Mondelez’s Philadelphia Cream Cheese has bolstered sales in its ‘pour over’ range in Australia off the back of its rollout of sponsored advertisements on photo sharing platform, Instagram.
Instagram’s sponsored posts first rolled out in the US in 2013, followed by the UK in September 2014. The program started in Australia in October 2014, with 10 brands signing up for the launch, including McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Tourism Queensland, Vegemite, Toyota, Flight Centre, Audi, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
Philadelphia Cream Cheese’s Instagram campaign centred around its ‘pour over’ range, including the hero product, Philadelphia Sweet Chilli Philly. The brand’s sponsored imagery on the platform was part of a greater digital marketing push by Mondelez that also featured instore and on other social media channels, including Facebook.
Bianca Melky, brand manager, Mondelez, told Inside FMCG the campaign was based on reconnecting consumers with Philadelphia’s pouring range by creating appetising ‘pour over’ moments in the lead up to the peak socialising and entertaining periods during summer.
Melky said Philadelphia Cream Cheese has since seen a 45 per cent increase in sales of its pour over range year on year following the launch of the integrated campaign and a 10 per cent lift in sales for its core Philadelphia Sweet Chilli Philly product.
“For us at the end of day, conversion is the number one measure that we need to achieve. We’re driving strong connections with our consumers to make them purchase instore on the back of our broader campaign, which we launched on Facebook and took into an instore environment.
“We saw our core Sweet Chili grow by 10 per cent and we got really great results from our innovation that we launched at the same time. We saw a 45 per cent increase in the pouring range from a year ago,” Melky said.
Philadelphia Cream Cheese’s cleverly crafted Instagram ads were seen by around 365,000 consumers, and the number of organic followers also increased significantly. According to Instagram’s head of marketing science, Doug Fraser, around 10 per cent of those who viewed the ads changed their purchase intent to wanting to buy Philadelphia.
There are more than 300 million people using Instagram worldwide, making it one of the world’s largest mobile ad platforms, with more Australian companies expected to launch advertisements on the photo sharing app.
“We’re opening [Instagram sponsored ads] up to more and more advertisers. Going forward we expect many more brands to advertise on Instagram,” Fraser told Inside FMCG.
Earlier this month, Instagram launched sponsored video ads in Australia, with Qantas and L’Oreal the first companies to roll out the initiative. Instagram’s Carousel Ads, which allow consumers to swipe the ad for additional content and information, are undergoing a soft launch in the US but are not yet available in Australia.
