Chobani gets active to lift penetration and purchase frequency

Driving penetration and trial while lifting purchase frequency – and love – across its existing customer base are the driving forces between Chobani’s latest activewear campaign, its brand marketing manager says.  

The ‘Winning peeling’ campaign kicked off on 22 December 2020 with a teaser advertisement featuring influencers, Inspired Unemployed, Jade Tunchy, Sam Wood, Natalie Bassingthwaighte and members of the Chobani factory team ripping off a set of specially made pants to reveal Chobani-branded activewear.  

Chobani marketing manager for brand, Steven Blakers, said the aim of the TVC was to create hype and give the audience a sense that something big was coming for Chobani. He said the campaign achieved an engagement rate of 40 per cent, significantly outperforming the industry benchmark (3-6 per cent).  

The second campaign phase, which ramped up in January, aims to amplify the promotion and has seen Chobani produce a range of digital assets to bring to life the “fun and excitement of fans vying to get that ‘winning peeling’ feeling”, Blakers said. The content has been amplified across streaming video services, Foxtel and social media channels as well as out-of-home placements.  

Chobani will also be giving away 25,000 pieces of activewear as part of a prize giveaway to create excitement and generate buzz around the brand.  

“Chobani fans consistently tell us our yogurt makes up one of the pieces of their healthy lifestyle and our fans regularly post on social media in their activewear holding a pot of Chobani,” Blakers told CMO. “So we decided, why not reward our fans with some top-quality Chobani branded activewear at a time when the majority of people are looking to kick start their 2021 fitness routine?  

“The quality of the activewear is exceptional and having 25,000 people keeping activewear in their Chobani branded gear is great to raise Chobani’s awareness.”  

Blakers said the idea of an on-pack instant win campaign had been floating around in local brand plans for several years, but the time hadn’t ever felt right.  

“We decided 2021 was the perfect year for the promotion; we’re in almost four out of every 10 Australian households and our fans have a real love for the Chobani brand, so we really wanted to focus on driving the amount of Chobani people purchase,” he explained. “Running an on-pack promotion with such a high value prize pool achieves this goal by encouraging people to pick up an extra pot and increase their chances of winning each time they shop.”  

The campaign was initiated and developed internally. Chobani worked with packaging suppliers to produce the under-foil printing and its long-term agency partner to produce and manage fulfillment of the apparel.  

“It’s taken a huge collaborative effort from all corners of the business to get the promotion to market,” Blakers continued. “The entire Chobani business has been super excited about the promotion since day one and we all rallied together to deliver the campaign in-market. There were a few tough moments with COVID-19 impacting shipping lead times, and filming digital content while Melbourne was in lockdown was a new challenge. However, everyone worked together to deliver the campaign.  

“It was hard for anyone to not love working on our ‘Winning Peeling’ campaign because we all knew Chobani fans would love their little piece of brand merch.”  

Alongside the advertising campaign, Chobani is using entrant data to target winners, encouraging them to share a photo with their activewear on social and also encourage their friends and family to purchase a pot of Chobani for their chance to win.  

“The data from non-winners is used to retarget these consumers and encourage them to purchase another pot for another chance to get that winning peeling,” Blakers said.  

Key objectives are to firstly reward Chobani fans with activewear to drive average weight of purchase and drive penetration and trial. Long term ROI is to significantly grow love for the Chobani brand.  

“We are also aiming to grow top-of-mind awareness through the promotional presence at shelf and the media campaign, leading to sustainable sales growth for the brand,” Blakers said.    

“To date, it’s been a huge success and we’ve seen an influx of comments from our fan saying how much they love the promotion and that the quality of the apparel far exceeds their expectations.”  

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