Frito Lay wanted to launch ‘ROCCO’, a lollipop aimed at teenagers. There were just two problems: In Turkey lollipops are totally rejected by teenagers as ‘for children'’; and we had enough budget to feed a parrot for a week. How our competitors laughed! At first anyway.

The product sold out in two months which sent demand into a frantic frenzy. In numeric terms we exceeded initial sales targets by 75% and penetration targets by 35%. By only using niche media, we were 25% under budget-our core users spread the message for us. And most importantly ROCCO lollipops are now one of the coolest things out there.

The creative was about ‘ROCCO SPEAK’; the funny, distorted way people speak whilst sucking lollipops.

Ideal as we had both product and behaviour to take to the ‘trend setters’. To cut through we dominated their media routine 24x7 by taking presence on websites, TV and radio programmes identified by the trend research. We ran 40 active product placements in programmes, chat-shows and on radio. Hit squads, in branded vehicles, extended sampling onto the streets and at ROCCO club nights. All activity was targeted aiming to seed ROCCO and ROCCO SPEAK.

The media idea was multiple touch-points. With mass media ROCCO would have been just another advertised product. We wanted it to be a ‘brand that chose the same life’. This was crucial to overcome the ‘for children’ perception by firmly saying: ‘This is for you!’ Trend research allowed us to select the ‘hot’ programmes which gave our proposition further credibility. Dominating our audience’s media routine 24x7 we accelerated the adoption of ROCCO by this group which gave the energy for the message to spread virally. ROCCO SPEAK took off in just three weeks.

‘Trend setters’ need products that are rejected by the people around them so we saw our target audience’s total rejection of lollipops as something we could leverage. If we focused on ‘trend setters’ we believed we could get them to adopt the product and carry it to the wider audience. This meant making “ROCCO” part of a specific, unique lifestyle relevant to this group of people. Not easy.So we commissioned trend research to identify exactly the niche media that would put ROCCO, with pinpoint accuracy, into the centre of their lives.And by giving this group exclusive access it would be primarily ‘theirs’ to discover first–an essential requirement for ‘trend setters’.

Amber Dilberoglu, Gorkem Onal, Sebnem Tongal, Aziz Kul, Irem Kilinc, Orsan Erksoy, Mehmet Durak, David Johnson