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In 2011, Nivea launched a range of whitening deodourants in India. In a category largely sold and bought on the promise of fragrance, this was Nivea's shot at galvanising sales through innovation.
The company launched a marketing campaign in 2012, which featured brand ambassador Anushka Sharma and said "Go Sleeveless", in line with the belief that dark underarms keep women from wearing sleeveless clothes. To connect with its target audience directly, Nivea added a digital leg to the campaign. The brief to its digital agency TenTenTen was simple - take the thinking behind the larger campaign. "Being able to wear sleeveless clothes after using a whitening deodourant is a functional benefit of the product. When we were throwing ideas around about the digital leg, we realised wearing sleeveless clothes is also representative of an attitude - a free, playful one. We decided to capitalise on this insight," says Ramesh Srivats, CEO, TenTenTen Digital Products. And thus was born the armprints campaign.
The Nivea armprints were temporary tattoos, to be worn on the upper arm. Women had to simply choose an armprint and share it with their friends through a Facebook app to get 5 free armprints. The Facebook app went on to become a hit with over a million views and about 10,000 shipments sent out. This high level of engagement egged Nivea on to revive the campaign in 2013. As Sunil Gadgil, director, marketing, Nivea India, puts it, "Digital activations don't reach the length and breadth of your target audience. To widen the reach, the scale of the idea was important."
Name of the brand: Nivea
Agency: TenTenTen Digital
Digital case: Go Sleeveless
The digital idea was taken to other media. A television campaign was launched and this time consumers were given a phone number to get in touch with the brand for their armprint. Consumers had to give a missed call and armprints were sent out to them. As the reach became wider the number of shipments grew. The per consumer engagement cost for the full scale campaign last year was 25 per cent higher than that incurred in 2012. Then the scale was also seven-eight times bigger with a range of platforms built in.
