Nestlé Fruita Vitals: Fruit Fuel
Khalid Naseem and Ainee Kalim
Warc Prize for Asian Strategy
Entrant, 2011
 
 

   Title: Nestlé Fruita Vitals: Fruit Fuel
   Author(s): Khalid Naseem and Ainee Kalim
   Source: Warc Prize for Asian Strategy
   Issue: Entrant, 2011
 

Nestle Fruita Vitals: Fruit Fuel

The Warc Prize for Asian Strategy is Asia’s first competition set up to reward brilliant strategic thinking in marketing.
Marketers and agencies across Asia (excluding Pacific Asia) were asked to submit case studies that demonstrated how
insight and strategy had solved a business problem. The cases had to show what the problem was, the strategy that was
developed, how that strategy was brought to life and the results it delivered. The prize was judged by a panel of senior
clients and agency-side strategy experts, using the following weighting: quality of insight (15% of marks); quality of strategic
thinking (40%); implementation (15%); performance against objectives (20%); lessons learned (10%).

For more information on this annual prize, please visit www.warc.com/asiaprize.

Campaign Details

Advertiser: Nestlé Pakistan Ltd
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather
Brand: Nestlé Fruita Vitals
Campaign duration: March 2010-September 2010
Country: Pakistan
Media budget (USD): $1m-$3m
Channels used: Events, In-store, internet display, newspapers (national), out of home (all forms), packaging, public relations,
product placement, radio (national), sponsorship (event or property), sponsorship (media), television (broadcast)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This case study describes how Nestlé achieved ambitious growth targets in Pakistan for its packaged-juices by radically
repositioning its brand, targeting a lifestyle market segment and creating the Fruita Vitals sub-brand. In a soft drinks market
dominated by colas, this new brandfrom Nestlé emerged as the strongest brand in the health and naturalness category, by 
using a 360-degree campaign targeting young, upper-class urban consumers. As a result, the brand enjoyed more than five
times the category growth in terms of sales volumes in 2010 and its market share rose by seven index points.

MARKET BACKGROUND AND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

In a country in which 70% of the population is under 30, it is only to be expected that more hip and cool carbonated soft drinks
will occupy the largest share of the market.

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With a population growing at 2.6% per annum, coupled with global warming, particularly in tropical areas, cold beverages were
registering impressive growth, fuelled primarily by CSDs. The packaged-juices category (juices, nectars and fruit drinks) was
growing at 6% per annum.

Our business objective was clear – we needed to expand our brand at least twice as quickly as the overall packaged-juices
category, if we were to become a significant competitor to the colas.

Nestlé Fruita Vitals, a premium-priced brand, enjoyed a 10% share of the packaged-juices market. With consumption
occasions for premium-priced being limited to lunch times or with evening snacks, we saw little chance of meeting our targets
by competing within the packaged-juices category alone, as it was difficult to upgrade consumers from middle- and low-priced
segments under times of high inflation and a poorly performing economy.

Clearly, we not only needed to stay relevant to our core consumers (ie packaged-juice users who primarily choose the
category for health and naturalness reasons), but to also appeal to more hip and cool consumers who choose CSDs,
particularly colas, as a lifestyle choice. Our challenge was to communicate a more emotional/ lifestyle benefit rooted in the
health and naturalness product attributes.

INSIGHT AND STRATEGIC THINKING

Our previous target consumers were our brand’s core users. Demographically, they were upper-middle class, urban males and
females between the ages of aged 21 and 35.

We aimed to target our growth consumers, who like to consume CSDs as a lifestyle choice, through this campaign. This meant
that we needed to study their specific values and lifestyles in order to get under their skin. A detailed segmentation study was
carried out and we found that these consumers could be segmented into four values and lifestyle segments.

We targeted “Purposeful Go-getters” because getting more of them to buy our brand would help us in our objective of
achieving growth that would be twice as fast as the category growth itself. It was the largest segment and we knew that every
beverage brand would be competing there, but we felt that it had the best fit with our category for several reasons:

l Juices in this part of the world weren’t treated as “social glue”, so “social bonding” wasn’t a good choice.

l Our highest selling one-litre SKU, enough for four servings, meant that our brand wasn’t being consumed as on-the-go
refreshment.

l Juices are hardly preferred over colas, coffee and tea for self-pampering in this part of the world.

We did in-depth qualitative research with consumers within this segment to gain understandings and insights about their lives.
Seeing them in the larger context helped us to get to know them better.

The country was facing economic meltdown, having just moved transitioned from a dictatorship into another corrupt regime,
with rampant terrorism and rising prices. This created an environment of insecurity and instability. But after talking to
consumers, we found that they were determined to create a happy and fulfilled life for themselves, no matter what. They
worked hard to protect themselves against insecurities. They had no role models and could not relate to their parents, but that
made them even more focused on their goals. They knew that they could not depend on anyone to get them the life they
wanted; they were in control and were fighting against the odds.

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Purposeful Go-getters looked for little things that give them the assurance of a good life. They worked hard, played hard and
made each moment of every day count. They were driven by what they wanted out of each moment, rather than big
achievements. They were ambitious, smart, diverse and fun-loving, yet they wanted every moment of their life to be productive
in some way. Being optimistic was not a matter of choice; they had a long way to go and were the future of the nation. They
did whatever it takes to stay positive, be it yoga, reading inspirational books or adopting a Zen philosophy. Their insight was:
“The world is a mess but I will not give up on it. All I need is my daily dose of ‘fixing up’ to continue to tackle life with a positive
outlook.” In summary, they are progressive self-driven individuals who make choices that help them achieve their ambitions.

The next step was to develop a brand proposition. Our challenge was how to develop a more emotional relationship with our
target consumers that is rooted in their deeply held beliefs about the health and naturalness benefits in fruit extracts. We used
a three-pronged strategy to meet our challenge.

Ownable Brand Idea: Our usage research told us that out of all cold beverages, juices elicit the most “positive attitude” on a
consumer’s body and mind. And that is where the fit came in. We couldn’t fix the government, nor guarantee them a good life,
but we could be that daily dose of “fixing up”, both in terms of our product, as well as our philosophy.

From this, our creative team developed the big idea – “No matter what life throws at you, Rise and Shine to Life”, which was a
message to our consumers to stay positive in every situation. The tone was light-hearted and upbeat, to contrast with the
dreariness of news channels and to fit in with the vibrancy of juice.

Until then, our packaged juices were part of the branded “house of Nestlé”. The radical repositioning of our packaged juices
product line necessitated the creation of a sub-brand, as our new positioning went beyond Nestlé’s core promise of “good
food, good life”, and we could not alter what Nestlé stood for worldwide. We therefore created the Fruita Vitals sub-brand
under the Nestlé umbrella. Fruita Vitals’ role was to act as the “co-driver” brand to drive purchase decisions. This approach
was also in line with Nestlé’s hybrid brand architecture that it used worldwide.

Our radical repositioning of Nestlé Fruita Vitals, targetting a new “growth” audience defined by their values and lifestyle, and

creating a new sub-brand, wouldn’t work unless our executions supported our bold strategy and stood sufficiently wide apart
from the run-of-the-mill juice communications, to signal real differentiation while maintaining enough association with it to retain
category membership. Therefore, we decided to deliberately avoid all category clichés while showing enough product shots.

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IMPLEMENTATION
For this campaign, the 360-degree marketing concept was approached to be holistic at all touchpoints surrounding the
consumer, wherever they may be. We opted for this plan as it was focused more on being a consumer-centric media strategy
and less on being a media-integration effort. It not only included a heavy online component, but also television, radio, print,
POP and other mass-media elements.The touchpoints utilised were television, radio, out of home, digital, PR/events, retail and
press.

Our marketing spends rose from PKR138m in 2009 to PKR171m in 2010. The breakdown remained roughly the same: 41% on
TV airing; 31% on the TV commercial; 23% on outdoor; 3% on web; and 2% on radio.

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PERFORMANCE AGAINST OBJECTIVES

l Nestlé Fruita Vitals enjoyed more than five times the category growth in terms of sales volumes in 2010.

l Nestlé Fruita Vitals’ market share rose by seven index points (2009 taken as 100).

l According to our conservative estimates, the Nestlé Fruita Vitals campaign activity helped raise the brand’s sales volume

by about 7,500 tonnes (21%) compared with the pre-campaign sales forecast for the period (which assumed that there
had been no communication activity).

l Nestlé Fruita Vitals enjoyed the highest conversion ratios within the category, as illustrated by a comparison with its 
closest rival Shezan.

l Nestlé Fruita Vitals’ new positioning (a hitherto unmet consumer need) has almost transformed the category, becoming
the second-most-important category driver behind “naturalness”.

l The tracking study shows highest scores for Nestlé Fruita Vitals on all brand health indicators – sufficient evidence that

the communication campaign changed peoples’ perceptions.

l The tracking study conducted by AMRB also shows that Nestlé Fruita Vitals came as strongly differentiated on the 
intended benefits of “naturalness” and “gives me the power to shine every day”.

l Nestlé Fruita Vitals not only came across as well differentiated on key functional and emotional benefits, but also on 
intended personality traits.

(source: AMRB)

LESSONS LEARNED
The strategy in this case scenario was very much based on an understanding of the Pakistani market. Every decision was
made in accordance with local trends, in terms of juice intake and what consumers perceive juice to be. The strategy can be
taken into perspective in a similar market or culture, where juice habits are of a similar nature. But overall, it is unique to the
Pakistani environment.

© Copyright Warc 2011

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