Miele taps digital consumer journeys in biggest brand campaign to date

A digital-first approach to consumer journeys is being tapped by Miele in what the company describes as its largest brand campaign in Australia in 120 years.

The ‘Life beyond ordinary’ global campaign debuted in February and represents the largest media investment to date in A/NZ. The campaign supports the debut of the German manufacturer’s new Generation 7000 kitchen range, a significant product launch that follows five years of research and development across 10 Miele factories, 15 different categories, four design lines and 353 appliances globally.

The products have already received several accolades internationally, including across the Red Dot Awards and iF Product Design Awards in 2019, and feature what the company describes as never seen before technology making cooking more intuitive than ever.

Brand work was created in partnership with agency, Select World, and features several internationally respected chefs, including Helena Rizzo from Brazil and Kyle Connaughton from Single Thread in California, using the new products and their breakthrough features. These include wireless food probe oven technology; the Miele Combi Steam Oven; and Miele’s full-surface Induction Cooktop with intelligent pan recognition.

The creative work also features visually arresting floral ice installations from artist, Azuma Makoto. Like the products on show, Miele A/NZ marketing director, Michele Laghezza, said creative embraces the company’s ‘Immer Besser’, or ‘Forever better’ philosophy.

“We are launching the most important cooking range ever in our history. This range is leading edge, completely new for the appliances world in terms of its technology and design,” he told CMO.  “We expect it to change consumer behaviour in the kitchen.”

As Laghezza noted, purchasing kitchen appliances is usually a task only undertaken two or three times in a lifetime. “We decided to launch this campaign to say Miele is launching the most advanced range of cooking appliances from a technological perspective in the Australia and New Zealand markets,” he said.  

Laghezza saw the campaign as the first-ever digitally thought out approach from the group, using significant consumer data and insight to inform assets plus channels and engagement strategies.

“Assets are designed to complement the consumer journey, from pre-launch, awareness, discovery to purchase. So according to different stages of the consumer’s journey, they’ll see different assets,” he said. “From a consumer perspective… We are following and monitoring hour by hour, the behaviour of our consumer. So if they click on a banner or engage in social, for example, we’ll respond by social retargeting, showing different assets, and so on.”  

While assets have been developed worldwide, local intelligence and planning has been important from an activation perspective. In addition, both Laghezza and his digital content manager, Stephanie Ashcroft, went to HQ to help develop the campaign.

“We know the consumer and how they behave, and want to provide that content from headquarters to local consumers at the right time,” Laghezza said. “It requires a digital mind - that’s not just a question of the right search, SEO tactics or banner planning, it requires thought-out consumer journeys, and which assets to provide at which time.

“Frankly, it’s been a big challenge for the media agency as well. We have been working on the planning since beginning of December.”

More than 100 different assets have been created to be served at the right time based on signals such as dwell time, if a consumer has seen an ad on YouTube or engaged on Instagram. While such digital and social channels have been employed locally before, this campaign “gives us the opportunity to exploit all these channels as they should be”, Laghezza said.

“We are trying to reach all these customers in an omnichannel way, rather than a multi-channel one… the system overall is going to provide value to our consumers,” he said.  

The Generation 7000 range also allows Miele to appeal to younger generations, particularly those around 35 years old. “But we never forget our current customers and older generation – we don’t want to make the mistake of thinking the older generation aren’t digital. The older generation is more open now than ever to technology. It’s particularly true in Australia,” Laghezza said.

As well as digital touchpoints, free-to-air and connected TV and print advertising, Miele has locally focused on ‘Intelligent living’ promotions. Laghezza admitted the concepts it’s striving to articulate around attitudes, sustainability and smart appliances are not easy to portray.

“We have developed a format and demonstration allowing people to touch and engaged in what this means, starting with Miele lab into mobile, cutting through features such as motion reaction, that help consumers really experience what we call the ‘flow’ of effortless cooking that provides outstanding results,” he said.  

Miele’s TV advertising will run until the end of March, while the always-on digital campaigning is set to run the full year.

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