Nescafé Philippines' 24-hour love affair on Twitter

When popular Filipino movie stars Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo went public with their relationship, eager fans took to Twitter to express their support for the couple, prompting Nescafé to launch a dedicated 24-hour Moments campaign on the platform.

This marks the first time Nescafé has launched TVC material on Twitter, and it is also a first-of-its-kind Moments campaign in Southeast Asia.

Moments, launched in October 2015, is a way to track big events as they happen. It gives brands a channel for 24 hours, where they can curate video, tweets and other content.

Nescafé said its intention was to take brand storytelling to a different level by seamlessly integrating the product story with a love story that would “captivate” consumers and 'KathNiel' fans.

“We knew we would need more than the length of a 30-second TV commercial to be able to really bring about the emotions we want from the audience, so we produced a 70-second material specifically for digital, where we had more liberty to really allow the love story to unfold,” said Enrico Yee, brand manager of Nescafé Creamy White in the Philippines.

Twitter also gave Nescafé a platform to tease the audience with a countdown, which added to the buzz even before the campaign went online.

“Everyone was curious to see what the buzz is about, and launching it exclusively on Twitter made sense where the fans could easily re-tweet it to lead more people to see the material and allowed a participatory conversation to take place between the brand and the consumers,” he added.

The Moments campaign broke two days before the TVC.

The payoff was immediate. #KathNielCreamyWhiteMoment trended organically, taking the top two spots on Twitter. It peaked at the top spot after the new Nescafe KathNiel TVC was added to the Promoted Moment. Within the 24-hour campaign window, the brand and the hashtag received over 120,000 mentions and over 4.3 million impressions.

#KathNiel tweets

The combination of creative assets and partnerships with influencers boosted likes and retweets. Between July 16 and July 21, the campaign received close to 38,000 likes and 27,000 retweets. Overall, the campaign garnered 103,462 online mentions and 198 million impressions.

The FMCG company has been at the forefront of using Twitter in the Philippines. It recently broke Twitter's world record for the number of 'unlocks' it received with its 'Flock to Unlock' video campaign. Within two days, the brand got more than 100,000 unlocks, 7.1 million impressions and 3 billion in potential reach.

“Just being present is not enough anymore in the current digital environment, especially in such a competitive industry like ours," Yee said. "Having a two-way relationship with our consumers has always been in the forefront of our priorities and we are always excited to work with Twitter on finding innovative ways of fostering these further."

After grappling with slowing advertising sales and stagnating audience growth, Twitter is now pushing its video ad formats, and has found early success in Asia.

“We’re seeing video become the preferred way in terms of what people are sharing,” Matthew Derella, Twitter's global VP for client partnerships and brand strategy told Campaign Asia-Pacific in an interview last month. “From a marketing standpoint it’s an obvious way to connect premium content and target that to very precise interest, and the market is responding powerfully to that.”

Globally, video views on Twitter have grown 220-fold in the last 12 months. More than three quarters (78 percent) of Twitter users in the US watch video content on the microblogging site. But the proportions are even higher in the Philippines (92 percent), India (91 percent), Indonesia (86 percent) and Singapore (83 percent).