#MarketingMasterminds: Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Stephanie Symonds on the nostalgia of Stimorol Retro

Issued by Meta

2 Aug 2021

This month's Marketing Mastermind is Stephanie Symonds, Saatchi & Saatchi creative director. She discusses Stimorol Retro.

Stephanie Symonds

How did this idea come about?

Stimorol was launching a limited-edition flavour profile, called Retro – the “old-school flavoured gum”. It’s essentially bubble-gum flavour, which tastes like nostalgia. Just experiencing that flavour triggers different memories and emotions for consumers. People have so many different associations with bubble-gum, so it was fun to explore those experiences through a “retro” lens.

#MarketingMasterminds: Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Stephanie Symonds on the nostalgia of Stimorol Retro

How does it work?

The idea was to get the public to help us to define and describe ‘retro’ flavour by taking their tastebuds on a throwback of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. We collaborated with influencers, including Young Stilo, Rowlene, Macc Gee, Dopest Chiqq, Kamo Mphela, and ‘twinfluencers’ Lauren and Lara, who shared what Retro flavour tastes like to them.

This then expanded to the public, inviting them to share their retro experiences on Facebook.

Why did you choose Facebook for the campaign?

The first phase was about driving product awareness and making people aware that there was a new flavour on the market, and Facebook is great to achieve that kind of reach.

The second phase was about driving engagement and getting people involved and Facebook made it easy for them to participate. The retro aesthetic is really popular among young people, even if they weren’t around to experience it. They identify with the nostalgia aspect because, you know, old school is cool. The essence of this sentiment inspired a lot of creativity among consumers, which was fun to see.

Did you experience any challenges rolling out this campaign?

By the time we launched the campaign, everyone was used to the new regulations around COVID and social distancing. So, we were aware of the limitations in terms of production from the conceptualisation phase, and we knew we had to be smart and agile in our execution.

Fortunately, we could procure a lot of the content and resources online, like photographs and other assets. We used a lot of different elements to create an animated collage, so it wasn’t too production intensive, but the limitations actually resulted in a really fun art direction.

And what were the results?

This campaign performed exceptionally well for us on many fronts – sentiment, engagement, and driving innovation in this category. We outperformed every KPI we set for this campaign, and Stimorol recorded an increase in market share. Other results include:

1.5% value share of chewing gum category gained since launch
10% contribution to Stimorol’s share of bottles segment 3 months after launch
12% contribution to Stimorol’s share of Sticks 3 months after launch
Retro was the best performing gum innovation of 2020

Will you be expanding the campaign?

We’re focusing on Stimorol’s new equity platform, which celebrates the unique flavour flows of our customers.

What was your biggest learning?

We created a lot of content during this campaign and, in doing so, we learned how to finetune our execution based on the platform we’re using and how people interact and engage there.