Butterfinger Case Study: Creating a Customized Video Network to Connect with Online CustomersPublished: October 2009 | By Yahoo!
Nestlé
wanted to connect with its Butterfinger candy bar customers and its
comedic heritage online, but it didn’t rely on traditional digital
advertising to do it. Instead, it worked with Yahoo! to build a home
online for its customers: a video network where they could watch funny
videos.
The Challenge
Nestlé wanted to maintain the
Butterfinger brand’s comedic heritage while bringing its appeal
up-to-date, especially among the candy bar’s core customers.
“Humor
is part of our brand equity,” says Daniel Jhung, Marketing Manager,
Nestlé Butterfinger. “We wanted to get broad reach to our target
consumer, align ourselves with them and with the kind of irreverent
humor they identify with most.”
The brand wanted to develop a
non-traditional, digital approach, one that would create even greater
customer engagement with the brand. Butterfinger turned to Yahoo!, which
offered them the ability to customize a section of Yahoo! Video with
the Butterfinger identity.
The Solution
Rather than
a traditional online advertising campaign, Nestlé engaged with Yahoo!
to develop the Butterfinger Comedy Network on Yahoo! Video.
This
exclusive, Butterfinger-branded, audience-driven Yahoo! Video channel
gathered thousands of comic videos from Yahoo! users as well as
established online comedy mainstays: JibJab.com, Stupidvideos.com, The
Onion and FunnyOrDie.com. Since its launch in April, 2008, more than
2,100 videos have been uploaded to the site, making it a Web hub for
irreverent comedy. The large Yahoo! network yields millions of page
views each month, reaching over 80% of Butterfinger’s primary target
audience of young adults on the internet. 1
The
Butterfinger Comedy Network has also become the de-facto home page for
the Butterfinger brand. “People go to Butterfinger.com to get
nutritional information and other facts,” Jhung says. “We wanted to
create a home for consumers.”
Butterfinger has ads throughout its
network that link to video games and contests designed to get users
involved with the brand. For instance, Butterfinger and Yahoo! partnered
with Hollywood celebrity, Seth Green (whose credits include “Austin
Powers” and “Family Guy”), to create an interactive contest series,
“Dude, Where’s My Bar?”
As part of its “Protect Your
Butterfinger” ad campaign, the brand worked with Yahoo! to create the
Protectyourbutterfingerbar.com contest site, awarding up to $25,000 for
the best user-generated “How do you protect your Butterfinger?” video.
Videos were shared and embedded on sites and blogs across the Web.
“The
contest allows for two-way communication,” notes Jhung. “Our holy grail
for engagement is all-way communications. The cool thing is that users
would submit their videos and talk to each other about the videos with
the brand as the centerpiece of the conversation.”
Butterfinger Case Study: Creating a Customized Video Network to Connect with Online Customers
The Results
The
Butterfinger Comedy Network successfully improved its perception as a
favorable, irreverent, and unique brand among its target visitors. An
average of 2.6 million people visited the microsite per month between
January and July of 2009 and 42% of the audience said they would
recommend the site to others. Users viewed an average of 8 million video
streams per month.
The campaign showed “significant lifts” in the following key engagement attributes, according to Nestlé:
- Unique—11 percent.
- Funny—16 percent.
- “Brand for someone like me”—16 percent.
All of these attributes added up to real results: Purchase intent for Butterfinger rose 12.3%.
The campaign gleaned traction in overall aided brand awareness, sponsorship association, and brand favorability. Butterfinger Comedy Network provides an online home for the brand’s audience, bringing them the humorous content that most resonates with them.
“The network effect and the broad reach they have to our consumers was a big part of why we engaged with Yahoo!,” says Jhung. “Also, it was a completely customizable solution for our brand. Yahoo! built and hosted it. But we own it. That’s pretty cool.”
1 comScore Media Metrix September 2009
About Nestlé: Nestlé is the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company. The company employs more than 280,000 people and has 456 factories in 84 countries. Nestlé products are sold in almost every country in the world.
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