Savanna Premium Cider wanted to launch its spicy new Chilled Chilli variant to the South African market.

To bring the launch of Savanna Chilled Chilli and its spicy campaign an additional layer of engagement and functionality, we develop a spicy entertaining e-commerce platform concept, that plugged seamlessly into the campaign eco-system and, importantly, carried the wit and humour of the brand into the e-commerce space. It was accessible through any mobile phone, just like any voice assistant.

When you think about how spicy South Africa is, just imagine how different the innovations of our modern world would look, sound and feel if South Africa invented them first...

Meet Gugu - an interactive web-app that functions much like Siri or Alexa, except with a lot more attitude. What really separates Gugu from those other basic bots, is that she plays by her own rules. Just like South Africans do. We're a spicy bunch who are known for being no respecters of polite societal rules.. So ask Gugu a question, and you'll get a spicy answer.

The only input that she will always obey is that one that asks for a Savanna Chilled Chilli.

Our target audience for Savanna is an aptly-named segment called 'Trend Adopters'. We looked for high-intent users on social media, targeting them specifically. These are the first in their circle to take up or share trends. Acutely aware of their image and status, they curate these carefully/ Their expectations for brands are high: They'll only interact with brands that set or pick up on trends and that entertain them, rewarding these brands with loyalty and engagement.

Our approach was to appeal to their love of novelty with a campaign that was innovative in every sense of the word — from the product itself to the campaign that supported it. In digital and mobile specifically, we developed Gugu asked our audience to engage with her via a web-application. This platform was chosen so that it could be used on mobile or desktop, and accessible through a URL, QR code, or swipe.

Living on the Savanna website and running for the 2 month duration of the campaign, Gugu was Powered by Google Driven AI, consisted of 3533 unique lines of code and was programmed to respond to thousands of inputs, making her the world’s spiciest cider delivery system.

During the 2 month campaign period over 32 000 questions were asked and answered.

The Average Session Time was 2 Minutes with an 8.2 Engagement Rate.

Attitudinal Equity Increased to 7.4, which was the highest in Brand History.

Most importantly we sold 1.7 Million Litres of Savanna Chilled Chilli in 2 months…… that's more than Savanna's previous new flavour launch sold in 3 years. No mean feat for South Africa's biggest selling cider.