Insight: Unique social media insight and behaviour where brand can establish its role.  

Younger generations demand an authentic conversation. Gen Z and Alpha grows up with technology and are exposed to information at an early age. As such, authenticity is the most important value for Gen Z, even beyond future plans and being rich. This means we will need to communicate the rebrand message clearly, not try to pretty up the work, but focus on Vinamilk’s courage to change instead of on the design aesthetic, which can be subjective.  

Rebrand needs to be controversial to make an impact, but familiar enough to not solicit anger from loyalist. We understand that for a heritage brand to generate attention, the rebrand needs to be controversial to spark conversations. Yet it will need to be carefully monitored to not damage the brand as it is a symbol of memories and nostalgia. When disrupted too much, it can create a sense of confusion and even anger. We researched the cases of Gap or Tropicana to understand how the more legacy a brand has, the more intricate the design and communication of the rebrand will need to become.  

Mere Exposure Effect where people prefer things that they are familiar with, and the more they are exposed to something, the more they tend to prefer it and are attracted to it. It is important because while tech brands (such as AirBnb) can withstand a longer period of controversy before becoming an iconic rebrand, CPG brands with intense competition like Vinamilk will need to make sure the unfamiliar turns attractive as quickly as possible to not impact sales.  

The IKEA Effect where people love things they create or things they put effort in. People place higher value and emotional attachments to the work that they create on their own, even though it requires more labour, time, or investment. Therefore it is important for brands to view consumers not as receipients of value but co-creators of value.    

These insights led us to decide that we will not approach this campaign as a traditional rebrand or advertising campaign, but will go as direct as possible but split into two phases: to first allow some controversy to excite the gen Z and Alpha with raw content, but quickly to saturate the message and new identity so that the general public become familiar with the change using user generated content.

Creative idea: Social media driven  

Our creative idea for the Vinamilk rebrand campaign was centered around the concept of 'minimal explanation, maximum engagement'. We realized that in the age of social media, users are not passive recipients of information, but active participants who shape the narrative. Thus, rather than explaining our rebrand in extensive detail, we opted for a more subtle approach, sparking curiosity and inviting consumers to engage, explore, and ultimately become ambassadors for our new brand identity.    

We launched the rebrand with minimal explanation and let the new visual identity speak for itself across various media channels. To ensure the authenticity of the discussion, we did not engage in KOLs or social seeding work. This sparked conversations and piqued the interest of our younger demographic who thrive on change and novelty. However, we knew that to win the hearts of our older, more loyal consumers, familiarity was key. Thus, the next phase of the campaign was all about familiarization and engagement.    

We would allow users to create their own personalized logos in the new Vinamilk style and share them on social media. This not only helped familiarize our consumers with the new brand identity, but also made them active participants in our rebranding journey. In essence, we turned our consumers into brand ambassadors, creating a ripple effect that accelerated the acceptance and love for our new brand identity.    

This creative idea was unique as it leveraged the power of social media and user-generated content in a way that was both engaging and strategic. It allowed the users to share their customized identity using the brand’s extremely new and bold identity

Connection plan: Make good use of digital channel mix for effective communication  

80% of the campaign’s media value was earned media (which includes both owned and shared media), with 0 spend on social media. To achieve our main objectives of (1) spreading awareness about a dynamic Vinamilk and (2) engaging with consumers with user-generated content, we focused our effort on (1) Out of home, (2) paid website placements, and (3) online video advertisements. There are 3 reasons why we did that. Firstly, OOH and Internet are the most media penetration in 2022. We indexed on Hiflex and LED billboards in highly populated city centers as these are the core target consumers we want to influence. Next, even though, TV were in top 3 media channel with the mass penetration, we did not use TV advertising because we want to alternate a series of dynamic creative assets using the new brand identity to appeal to the younger generation. In addition, Online Video and Social network are the most time spent online activities per day. We also invested in vertical videos on Tiktok, as it skyrocketed the media penetration, equal with Youtube. We leveraged these channels to maximize reach within the target audience while maintaining cost effectiveness and ensuring positive sentiment score.    

Nearly all of these channels exceeded our media buying targets, with biddable channels surpassing expectations by at least 110%.

Short-term campaign-specific objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of how we deployed the creative assets and the investment in consumer engagement activities, against the industry campaign benchmarks  Media – We benchmark against prior Vinamilk’s campaigns to measure cost effectiveness, as it is difficult to benchmark against competitors for non-public metrics  ROI (Total media value/Media cost) - Benchmark: >152%  

Result: 484%  

Social Marketing – We benchmark against either Category average or other Corporate rebrand campaigns’ metrics in the last 5 years to measure social reception effectiveness, available through third party report  

Sentiment score – Benchmark against corporate rebrands: > 0.67 where 1 is the maximum positive score  

Result: 0.72. Given that, total buzz volume of Vinamilk got 10.42x than the median of total buzz of other brands.  

Earned buzz/Total buzz – Benchmark against Vinamilk’s category social campaigns > 34.5% to measure virality of generated content  

Result: 100% (We did not pay for seeding)  

Brand lift on Favourability on Youtube – Benchmark: +2.2% Lift  

Result: +5.07% Lift  

Brand lift on Favourability on Tiktok – Benchmark: +0.8% Lift  

Result: +1.4% Lift    

Post campaign metrics (measured 6 months after): To evaluate the effectiveness of the rebrand on changing consumer perception and behaviour that essentially resulted in sales (Innovation attribute, BUMO). We benchmark against Vinamilk’s prior year performance to measure lift attributable to the campaign, as this is the only core campaign that runs in H2 2023 for the flagship brand product.  

Consumer perception for Innovation – From 3rd party brand health study  

KPI: > 0% lift  

Result: +17%  

Consumer behaviour for purchase – From 3rd party brand health study:  

KPI: >0% lift  

BUMO: Lift +15%