Otees, a South African cereal produced by Bokomo, wanted to reduce production costs and also build excitement and awareness for a new product, so it created an online game. The game, which was promoted via Facebook, used an online version of rock-paper-scissors to help Otees determine its new cereal flavor.
Objective and Context:
It was too expensive for Otees to continue to produce its apple/raspberry flavored cereal, so the brand decided to hold a competition among consumers to decide which flavor should become a standalone cereal flavor. Bokomo also wanted to raise awareness of Otees cereal and create a fun, engaging campaign that would spread virally. The campaign was based on the idea of a "battle of the flavors."
Target Audience:
The campaign was targeted at children and young adults, who were not regular gamers.
Creative Strategy:
The campaign ran from November 2018 to January 2019. Bokomo had a limited budget, so tactics were focused primarily on Facebook. Coupons were also distributed. One of the primary challenges was that Otees did not have a mascot, which made it harder to create a memorable social media identity for the cereal. The campaign also needed to be family-friendly.
Overall Campaign Execution:
The campaign was based on the idea that apple and raspberry were battling each other for flavor supremacy via rock-paper-scissors. Bokomo selected this game because everyone already knew how to play it and no explanation was required. The game was played on Facebook with each consumer competing against a computer-generated player. Each player selected a flavor and the winning flavor earned a point. The game was played via a microsite, accessible on desktop or mobile.
Mobile Execution:
Advertising was targeted at Facebook fans of Otees and people who showed an interest in the competition when it appeared in their Facebook feeds. A leaderboard was updated daily and players were allowed to play as many times as they wanted. Users selected their rock-paper-scissor combinations prior to starting the game so that less sophisticated mobile devices were not disadvantaged in a real-time battle.
Overall, 94,349 battles were played, with each of the 4,100 gamers participating in approximately 23 battles.
