Culturelle Immune Health / COVID-19 Campaign objectives and goals:
Raise Culturelle’s brand awareness in South Korea.
Increase awareness of probiotics, especially LGG, as a tool in immune defence.
Cultivate consumers’ interest and purchase intent on Culturelle’s probiotics products.
Enhance the Culturelle health product sales volume during and after the campaign.
The Strategy
Probiotics are not only a key in good intestinal functioning, but are also an important tool in protecting immune health, as 70% of the immune system lives in the intestinal system. As Covid-19 began spreading throughout S. Korea and consumers looked for more ways to protect themselves against the coronavirus, Culturelle made it a priority to communicate how probiotics can help consumers further protect themselves. This encouraged us to launch a campaign with a “Shield against Vulnerabilities” messaging, highlighting how regularly taking probiotics and balanced intestinal health was scientifically useful at mitigating serious COVID-19 symptoms.
Hylink adopted a highly integrated media buy, PR and social media strategy for the campaign, including Display Ads throughout key Korean digital channels. A series of 8 videos with medical experts focused on how to protect yourself against COVID, PR articles promoting donating Culturelle probiotics to senior members of the society, and numerous social posts further highlighting protection tips. The campaign was carried out in two phases to adapt to epidemic situations in Korea.
The execution
As COVID-19 began in early February, Phase I of this campaign was launched on Naver, the most widely-used South Korean portal, Kakao, one of the most popular local social platform in South Korea as well as Facebook and Instagram to take part in the growing interest in preemptive health products like Culturelle.
Ran search and display banners on Naver with Culturelle’s branded keywords as well as health travel-related keywords to further promote Culturelle’s Naver Smart Store for direct sales.
Ran Kakao Native Ads to quickly enhance awareness and drive clicks by naturally embedding our display ads on Kakao feed.
Paid social media promotion on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to capture target audience with specific interest targeting.
As COVID continued, in May, Phase II extension was added to continue maximizing Culturelle’s brand awareness as interest in immune health continued to grow. The campaign was finalized with influencer sales in the summer, as the second wave reached its peak.
Hylink kicked off a series of videos with popular questions about COVID and COVID prevention with two of Culturelle’s medical experts to promote Cullturelle’s professional, reliable and authoritative brand image. The video series was so comprehensive that it is slated for global distribution starting in early 2021.
To further increase brand awareness and to generate CSR opportunities in S. Korea, Culturelle donated 1,000 packs of its key SKU, Digestive Health, to S. Korea’s Senior Citizen Support Organization. The press release was distributed to major consumer and trade publications in S. Korea to enlarge the audience reach.
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