NESCAFÉ Alegria: #goodthoughts campaign put fan messages on 17 million coffee cups

We loved the idea of sending a short, motivational message through the coffee cups, that would make people smile.

Next we wanted to believe that we can convince people to send similar messages to their friends or loved ones all across the country. From there on there was no looking back. We would take the first step in this experience and measure how much our enthusiasm would be amplified by the NESCAFÉ Alegria consumers.

We knew there would be many challenges ahead, but we put high stakes on a user-generated content campaign. If implemented correctly, this type of campaign can score high on many charts:

1. They are time and budget effective. The content is generated by the users.

2. The communication is authentic, believable, builds trust and strengthens the relationship between the user and the brand.

3. Users in the Generation Z category resonate well with various types of content, especially the one they create themselves.

Our aim was to bring our fans closer and send pleasant emotions to them. Those who answered the call were able to send a kind message to people from across the country. Moreover, the NESCAFÉ Alegria brand awareness would grow organically.

The campaign unfolded during December 2016 and May 2017, in two phases:

First, we came up with a series of optimistic messages that we printed on a specially designed NESCAFÉ Alegria coffee cups. We directed the consumers to access the campaign web page. The landing page was integrated within the traiestecugust.ro website, the multi-brand platform through which Nestlé reaches to its users and rewards their loyalty.

This is where the users were able to view nice one-liners, or good thoughts, from other NESCAFÉ Alegria fans, as well as send their own cheerful messages.

During phase two, we selected the most appreciated messages, from those we received from our users. They were printed on the NESCAFÉ Alegria paper cups. This way, all those who enjoyed their morning coffee and felt inspired by these messages were invited to give back smiles using the landing page created for the campaign.

The Campaign came with a series of challenges that we faced head on and through a lot of hard work. For example, one of the biggest questions was how to choose the name for the campaign. In the end we decided on ‘Simple things can bring big smiles’. In order to decide upon this tag line, we went through hours of research and brainstorming. Within two weeks, we had three alternative tag lines: “life is beautiful”, “live now or not at all” and “simple things make life beautiful”. To choose the final message, we spent hours debating and tested the three versions on friends and strangers, in return for a free cup of coffee.

“It was a real challenge for me to pick one concept out of the three finalists. I had fallen in love with ‘life is beautiful’. However, every time I asked around, people told me that it is the ‘simple things that bring big smiles’ and went on to tell their stories. They opened up about the feeling brought on by the first morning coffee or how they love the scent of a freshly printed book or a little compliment on a bad day.”
Andreea Marinciu | Content Manager at Grapefruit

Logistic challenges were also on our tails. The time estimated for printing the paper cups was six weeks, so we had to move really quickly between the two phases of the campaign. It was really important that the batch of cups showing the user messages would be on the market at the beginning of spring. Moreover, the paints we chose for printing the words came in limited supplies. That is why we had to be really creative in choosing the colors for the print, to make sure we could successfully print all the messages.

Although it looked simple, compared to all the work we did, selecting only 100 messages was really difficult. After all, the users sent over 1500 messages in the campaign.

To make the campaign viral, we conducted a very thorough idealization and testing effort. After finding the main message, we went on to explaining it. We spent entire days browsing the motivational sub-Reddit, to read stories from people who cherish simple things. We were looking for a butterfly effect. Like a butterfly that flaps its wings can create a hurricane later. This was our campaign’s core, the kernel through which we transmitted the brand’s values, the joy of good coffee and brought a smile on people’s faces on a cold day.

We fell in love with the idea and made long lists of the small things that make us happy. We also asked our beloved ones what made them feel motivated. They all agreed: a whole hearted hug or a compliment costs little, but it could brighten someone’s day.

The work for creating the paper cup design was no piece of cake either. We created multiple prototypes, we tested and adjusted. We created a large series of mock-ups, by sticking the printed paper strips on the coffee cups to test if the messages can be viewed easily.

It was important that no matter the side the coffee machine dispensed the paper cup, the users should be tented to turn it all the way round to view the message.

With every mock-up, we monitored that the website link was visibly printed on the cups.

The campaign landing page was created mobile first. It makes a lot of sense, because we wanted people to be able to access it as they had their NESCAFÉ Alegria coffee, on the go.

We mainly interacted with the NESCAFÉ Alegria fans through the Campaign’s Social Media pages, the landing page, as well as the Facebook and Instagram accounts owned by NESCAFÉ Alegria.

Our focus was raising the NESCAFÉ Alegria brand notoriety, so we measured the impact of the good thoughts we sent, by two criteria:

The number of impressions is highly important in a brand awareness campaign, because it measures the number of times the messages reached the visitor’s eye.

Over the two phases of the campaign, the number of daily views for the main message was over 800.000, for an average of over 400.000 viewers.

On Facebook, the number of users who interacted with the campaign messages exceeded 200.000. At the end of the campaign, the Facebook page had 6000 more fans.

But perhaps, our greatest reward was the hundreds of posts on Facebook and Instagram, of the people who read the messages on the cups and had a better day from there on. The photos depicted themselves with the campaign coffee cups and were accompanied by the #ganduribune hashtag.