How we brought two Arla brands together in order to inspire young Muslims to cook delicious, fresh dishes rather than grab a takeout as they broke their fast for Iftar.

BD has worked with Arla Foods both globally and locally in the UK for over twenty years. In recent years we have created multiple global, shopper toolkits for Arla Apetina, a range of white salad and cooking cheeses.

In the UK, we were challenged to build awareness and trial of Apetina outside of its core summer usage occasions, by focussing on its range of cooking cheeses in order to increase reach throughout the year.

Ramadan presented the perfect opportunity to showcase Apetina Paneer’s qualities at a time when cooking and feasting is such a focal point for Muslim families, and would allow us to do so in a credible way – but Apetina on its own didn’t have the presence needed to cut through. 

We proposed a joint campaign with Anchor Butter – another Arla brand but not an existing BD client – in order to create greater stand out and reach.

Our Challenge

Arla Apetina had established itself within the salad white cheese sector but had little brand awareness within the cooking cheese category and lacked the credibility of authentic, established Paneer brands that Southeast Asian families have trusted for years. 

We needed to create a campaign that would demonstrate the product’s cooking credentials and build brand awareness with Southeast Asian cooks. Ramadan is a perfect time of year to celebrate home cooking and the coming together of families over recipes that are close to their hearts and presented an opportunity for both brands to shine. 

As we began our research, we found that this would not be an easy task as Iftar (the meal that breaks the fast at the end of the day during Ramadan) is very personal to families and steeped in tradition, with meals and dishes firmly established and recipes handed down through generations.

Our Insight

During Ramadan, Iftar is central to the festivities, playing a key role for each family in gathering everyone around the table. Its responsibility has always fallen to those that run the household (traditionally mothers, grandmothers and aunts).

However, our research and focus groups identified that there was a younger, food loving Muslim audience that observed Ramadan, but due to a lack of time or confidence in the kitchen were resorting to takeaways and fast food when it came to breaking their fast during the week - with family gatherings reserved more for the weekends.

This audience was keen to enjoy a more authentic diet and longed to be able to contribute to the Iftar dining table with dishes that they had prepared themselves. 

Our Strategy and Approach

Partnering with Anchor Butter, our strategy was to inspire this audience with quick and easy to follow recipes that used both products, and offered a delicious and contemporary twist on traditional dishes including Paneer Makhani, Saag Paneer, Paneer Pakora and Buttered Naan. 

Anchor had run a campaign the previous year with ASDA, but with Apetina Paneer by their side we could now create a campaign with more cuisine credibility and focus on the speed and ease of the dishes to get our younger audience active in the kitchen. 

We didn’t just want to rely on telling our audience how good the recipes tasted though. Media spend was limited and we knew we had to take a much more targeted approach for the campaign to reach our audience.  

We wanted them to taste the dishes for themselves and to see just how delicious Apetina and Anchor combined could be, moving them from passive foodies to active cooks, preparing their own dishes. To achieve this, we needed a sampling execution that would allow us to reach our audience at events and locations they already visited. 

Wherever we activated, we also wanted to ensure that we closed the sales loop by getting consumers back into store. We needed an incentive for consumers to purchase after they had enjoyed our dishes or be motivated to visit a store where we would have brand presence to aid conversion. 

Our Solution

We created “Fast Dishes from Apetina and Anchor” – a campaign centred around a range of delicious, authentic recipes that could be prepared in under 30mins and that would deliver big on taste and demonstrate Apetina Paneer’s and Anchor’s cooking credentials.

We created a striking visual identity for Fast Dishes, marrying the yellow of Anchor and blue of Apetina into a key visual that allowed food photography to ‘pop’ and a campaign lock up featuring traditional Ramadan iconography, as well as a call to action of “Get together for Ramadan” – symbolising the coming together of families and the two brands. 

To reach our audience we branded a food truck that allowed us to pop-up at both consumer events, stores and head offices in order to serve up hot samples of our chosen dishes and let our food do the talking. 

We then activated the campaign across experiential, shopper, social media & DM channels. 

We attended the London Muslim Shopping Festival at the Excel which happened in the month prior to Ramadan commencing, so that we could drive consideration in good time. ASDA was identified as a key retail destination for our audience, so we also took the food truck to store car parks in and around Leeds to engage with the large local, Muslim population and again serve samples of our Fast Dishes. 

At both activations, consumers were given money off next purchase (MONP) vouchers for both products to redeem in store as well as recipe cards for each dish. These coupons were also distributed via DM door drops to large Muslim communities that were around Birmingham and in proximity to an ASDA store. 

The campaign was activated in store, with POS suites created for both ASDA and Sainsbury’s. POS was sited next to products and featured QR codes to recipes.

Our results

The activation consisted of 8 live days of sampling and unlocked brand space in Sainsbury’s and ASDA stores in areas with large Muslim communities. These delivered:

·      16,250 samples of Paneer Makhani, Saag Paneer, Paneer Pakora, Buttered Naan

·      15,100 recipe leaflets -with MONP coupons distributed

·      10,000 door drops with MONP coupons delivered

·      618k impressions across retail digital media