Lion

The Objective

The cereal category is highly competitive and the average consumer has dozens of brands to choose from when approaching the shelf. Nestle's Lion is relatively young cereal brand in Israel, competing with several well-established and well-loved brands. Nestle sought to raise brand awareness and increase desirability by creating an emotional connection with Lion's main target audience: Gen Z.

The Solution

Lion wanted to leverage the power of the TikTok community, so together with their agency partner McCann and UM digital they launched the first Branded Hashtag Challenge in IL “Get your lion out,” calling all the lions on TikTok to roar! To maintain an integral connection with the product, the challenge was created around the morning routine, as cereal is a common breakfast for Gen Z’ers.

To make the challenge fun and easy to follow, an original "TikTok vibe" track was created, directing the different stages of the routine:

Wake up like a lion. Fresh up like a lion.

Dress up like a lion. Mix it like a lion.

To incentivize participation and creativity, Lion set daily prizes for the six days of the challenge, including iPhones, light rings, and boxes of Lion cereals.

To kick off the Hashtag Challenge and inspire the community to participate, Lion launched the campaign with the help of 10 top Creators, all of whom demonstrated the challenge in their own creative way. All of the official Creator videos included a product placement to urge users to purchase Lion cereals and incorporate them into their own videos.

Lion also ran TopView and One Day Max In-Feed Ads to ramp up exposure for the challenge page. TopView ads take over the full screen upon opening the app and guarantee millions of views in a 24-hour period. In-Feed Ads offer a more integrated approach, seamlessly fitting into a user’s For You feed for maximum organic impact.

The Results

During the six-day campaign period, #GetYourLionOut gained 40 million video views, over 22,000 user-generated videos, a 5% engagement rate, and attracted more 25,000 new followers to the @Lioncerealsisrael Business Account on TikTok. The additional TopView and In-Feed Ads promoting the campaign realized over 22 million impressions with a staggering 23% engagement rate. Most importantly Lion saw an impact on brand awareness among the target audience (6% increase) and amazing business effect resulting in 40BP increase in market share (an increase of 30%!)

"Tik Tok was proven to be a powerful platform the engage with generation Z," said Nahum Seeman, BEO Nestle beverages & CPW Israel. "The exposure to the campaign was impressive and the level of engagement was outstanding. We felt that the media itself and the usage of the different tools were part of building the relevance of the brand message to the target audience. We are very proud to be the first brand in Israel to run a Tik Tok challenge to our target audience."

"TikTok enabled us to bring Lions' brand story to life in a super creative and innovative way, alongside with a massive takeover of a new and emerging digital media platform, enabling us to deliver major impact for the brand and the business," said Ophir Cohen, CEO UM DIGITAL.