How Activia Interacts with Consumers with Gut Health Challenge Campaign?
Activia is a probiotic yogurt brand launched in France in 1987 and is widely available in over 70 countries. From the birth of the brand, Activia has been communicating with consumers through a variety of popular media. This article will provide insight into Activia’s recent social media campaign, Gut Health Challenge, and discuss its role in engaging with consumers.
Activia’s #Getyourgutingear Campaign
Activia is best known for its TV commercial featuring Shakira, who sang the theme song for the World Cup, and La La La, a music radio promoting Activia products with a World Cup theme in 2011, which according to Unruly's social media data had over 5 million views during the World Cup. However, this commercial, while increasing Activia’s visibility, did not bring enough conversions to Activia. How can the Activia brand differentiate itself in a further competitive environment?
The Danone Group, which holds the brand Activia, values the cutting edge of Activia’s digital content, and they have partnered with Digitad to establish a data-oriented digital strategy. The Activia Gut Health Challenge Campaign is a long-term commitment by the brand. By consuming Activia products twice a day for fourteen days, people can receive a $2 discount on their next purchase.
The marketing and interaction approach here is very straightforward. Activia invites people to use the product consistently and offers them the opportunity to purchase the product next after a period of use. This shows that Activia is very confident in its products. The marketing is all about the core product and offers a 14-day trial period directly to consumers.
Key-word Marketing: Gut health
Activia is learning about its consumers through data. The study by Cohen et al. shows how Activia locates the keyword and reinforces it. The study used the AHrefs tool to track keywords related to dairy products and found that compared to the competition, Activia was almost indistinguishable from the competition in terms of keyword searches. The only significant difference was in “Gut health”.
In 2020, Activia also launched a new “A to Z” campaign for the Gen Z-based target group to further enhance their perception of the keyword “Gut health”. The commercial uses the phrase “Gut health” repeatedly by rewriting the lyrics of the well-known alphabet song “A-Z”. In 2021, with the objective of “helping women improve their mental and physical health,” Activia partnered with women’s wellbeing advocate Iskra Lawrence and female-powered platform Hello Sunshine to bring a new perspective to the meaning of Gut health.
We can see that Activia is always changing the target group of its marketing. It seems contradictory to the positioning theory in marketing. Is there a secret behind Activia’s communication strategy?
Evaluation: A Successful Strategy or Not?
The #Getyourgutingear Campaign is unsuccessful if it is seen as a separate branding campaign. There are only 338 posts on Instagram for #getyourgutingear. However, if the Campaign is seen to reinforce people’s memories of the keywords that are the focus of the brand’s advertising, then it does succeed. Google Trends shows that the keyword “gut health” has increased by almost 800% from 2014 to 2022.
In addition to emphasizing the negative effects of “gut health,” “probiotics” also appear in topics related to “gut health.” If “gut health” is a new kind of anxiety in contemporary society, probiotics are a solution.
The conclusion is that it is not possible to look at each digital marketing strategy separately when evaluating Activia’s campaign objectives. Although none of Activia’s individual digital campaigns are highly profitable, the investment is not high either. These campaigns all have a single goal: to serve the keyword “gut health.”
