Milka: The Digital Egg Hunt

Easter, with the Christmas holiday, is the best time of year to eat chocolate. As a child, my friends and I would organise egg hunts in our gardens and spend the afternoon trying to find the precious chocolate, and this is one of the best memories I can associate with chocolate.

In 2013, the Buzzman agency, who works on Milka’s communication, extended the concept of an egg hunt, combining advertising and online gaming. The campaign was a frank success and was renewed this year.

Milka’s advergaming (neologism coming from advertising and gaming) campaign, ‘Oeufs cachés‘ (meaning Hidden Eggs), offered its French consumers the chance to participate in a digital hunt updated in real time, with a garden that was the size of France.

To participate, it was very simple, you only had to log on the website, and from the moment you entered the hunt, you could see how many participants you were playing against, and had 5 minutes to scratch the herb and try to find as many eggs as possible.

This hunt was not for entertainment purposes only;, if you found an egg, you would get a price: either vouchers, or gifts such as phones, iPads, etc.

The game is free, fun, entertaining, easy to play even for non-gamers: everyone has a chance to win, and enjoy a nice time.

The constraint is that you can only play for 5 minutes a day. When scratching the eggs, you can find bonuses that give you extra time to play the game.

How is this advergame positive for Milka?

Advergaming enables the brand, namely Milka, to build a relationship with the customer in a fun, entertaining way, without being too intrusive. The game format allows the consumer to interact with the brand in a positive way, and a memorable one: even if the game lasts only 5 minutes in general, having 5 minutes of time in a consumer’s life only dedicated to your brand is a challenge nowadays, when people are permanently solicited by ads.

In Milka’s ‘Oeufs cachés’, all the players do the hunt simultaneously on the same garden at any given time, which involves them in the game, and reinforces their positive image of the brand. Indeed, the competition and the rewards, apart from improving the consumers’ intention of sales towards Milka; makes the consumer feel the shiver of playing a game with real stakes.

This kind of advertising proves to be a very good way to involve the consumer in the brand, something in which Milka is becoming an expert.

Nabila Mangrolia

Sources:
http://www.argentdubeurre.com/focus/decouverte/alimentation/4268-jeu-oeufs-caches-milka-paques-2014-gagner-reduc.html
http://www.nuwave.marketing/publicites/campagnes-web/milka-buzzman-advergame-oeufscaches/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeqpMgfg-DI

Côte d’Or’s marketing strategy

Values:

Côte d’Or is all about a qualitative chocolate with an intense taste of cacao. It brings pleasure while eating it. The values conveyed by the brand are authenticity and intensity. Both are directly related to the chocolate itself, authenticity by the engagement of the brand with local producers and intensity through a strong taste of cacao.

The Côte d’Or identity is truly specific, it evokes an intense chocolate taste, a good quality, a selected cocoa as well as a centennial know-how. Even if the brand has a broad category of products, the identity stays in the tasting universe.

Positioning:

On the mass market premium segment for adult. A sustainable and responsible chocolate. At the moment, in France and Belgium the black chocolate tablet (more than 70% cocoa) contain at least 30% of cocoa coming from verified Rainforest Alliance™ exploitation. Over time, the final objective is to only use that kind of chocolate for the complete range of product.

Target:

The targets are the adult who wants to savor a tasty piece of chocolate. An adult who want to succumb to the temptation of a delicious piece of chocolate.

Packaging:

With a sober (through warm and dark colors) yet effective packaging, Côte d’Or wants to give the image of a qualitative and premium brand. Usually the consumers does not really know what he wants to buy so it will be an impulse buy that is why the color, the logo and the ingredients (with pictures) are really important to attract the consumer.

Over the years the packaging and logo evolved, at the beginning there was one palmer and 3 pyramids as well as the elephant to evoke the exoticism of the Ghana, but later on they to refine the logo to only keep the elephant, the symbol of strength, stability, memory and longevity.

Distribution:

Nowadays, the brand is sold in about twenty countries among them Germany, Greece, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Italy, Lebanon, Japan, South Africa, US… but the best sellers are Belgium, Holland and France.

The selling points are the following:

80% in supermarket

15% chocolate’s artisant

5% restaurateurs, internet

Communication:

Côte d’Or is present everywhere, the purpose for the brand is to known as the expert of the chocolate for the mass market. Over the years they create different kinds of TV adds because they wanted the consumer to remembered them as a strong, sustainable and with a specific intense taste of cocoa. They also create a buzz last year with a street marketing campaign: «Afrodisiaque, le vrai pouvoir du chocolat» and a media campaign: “a world without chocolate” they wanted to emphasize on the importance of the chocolate in everybody life and the values of brand instead of the product. In supermarket, where you can find the products, they implement some specific action to attract the consumer like some corners or display.

Display

Display

Main competitors:

Of course, even if Côte d’Or is well known among the mass market, it also has a lot of great competitors. For instance, we can identify 2 main competitors that are direct competitors with almost the same target and positioning:

Nestlé:

Nestlé

Lindt:

Lindt

In addition, we can find other competitors that are not directly addressing exactly to the same target but are offering an alternative like private label, Ivoria.

SWOT Analysis

Strenghs Premium brand Broad range of product Affordable price for the quality (and compare to competitors) Old valuable brand Seen as responsible and sustainable brand Intense cocoa taste Easy to find (eye catching packaging) Assisted awareness: 99% (Ipsos 2011)	Weaknesses Not the leader on the category Not enough communication Failed of co-branding
Opportunities Consumers attached to nature and sustainable development Values old good quality brand Appeal for natural product	Threats Fight against obesity Crisis on raw material Strong competition

Julie Marec

Sources:

http://www.prodimarques.com/sagas_marques/cote-d-or/cote-d-or.php

http://recherche.e-marketing.fr/marque-cote-d-or.html

http://www.e-marketing.fr/Marketing-Magazine/Article/Cote-d-Or-investit-la-rue-41045-1.htm

http://www.mondelezinternational.fr/about-us/brands-az/brand-C

http://www.pearson.fr/resources/titles/27440100604610/extras/7143_kotler_chap9.pdf

Display picture: http://www.moodiereport.com/document.php?c_id=37&doc_id=14595

http://www.phixion.be/en/brand-experience/in-store-brand-activation/cote-d-or-afrodisiac.html

Nestlé picture: https://www.theinsiders.eu/campaigns/info/4/1726/info.htm

Lindt picture: http://www.exceptionn-elle.fr/cuisine/les-tablettes-creations-de-lindt-ou-le-chocolat-gourmand-a-letat-pur/

Côte d’or pictures: http://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/74/59/16/20140618/ob_38dd95_nouvelle-tablette-chocolat-cote-d-or-s.jpg

http://img.over-blog-kiwi.com/0/74/59/16/20140618/ob_fa16c1_nouvelle-tablette-chocolat-cote-d-or-s.png

Côte d’Or and Corporate Social Responsibility

Côte d’or: Participate in an Activity of Sustainable development with Cultivator of CACAO

Recently, Côte d’or collaborated with an ONG Care International for a project of marketing to convey its sense of social responsibility. The subject of the project is to develop the plantation of cacao and living standard of cultivator in Batéguédia II (a village of Côte d’Ivoire), which is famous for plantation of cacao and café.

How would Côte d’or proceed for the goal of sustainable development?

There are 2 missions. One is to plant banana trees to protect young cacao trees form the exposure of sunshine. The reason is that sunshine will affect the quality of cacaos during the growth of cacao tree and the blades of banana are wide enough to supply the shadow for young cacao tree. At the same time, the cultivators could also benefit from these banana trees.

The other mission is to interplant five categories of vegetable (tomatoes, eggplants, gumbo, pepper and green bean) with cacao. Because of cultivators could only harvest cacao twice per year and the productivity is pretty low. If the project is carried out, it could create job opportunities for the youngsters and increase the income of the local cultivators.

How could clients participate in this project?

The method is simple and interesting. Clients just need to put the code on the packaging of Côte d’or chocolat into the input box of its Internet site. Then the clients could choose one type of plant for his mission. Next, he should choose one part of the land to plant his plant. At last, clients could share this experience in his facebook with his family and friends. The goal of Côte d’or is to plant 200,000 plants before 31 may 2015.

In my opinion, this activity is really a smart way to give a good impression of Côte d’or’s social responsability to its clients. Because the social responsablity is not a value added for the products of Côte d’or, but it will impact the decisions of the clients who are more concern with the social development and environmental situation. So Côte d’or doesn’t need to invest a lot to this point, it just needs to contribute a little to let their clients know their attitude.

This project perfectly balances the investment and impression output. On the one side, the plantation could be regarded as one way to increase the productivity of their cultivators, and on the other side, this project could be also regarded as a contribution of Côte d’or to the local people.

Meanwhile, its collaboration the ONG Care International also contribute an positive impression to this « non-profit » project. In addition, the change of packaging for this project could be ignored. Côte d’Or just adds a code in the corner of the packaging. Above all, the project « Partenaire pour le meilleur » will be a success try for Côte d’Or to convey its great social reponsability to the public.

Jiaqi Wang

Sources:
The site which client can input his code: https://codes.cotedor.com/agir
The detail of this project: https://codes.cotedor.com/projet
The condition of utilization: https://codes.cotedor.com/Content/PDF/FR_Conditions%20G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rales%20Utilisation%20%20Participation%20Partenaires%20Pour%20Le%20Meilleur%20Cote%20d’O_16122013r.pdf

Milka: Piece missing?

Would you buy a non-conform product with the same price as a conform one?
… Of course NOT!

But when French and German customers of Milka opened their chocolate bar in August 2013, they got a special surprise: one of the squares was missing.

Why did this happen?

The culprit was not a naughty kid or a supermarket mouse, but the brand itself, which used a smart way to communicate its brand message: ‘Dare to be tender‘.

Milka tapped Buzzman Paris for the « Last Bar » campaign. Almost every person feels that the last piece of chocolate is always the best one. Milka’s managers know about this! So, to encourage consumers to be more « tender », the brand gave them the opportunity to give that very special piece as a gift to someone they cared about.

The packaging for these missing pieces bars was printed with a special code.

The code could be entered online to either claim the missing chocolate piece for themselves, or to send it along with a lovely message such as « missing you » or « love you ».

Here is a very bright case of product creativity, with the product as the medium.

Milka uses the marketing buzz well in this campaign, marketing buzz being the interaction of consumers and users of a product which blows up or alters the original marketing message. The emotion or campaign about the product can be either positive or negative. Of course, Milka uses the good emotion -tender and care- to create a positive image brand.

What a nice idea from Buzzman! It shows a lot about the brand ambition. Indeed, Milka was brave enough to change its product, with all the costs and production impacts it implied, for the purpose of a good communication campaign.

Jiaqi Wang

Sources:
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/square-of-chocolate
http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/milka-chocolate-bars-now-missing-square-new-campaign/