Chupa Chups

The Objective

Chupa Chups is famous around the world for making lollipops – it’s brand promise is to create “Forever Fun.” So, when lockdown kept Italy’s younger generations inside during Halloween, the lolly-maker sought to bring a touch of fun to them on TikTok to generate widespread awareness and supercharge love for the brand with digital natives.

The Solution

Chupa Chups brought this objective to life with a special, Halloween-themed Branded Hashtag Challenge called #Chupalloween. The premise was simple – users had to dress up as the several spooky characters using Chupa Chups stickers as their inspiration. And the TikTok community usually needs no excuse to play fancy dress, so you can probably guess what happened next.

The community responded in droves, with waves and waves of colourful, Halloween-themed outfits. A Branded Hashtag Challenge attracts instant attention because it creates a viral moment both brand and fans can share, by peppering the feeds with user entries and then pooling them in one place, on a central “challenge page.” The hashtag also sits within TikTok’s trending hashtag list and additional ads drive even more users to the challenge, included in the Branded Hashtag Challenge bundle. Chupa Chups ran a TopView Lite, In-Feed One Day Max and In-Feed Brand Premium Ad.

“Official” videos – the campaign’s launch videos – add to this ultra-awareness, and Chupa Chups collaborated with four popular Italian Creators (like @giorgiamalerba0 and @valerio.mazzei) to make theirs. This gave access to a huge combined following of over 7.5 million followers to kickstart the challenge and became a catalyst for engagement.

The Results

The campaign was a hit, driving over 295 million video views in just five days. Over 98,000 Creators got involved with making an entry, leading to a whopping 242,000 submissions. Chupa Chups swept the feeds and brought a touch of Halloween fun to a nation weary of restrictions. The end result was a 12.6% engagement rate, showing that Italy’s digital natives heard the call and engaged in their thousands, passionately connecting with Chupa Chups vision. 

A brand lift study showed an increase in brand awareness by 10% and an incredible increase in ad recall by 57.6%.