HARIBO is a 100-year-old global candy brand and the inventor of the world-famous Gummi Bear. However, HARIBO has only been recently introduced to the highly competitive US market, competing with industry giants like Hershey, Nestlé, and Mars alike, where they’re outspent by their competitors, and have low brand affinity.

As HARIBO looked to make their candy relevant in the US, the brand turned to social to differentiate from the competition and capture the hearts and stomachs of the internet. However, there was a problem. Today’s modern consumer has the attention span of a goldfish - 8 seconds and shrinking. And in 2020, the content competing for their attention was often negative. HARIBO could either fall into the void or use this modern marketing problem as inspiration.

Key Objective: Elevate HARIBO social media channels, drive distinctiveness of product, and differentiate from the competition

Introducing: the Chewy Channel. The world’s first streaming network for dwindling attention spans, where full episodes aren’t just binged but microbinged in seconds and all powered by tiny gummies you can’t help but play with.

And in 2020, HARIBO brought joy to feed-weary "doom scrollers" when they needed it most. This past year, our social feeds were dominated by bad news, providing HARIBO the perfect opportunity to create bite-sized bits of happiness by turning their very own products into positive protagonists.

From digital adventures to the shortest, sweetest Halloween marathon ever, The Chewy Channel helped show bad-news-bingers the sweeter side of their social feed during quarantine. Utilizing its delicious cast of characters HARIBO’s Chewy Channel recreated binging favorites like baking competitions and sequels that dominated stay-at-home streaming. All housed on America’s favorite micro-bingeable streaming network and bingeable in a matter of minutes.

With HARIBO’s social channels, the brand aimed to reach modern consumers. Today’s modern consumer embraces binge culture. The ability to non-stop stream episodes has become habitual. Yet, in the social world, attention spans continue to decrease. This habit inspired HARIBO’s idea for the Chewy Channel, and a new form of viewing content they branded “microbingeing.” The goal of “microbingeing” is to satisfy our audience’s shrinking attention spans with bite-sized HARIBO entertainment, both short enough and entertaining to hold viewers shortened attention spans.

In 2020, Instagram feeds were inundated with somber content on a wide range of topics. Many found themselves caught in a downward spiral of “doom scrolling” in their social feeds. By focusing our media on reach and video views, HARIBO kept its promise of giving fans a channel to come to that inspires true happiness.

HARIBO’s Chewy Channel premieres a new content series every month. The series is divided into two parts, each part consisting of four :15 episodes. Part 1 always ends in a cliffhanger, leaving the consumer looking forward to the release of Part 2, inspiring microbingeing. Series are announced with a digital poster promoting the series, and a trailer promoted within Instagram stories. Behind-the-scenes footage, bloopers, and memes drive conversation among fans. All series are saved in Instagram highlights so anyone can catch up or view again.

Challenges of the Instagram platform created opportunities. Social viewing habits, like sound-off, inspired Chewy Channel to use speech bubbles to convey gummi dialogue. From a visual standpoint, miniature sets were built to the specs of mobile screens. Chewy Channel harnessed a cultural viewing habit made popular by streaming services and applied it perfectly to IGTV.

In a world of social media clutter, Chewy Channel broke through the noise by creating content inspired by the platform and created a new viewing habit, microbingeing. By using the product as stars, Chewy Channel created a groundswell of social conversation around HARIBO gummies. Fans loved that the gummi bears they devour were starring in unexpected content in their feeds in a way that felt so native to the channels they use. The Chewy Channel not only entertained audiences to keep them coming back for more, but also inspired them to share. Chewy Channel’s success has the numbers to prove it, outperforming benchmarks by staggering numbers.

? Earned over 158 million impressions and 12.7 million video views

? Completion rates for our 1 minute ads topped 17%

? Achieved a 29% ThruPay Rate, beating initial benchmarks by 124%

? Created micro-binging: an entirely new viewing habit for IGTV