Italian aperitif brand Martini had spotted a regular drop in sales around October, as the winter starts to descend. Targeting a millennial audience, Martini wanted to create a digital experience of real value that captured the summertime mood and kept it going later into the year.

Strategy

The campaign decided to focus around the moment the clocks go back; a small two-day window, not traditionally popular with alcohol brands, which tended to coincide with a drop in sales.

Creative

They identified that their target audience was, prominently, heavy users of Facebook Messenger. Incorporating the latest developments in artificial intelligence they built a messenger bot that would create a bespoke summer playlist based on the emojis you sent.

Results

It reached 7 million people, and of those who engaged 29% completed the entire flow. Martini went live with only two Facebook posts across five key markets over the weekend the clocks changed.

It reached 2.4 million millennials across the first 24 hours and over seven million in total, with a budget of 35k euros. With a 12% engagement rate, Martini connected with over 875k of the target audience. The bot also established a 29% completion rate.

The campaign achieved a cost per engagement of 0.03, nine times more effective than the UK average cost per engagement on social media, and the lowest CPE across Martini’s entire social activity for the whole year.

What we can learn from this

This campaign gave a traditionally seasonal brand a way to extend their conversation and remain in the minds of consumers through what would otherwise be a quiet period between the summer and Christmas peaks.

This is a great example of how you can utilise new technology with a heritage brand. It offered consumers an open and creative experience but also a one-on-one relationship with the brand. These two elements are key and are a growing trend in marketing.

There’s now a range of technology that gives you the ability to create unique digital assets like playlists and videos for users through custom software that can integrate with services like Spotify through APIs. Consider how you can take advantage of the rise of chatbots and the ease with which they can be programmed to respond in an almost infinite number of ways.

Also, consider how this technology can help you build a one-on-one relationship via social. This growing trend has come about in response to users moving from open platforms where anyone can broadcast to anyone else at any scale such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, to more private messaging platforms where conversations are in small groups or one-to-one such as Snapchat, WhatsApp and Messenger.

This trend has been dubbed ‘dark social’ and presents a challenge to marketers who have limited access or insight into these spaces. They do however present an opportunity to add value to our audience’s digital lives in more direct and personal ways.

This form of marketing is also more accessible than you might think. This campaign had a total budget of €35,936 – a relatively modest budget for such a high-impact campaign.

Your Task

What are your observations and feelings about the Martini campaign? Would you have engaged with the Facebook Messenger bot? Explain why or why not in the comments below.