Dutchie has been Thailand’s yogurt category leader for decades, but since 2020, the brand has faced a concerning trend, with fast-eroding relevance and sales against consumer’s fostering the growth in ‘functional’ products whose specialised formulas are perceived to be more effective to achieve their physical goals. Dutchie decided to fight back by hitting the upstarts with an undeniable truth: trendy, functional superfoods are worthless without a healthy gut and yoghurt promotes the working function of the gut.

Objectives:

Business: Turning around sales & stop bleeding to FF

Brand: Make Dutchie ‘Health Related’ among consumers

Communication: Driving re-appraisal and giving consumers a new reason to pamper their gut health with Dutchie yogurt, everyday

The role of communication was the key driver in this campaign, with Thai engaging/ concentrating on entertainment over academic, we need an engaging and relatable story to hook consumers to ‘gut health’ and the yogurt itself.

Against the world of content cluster, it was important we made an academic topic more entertaining by metaphor-ing the process of Gut Health. That is how the idea ‘Gut Health’ emerged. Riding on the target’s familiar usage of e-commerce, Dutchie played on the pain point everyone experienced once - a delivery that never arrives at the front door or gets damaged during its journey. Similarly, the gut’s purpose is to absorb the nutrients to the body, but without daily pampering with Dutchie Yoghurt, it will only work as an unhealthy pathway, not absorbing nutrients. Added scenes of top selling functional products; including whey protein, collagen, or even vitamin water to trigger a new mindset of health, that everything works once you have loved your gut first.

Consumers are ‘tangible health users’:

Spending more than 8 hours a day scrolling through their social feeds, force-fed the image of media’s idealized body, they are easily lured into the promises of functional foods - the powerful ingredients, treating specific issues, with immediate and tangible results.

Meanwhile, they only see yoghurt as a flavor variant snack – not to mention ‘gut health,’ the unfamiliar and intangible organ.

How could Dutchie rebuild relevance in this context – we decided to fight back with a hard-hitting truth: trendy functional superfoods are worthless without a healthy gut.

Our strategy was to ‘make the unfamiliar, the familiar’: helping misguided consumers realize the only effective way to get the most out of superfoods is a to pamper their gut health with yoghurt, and to get their attention we decided to tap into everyone’s familiar life pain point.

Dutchie aimed to encourage consumers to take care of their gut health every day but it was important to consider that just a TVC could not do it justice. Dutchie must utilize the online world and influencers to spread the idea (with credibility!)

We borrowed the hands of healthy influencers and page partnership to share their experience and turn educational content into an easy to digest language specifically for their audiences. With their visibility and credibility, their audience felt the urge to try, and this became the driving factor that leads to sales.

To support the influencers, Dutchie tapped into consumer’s online world. Placing online banner series that questioned their consumption targeting by geo-located and scheduling ad during meal hours. This played a huge role in triggering their behavior and look back at what they eat.

The success of the campaign shows by the end of the campaign, as it clearly linked to consumer’s shifting mindset in choice of food especially towards base understanding of gut health, creating a purposeful case with effective creative solutions:

Communication: Gave consumer a reason to ‘see’ the importance of regular gut health

- 11M views on YouTube (KPI surpassing by 56%)

- 68.1% increased in ‘gut health’ search compared between pre & post-campaign

Brand: Increased in brand for me by 18.5% since pre-campaign

- Increased in ‘Health Brand for Me’ +18.5%

- 74% positive sentiments for making academic topic into an entertainment

Business: Rebound in sales

- New High of +14% increase in sales by post-campaign

- 67% increase in market share securing Dutchie as No.1 in Thai yogurt category

The campaign proved a good starting point for Dutchie's new direction - pushing Gut Health into the new health agenda.