Krispy Kreme Australia has shared its challenges and successes of its Throwback Party campaign launched in store and on Instagram in April at the 2019 Advertising Week forum in Sydney. The campaign will be rebranded as Krispy Kreme Arcade in the coming weeks.
Chief marketing officer for Krispy Kreme Australia Russell Shulman, along with Jay Morgan, innovations director at The Monkeys, and Susan Rose, product marketing director at Instagram, discussed the impact of Instagram as a platform can have on brand and product marketing for businesses on a local and global level.
The Throwback Party campaign was launched in Australia in April and May where Krispy Kreme created a virtual arcade on its Instagram with four doughnut-themed versions of 90s-inspired video games. The company worked with ad agency The Monkeys to help create the games and deliver the brief.
“I think we have a global objective of being the most loved sweet treat brand in the world,” said Shulman.
“We tried to tap into the retro theme and things that were trending, like Stranger Things, and tap into it, not only in a doughnut perspective, but also the culture and bringing the smiles.”
“For us, digital – given budgets, probably not being massive – it works so well...we didn't even think about going on any other platform. Instagram for us, particularly with Stories...the engagement and views are so much higher sometimes than the actual followers we have.”
Shulman said Krispy Kreme had been looking for ways to the modernise the brand given its 16 year presence now in Australia, and showed strong results during and following the campaign.
“We tried to make it as easy as possible for people to flick and play the game,” he said. “One of the key metrics for us was the search terms and we saw a massive increase in that. The engagement numbers were incredible and all the way through to our e-commerce platform, and on Uber Eats we had a seventy five per cent increase over last year. Retail sales were great as well. All our brand metrics were strong but the goal was more from the brand love perspective.”
Krispy Kreme will rebrand the campaign as Krispy Kreme Arcade in Australia, which will return to Instagram in a few weeks.
It will also expanding into the UK and Ireland, as well as into a further 35 countries where Krispy Kreme operates.
