While looking for unusual data sources on food trail, we’ve came across Umut Yigit a.k.a. the garbage sociologist, a journalist who has done studies on the garbage trails in various districts of Turkey in order to have a deeper understanding of socio-economic determinations of the people; whether they are consuming loose tea or tea bag reflecting the breakdown of household composition when combined with several other findings. The results contained numerous co-relations like, the weight of white collar residents were in line with the weight of coffee capsules in the garbages, and where blue collar residents were heavy the garbage contained lots of high carb & low cost sweets like jam and halvah etc.

We have applied this approach to Lipton Ice Tea and analyzed take out food trails in a specific district, in order to design a customized content aiming to ensure Lipton Ice Tea to be the beverage that has the strongest and most authentic ties to the most popular food of the disctrict.

We have selected the pilot district, via corresponding highest beverage consumption volumes and population. Besiktas Turkali district was selected as the top match for the criteria and throughout 4 weeks; 72 containers were investigated, the team digged into hundreds of garbage bags giving us a detailed view of the residents’ food & beverage preferences.

Results of the research showed that, Turkali’s favourite plates were Lahmacun & Pide, both of which are types of Turkish pizza. These are the type of dishes that are almost always consumed with a beverage on the side and it’s no surprise that brands like The Coca Cola have been using them in their meal moment communications for years. Thus, it was even a bigger challenge to associate Lipton Ice Tea as the top of mind beverage buddy for Lahmacun and Pide.

Our sales where we distributed promotions and used OOH units in Besiktas, were increased by 2.9% at the end of the month.