PHD Hong Kong - CDC's Machine-Learning backed Growth with YouTube BETA Solution
Company Name: PHD Hong Kong
Project Name: CDC's Machine-Learning backed Growth with YouTube BETA Solution
Project Summary
Café De Coral (CDC) is a fast-food restaurant chain in Hong Kong and their Baked Rice series is their best-selling hero product line. With the pandemic meat crisis limiting meat supply as well as growing consumer demand for plant-based offerings especially amongst younger audiences, CDC saw the opportunity to invite new conversation around the brand and launched a plant-based meat Baked Rice to provide an affordable vegetarian option for Hong Kong consumers as well as attract a new group of younger audiences to the brand.
CDC used YouTube’s new Beta product "YouTube Video Reach Campaign (Reach Mix)" which allowed CDC to leverage machine learning optimization to devise a winning mix of TrueView Skippable In-Stream and Bumper Ads to deliver according to viewers’ tendency to skip ads. With machine learning informing the mix of video format, it took out the guesswork to help us customize video delivery for the most effective uplift in awareness as well as achieving the maximum reach possible for a given budget.
Through the use of YouTube's Beta product "Video Reach Campaign (Reach Mix)", we maximized campaign unique reach at an efficient CPM (32% lower CPM vs. last Baked Rice YouTube campaign) while achieving best-in-class results in YouTube Brand Lift Survey 2.0 in which we saw a significant uplift in ad recall and awareness of our new Plant-based Meat Baked Rice (5.7% and 5.0% respectively), to ultimately driving demonstrable business impacts such as a 101% relative lift in product search as well as overachieving our sales target.
Background
Café De Coral (CDC) is a fast-food restaurant chain in Hong Kong and their Baked Rice series is their best-selling hero product line.
With the pandemic meat crisis limiting meat supply as well as growing consumer demand for plant-based offerings especially amongst younger audiences, CDC saw the opportunity to invite new conversation around the brand and launched a plant-based meat Baked Rice to provide an affordable vegetarian option for Hong Kong consumers as well as attract a new group of younger audiences to the brand.
Objective
The key objective for CDC was to drive awareness of their plant-based meat Baked Rice to ultimately drive sales of the new offering.
Execution
To support their product launches, CDC often relied on traditional media such as TV to drive mass awareness of their offerings amongst their core audiences, which lean mature. But for this campaign, this tried-and-tested formula may not be the best approach.
Firstly, CDC faces an increasingly competitive environment where competitors pump massive ad dollars into celebrity endorsements such as strategic brand partnerships with popular boyband MIRROR and heavy offline media support to drive cut-through for their respective offerings. With our budget level, we would be drowned in a sea of competitor communications if we competed head-on
Secondly, with younger audiences being digital-first in their media consumption and a diminishing reliance on traditional media channels, continuing with CDC’s usual approach may not be as effective in reaching and engaging them.
This all pointed towards a need for CDC to expand their communications strategy to explore digital means of communications to engage audiences in which YouTube – as Hong Kong’s no.1 video platform – was naturally the best platform for CDC to turn to.
CDC used YouTube’s new Beta product "YouTube Video Reach Campaign (Reach Mix)" which allowed CDC to leverage machine learning optimization to devise a winning mix of TrueView Skippable In-Stream and Bumper Ads to deliver according to viewers’ tendency to skip ads. With machine learning informing the mix of video format, it took out the guesswork to help us customize video delivery for the most effective uplift in awareness as well as achieving the maximum reach possible for a given budget.
Result
Through the use of YouTube's Beta product "Video Reach Campaign (Reach Mix)", we maximized campaign unique reach at an efficient CPM (32% lower CPM vs. last Baked Rice YouTube campaign) while achieving best-in-class results in YouTube Brand Lift Survey 2.0 in which we saw a significant uplift in ad recall and awareness of our new Plant-based Meat Baked Rice (5.7% and 5.0% respectively)
But more importantly, the use of YouTube’s Beta product played a pivotal role in helping us cut-through a highly competitive category to drive demonstrable business impacts such as a 101% relative lift in product search as well as overachieving our sales target.
