Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
The safety of infant formula milk was severely compromised when Fonterra & Danone announced that bacteria were found in their products, which could cause botulism, a potentially fatal disease. The contamination struck widespread fear in Malaysian mothers which impacted Friso. FRISO had to take proactive actions to stem the crisis.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Insight: The breach of trust in moms opened a gap in their loyalty, making them re-evaluate their choice afresh & source of milk became a focal point in their decision. We discovered that none of the infant milk manufacturers were able to reassure mothers since they did not control their supply chain, unlike FRISO, which had Grass to Glass control over it. Strategy: We decided to turn the crisis into an opportunity. Agency recommended Search to be the frontliners to deploy a 3-prong strategy. First, to REDIRECT the Fonterra doubters, Secondly to REASSURE Friso consumers that Friso is completely safe, and Thirdly to REINFORCE Friso’s credibility on the full control of the entire supply chain. Idea: As mothers searched for news and information about the Fonterra contamination, we aimed to address that concern by helping reassure mothers that bacteria spread was not a problem affecting all dairy products for their children, and that it could be avoided through proper high quality control of the product, something that Friso as a leading premium brand could guarantee.

The Execution
Within 48 hours of Fonterra announcement, we deployed Search ads to redirect Mothers as they searched actively on the contamination crisis. Mothers seeing the ads were able to quickly comprehend that there was a safe solution to the contamination issue, and Search efforts were focused to: 1) REDIRECT competitor users to Friso’s products which were not affected and safe to use. 2) REASSURE Moms that Friso is fully imported from Holland 3) REINFORCE the fact that Friso had full end-to-end control of its supply chain. After clicking the search ads, they were led to a dedicated webpage that reassured them by showing Friso’s Gold Quality Grass to Glass process using video and educational articles. However this first point of contact was not enough as we knew Mothers would be looking at multiple sources of content online to fully research the contamination situation. We hence remarketed to Mothers using subtle but highly strategically placed display ads targeting news, health, parenting and social websites. This reinforced Friso’s credibility by being visible in all the right places.

The Results
We captured a total of 160,000 highly targeted searches & suddenly repositioned FRISO as the only ‘safe’ choice. This has converted an all-time low of market share in August 2013 to a 1.4% increase in market share in the next 4 months! FRISO emerged a surprise winner in the category, with majority of other competitors bracing market share decline in this period.