Ogilvy China campaign for Nescafé disrupts coffee landscape with novel sensory experience
Over the past decade, China, traditionally known as a tea-loving nation, has developed a strong taste for coffee. The brewing coffee craze was further accelerated by the COVID pandemic, which propelled demand for premium instant coffee and elevated consumers’ expectations for specialty roasts and unique coffee experiences. At a time where FMCG giants had to adapt almost overnight, Nescafé – a long-time leader in China’s soluble coffee market – rose to the challenge, swiftly pivoting online by launching Sense Café by Nescafé, a new China-born, digital-first, experiential coffee brand.
Sense Café by Nescafé first came to life in 2017 as an annual experimental pop-up event combining unique coffee recipes and sensorial excitement to deliver immersive, personalized experiences that sparked thousands of conversations on Chinese social media.
In order to replicate this offline success into the online world in a post-COVID era, Nescafé had to expand its digital fooprint and diversify its offerings to cater to increasingly sophisticated consumer groups and new consumption occasions. In 2020, Ogilvy Beijing helped Nescafé turn the Sense Café IP into a standalone premium eCommerce brand powered by a digital ecosystem blending data and innovation.
The agency partnered with Alibaba, leveraging real-time consumer analytics to inform product development, including creating the right blend, designing ‘online first’ packaging and crafting cross-platform social content that delivered a premium brand image, drove consumer engagement and conversion to Tmall.
In just 6 months, 3 product lines and 10 SKUs were launched on Tmall, each designed to deliver a novel sensory experience:
Taste – Sense Café by Nescafé Latitude: tapping into the young generation love for travel, this line allowed consumers to appreciate subtle nuances in different blends, named after the exact latitude of the coffee plantations in Yunnan, where Sense Café’s beans were sourced.
Sound – Sense Café by Nescafé A Capella: celebrating the harmony between music and coffee. Individual sachets came in a CD-shaped box that also contained a song recommendation for each different blend.
Sight – Sense Café by Nescafé Gold Dust: turning coffee into a must-have lifestyle accessory. Developed using a patented extratction technique, the shimmery coffee powder came into a transparent lipstick-like container, selling out in 3 days during the 2020 Singles’ Day Festival.
Sheng Lee, Global Client Partner at Ogilvy China, said: “We are incredibly proud to have worked alongside with Nescafé to create the first locally curated brand in their 82-year old history. The story of Sense Café by Nescafé not only speaks to the power of Borderless Creativity; it shows that heritage brands have the ability to rewrite the brand innovation playbook and sets an example for agile product development in today’s fast-paced digital world.”
