "La Pasta de Mamá", has become a trademark within its consumers.
But the market was evolving: the food segments with added value begun to grow, and if the market changed, Lucchetti would also need to change to not stray behind. So, by 2008, Molinos betted strongly on the growth of Lucchetti.
The challenge was to reinvent a pastas' brand, and transform it into a food brand of high value.
It was no easy task, since Lucchetti had begun to compete with Caldos & Sopas, two category that were leaded by a sole brand. A brand with a giant portfolio of products, a solid positioning, with trade dominion and a strong and year long constant inversion in advertising.
Lucchetti would go up against Knorr, leading brand of Unilever.
In this context, the great challenge for the agency Madre consisted in building a new identity for Lucchetti to permit its relaunch, helping it grow and privilege itself as a brand.
The grand idea was simply to leave behind that cliché advertised mother, the very one who wears khaki pants and resolves every- thing with a flick of her wrist and a perfect smile.
OBJECTIVES
1. Reposition Lucchetti as a food brand of products. I.e., convert it into something much more than a brand of pastas.
2. Create a defining message that will help identify with the consumers, in order to construct an emotional bond with the product.
3. Reaching these business goals set for Lucchetti, by the year 2008.
The grand idea was simply to leave behind that cliché advertised mother, the very one who wears khaki pants and resolves everything with a flick of her wrist and a perfect smile; kill off once in for all the "young, dynamic and modern mom" whose only existence is manifested in the briefs of hundreds of brands that keep on repeating themselves, and giving place to express the real mom, the one which can live in your most common neighbourhood - like Barracas -, and bring forward her maternity the best way she can, full of imperfections, mistakes, frustrations and fears, but inconditionally loving to her family.
Lucchetti wanted to position themselves as a brand that would offer simple and practical solutions for every day food; a brand allied with the modern mom. And that is how Mamá Lucchetti was born, the representative of 99,99% of moms in this planet.
The creative strategy for the campaign was based on instances of everyday life that would reflect what almost every mom has to go through daily.
STRATEGY
It was decided that Mamá Lucchetti would not come to this world to sell products - since the target nowadays generally does not appeal to those kind of brands- Mamá Lucchetti is here to tell all those who want to listen that being a mom is a state of constant moodiness. Through this campaign, the communication was not the product launch, if not the relaunch; in search of mothers who would identify and bond emotionally with Lucchetti.
The creative strategy of the campaign was based on a search and identification of insights and common instances of life, that reflect what mothers go through every day for the very act of being a mother. Situations that would allow us to fully describe how they are, as they are.
However, as some "truths" can come to result as painful or brutal if presented with such realism or seriousness, it was decided to go with an animated commercial, bordered with humor and fun.
During the whole campaign, the work process could be described as completely synergetic - this including the creative and media strategy - in order to optimise the maximum inversion and amplify the results.
FIRST STAGE
Television:
Television fulfilled the central rol for presenting Mamá Lucchetti to society. It sought to entertain and impact in record timing. That's why work was done with higher intensity than that of the principal competitor (Knorr), reaching at the first stage of the campaign a 70% of the total in advertising inversions of the brand.
That's how the four animated spots were launched. The first of them was "Chorus", what presented the main characters of the Lucchetti world, and generated identification and stuck many minds with the campaign jingle.
The Prime TV segment (19.00hs onwards) was strategical, because it allowed us to reach the spectacleness we were looking for, and during the first week of the launch, "Chorus" as much as the second spot were viewed in a secuenced in the same commercial cut by more than 90% of our consumers.
The following commercials: "Blender", "Kitchen Light", and "Perfect Mom" allowed us to enter different households and spy on different moms to see them in action, in some daily situations that our narratives propose.
Each of these three pieces allowed us to generate a segment in TV Cable's planification. Each genre (children, news/sports and women) had their core piece and major advertising pressure according to the particular piece.
SECOND STAGE
Television:
For the second instance of the campaign, an objective was made to introduce in the scene two key categories in favor of strategy and business for Lucchetti: Caldos y Sopas.
Mamá Lucchetti would interact naturally with the brand products, without losing the main character who are the situations full of insightfulness and fun.
Thats how we launched a new animated commercial for Caldos called "Osvaldo Laport", and another of Sopas that was placed in the months of winter.
Osvaldo Laport was acompanied by two additional spots ("Meat", "Stew") whose objective was to support appetiteness to the brand, a key attribute in the food world. These spots were produced combining tactics of animation and film, a slow motion camera.
With intermediate objectives of coverage and frequency (65% and, in frequency 5+), we searched for continuity and placement in time, to install the message and permit the consumer to assimilate the benefits of each category.
Subte (TV):
The campagn also came through to almost two million people that daily transit the subway. Sixty spots were broadcasted daily to accompany and cheer up the users of every subway station.
ADD-ONS
The characters of Mamá Lucchetti also went for the packs and they visited the store shelves, so the brand products could have the best identification possible at it's buying point.
Lucchetti was also made present in a great stand at the Children's Book Festival, so that the children could live the experience in direct contact with the campaign's characters.
During the second stage of the campaign, during the most productive months of winter, Mama Lucchetti visited magazines of great circulation, to show more about its world and re enforce its attributes and the communication of the product line.
The Agency decided they wanted the characters to be as cute, but also as expressive as possible.
DESIGNING MOM
After sketching a series of different characters and different looks, styles and morphologies, along with the agency we thought it would be better to carry on designing, not only in 2D but also in 3D, where the agency, and client, could understand much better where we were heading to. Characters were not only designed, but fully modelled and rigged, to test expressions and movement. The characters were never designed alone or in singles. All morphologies and styles were designed to function as a family, so a mother, father, sister and brother (and sometimes a dog) were created and designed altogether at once to achieve the final style for the commercials.
RESULT
The Agency decided they wanted our characters to be as cute, but also as expressive as possible. So we begun directly forgetting about limbs, hands and legs, and started focusing mainly on expressions: the face. So it was decided: let's go with a huge mouth. Another important thing was wardrobe: should our characters be completely naked? Or should they have maybe some clothes on? The first tests only showed us that with such simple-looking characters, adding wardrobe to them would mean to actually re-design them based on their clothes from scratch, as they covered most of their bodies. So the idea was dropped off, except for some minor details, such as ties, bows, glasses, and so on.
All mothers were given real mother’s names, rather than code names or numbers. Many mothers were based on our own mothers as well, which made a lot of the design process really fun for the whole team (and families). Everyone was involved in the creative process behind this commercials, which is always good.
Today, Lucchetti takes up 1st place in Ranking and 2nd place in Top of Mind in Foods.
RESULTS OF THE FIRST OBJECTIVE
The first objective was to reposition Lucchetti as a food product brand.
In the first six months of the campaign, Lucchetti was able to grow, leaving behind just being a pasta brand and truning into a cross category brand:
Today it occupies 1st place in franking and second place in Top of Mind of Foods.
“The golden medallion is for Lucchetti, which has grown throughout the years, making it to first place this year. It leads among women and teenagers. This brand leadership is related to a strong communicational bet made by the cmpany, and a proposal of a new bond within the consumers. From last year to today, its mental presence has grown significantly within its consumers, ascending to first place in recognition. Lucchetti obtains high levels of confidence, key attribute in this category..”
iEco Clarin Supplement.
RESULTS OF THE SECOND OBJECTIVE
The second objective was creating a message that would make a difference for the brand, that would generate identification and contribute to the construction of an emotional bond with the target.
The awareness of Lucchetti duplicated in only five months (1). The company reached elevated levels of impact and overly succeeded the standard quantities of:
Visibility (+78%)
Branding (+60%)
Likeness (+71%)
Performing over the established media for the market and overcoming Molinos' objectives. Lucchetti stopped being a functional brand to turn into a brand with great emotional anchorage.
From its authentic place - the kitchen - it grew and expanded throughout social networks and blogs, where people became the owners of its grace as its message became spontaneously viral, enhancing its reach and amplifying the results of the communication.
A total of 10.558.307 people viewed Mamá Lucchetti on Youtube, and over 3,480.000 are fans on Facebook.
Lucchetti demonstrated an increase of:
15% in volume
29% in sales
43% increase in operating results.
RESULTS OF THE THIRD OBJECTIVE
The brand also showed a important increase in terms of Share of Market, no only on a masterbrand level, if not in each of its categories where its participation is highly favorable.
In "Pastas", it increased 3.1 points. This represented an 51% increase in sales.
In"Caldos", Lucchetti grew 0.7 points in which signified a 30% increase in sales.
In the category "Sopas" it reached 9.5 of SOM, which represents a 37% increase in sales.
With these results, Lucchetti reached a strong competitive position in terms of SOM, converting itself in the second player of the market in each of the three categories mentioned.
Lastly, on an important note, while in 2008 the food basket grew a 39% vs 2007, Lucchetti experimented an 85% sales increase.
We thank the agency MOTHER for trusting us in such an important project and we are proud of having worked with them during the creation of this campaign, as well as having these results.
All information about the campaign can be consulted in Medios y Empresas http://www.mediosyempresas.com.