#MARKiesAwards 2021 spills: foodpanda talks strategic advantage of hyper localisation

Founded in 2012, foodpanda is an online food and grocery delivery platform brand headquartered in Singapore and has managed to cement its position as one of Singapore’s leading food delivery app. foodpanda also launched its campaign Auntie knows the real deals, which captured locals' attention using a relatable persona. The campaign saw the brand clinch the gold award for Most Creative – Out-of-Home at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's MARKies Awards 2021.

foodpanda Singapore's marketing and sustainability director, Laura Kantor (pictured), told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that reliability and adaptability are key factors that make a successful marketing campaign. "I truly believe that what makes marketing / advertising great is the relatability of the content. We see hundreds and hundreds of ads every day, and the ones that stick with us are the ones that can evoke reactions and emotions. The ads that can do so all have something in common: an relatable message that is conveyed well," she said.

Kantor shares more on takeaways from the pandemic and how hyperlocalisation helps brands reach a wider audience. 

This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners and finalists’ interview series for MARKies Awards 2021. To find out more about the awards, click here.

Tell us about the campaign you won and what was the most memorable aspect of the campaign for you?

Kantor: We are very excited that our hyperlocalised campaign, Auntie knows the real deals, won in four categories in the recent MARKies Awards - including Gold for “Most effective use of out-of-home”.

Auntie knows the real deals was planned as our main marketing campaign for the months of September - November, which is also known as the peak of shopping season. We knew that this was also when e-commerce giants would be going all out to shoutout about the best deals. Putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers (and as customers ourselves), we recognise that this is also when customers will be most inundated with ads after ads of massive discounts to entice them to make purchases. I am sure we have all fallen victim to these ads, and have ended up with multiple impulse purchases that we regret after.

This exact scenario was the inspiration for our campaign. Instead of also pushing out deals and vouchers, we wanted to provide value to our customers by helping them to sieve through the noise and spend on what is truly necessary. We decided to personify this campaign by having an “auntie” character to front it.

We are all familiar with the typical “auntie” traits - slightly naggy, though they have your well-being at heart. Not wanting to lose, or as we better know it: kiasu, and this includes the superpower of knowing where the best deals are. And that was exactly what we wanted our Auntie to share with our customers. We wanted this auntie to reach out to all of our inner aunties and remind us of the important things that we need to stock up on that will definitely add value to our lives, as opposed to spending on wants that will end up resold or donated away after a few months.

Of course, we still needed the message to be delivered in a way that would capture our audience’s attention. Working with a local artiste and music production company, we came up with a cool anthem that our Auntie, brought to life by local entertainer Liu Ling Ling, rapped in a music video that also got us the accolade of the top ten most watched YouTube ad in the second half of 2020, as shared by a report by Google.

What do you think makes for great marketing/advertising these days?

Kantor: I truly believe that what makes marketing / advertising great is the relatability of the content. We see hundreds and hundreds of ads every day, and the ones that stick with us are the ones that can evoke reactions and emotions.

The ads that can do so all have something in common: an relatable message that is conveyed well.

This is where the creativity in storytelling comes in, but fundamentally, the key message needs to be simple, and easily understood without having the need to explain the concept too much.

This may sound easy in theory, but can actually be challenging to execute properly in real life. First, the team needs to have a very clear understanding of the target audience, and their behaviours. This in itself can already be quite challenging to pin down, given the multiple customer segments that we can categorise the general population into. Second comes pinning down the key message that we want to amplify via the campaign that we are planning. This includes the careful art of making this key message relatable to the intended target audience in a way that they prefer to be communicated to. Third is planning the execution - the look, feel, and voice of the assets. Our Auntie knows the real deals campaign, for example, was the result of 2 months of planning, with countless brainstorming sessions that involved multiple teams!

What is one specific marketing/advertising trend you are looking forward to exploring and experimenting with?

Kantor: TikTok has really taken the world by storm, and we are so excited and intrigued at the same time to really harness the power of this new social platform. The TikTok algorithm is something that no one has really quite cracked the code of - the most unexpected of content can go viral, and the speed at which this virality can be achieved is quite unlike what we have observed in other platforms.

The variety of content that we see on TikTok is also so wide. There seems to be a fan base for all kinds of content - from the super polished types, to the vine-like styles - though fundamentally, it really goes back to the relatability of the content. If the post resonates, people are going to watch it on loop, or engage with it, and this will bump the particular content to the FYPs (for you page) of other similar users.

We launched our TikTok account in May last year and have been experimenting with various different content styles since.

This has also given some of the younger team members in our team to showcase the creative sides, and our current content strategy has shown very promising results - we have now amassed more than 18k followers, and over 200k likes. We’ve also had some of our content go viral, especially those that ride on current trends. This year, we’re definitely very excited to continue exploring different ways of engaging with our TikTok fans, and leveraging this new, mystical channel to showcase what we do as a brand.

What was one lesson learnt during the pandemic that all marketers can take away?

Kantor: I believe most marketers will be able to agree that the one lesson that we all can take away would be the importance (or necessity, rather) to adapt to the ever-changing landscape. This has been especially pertinent in Singapore, where restrictions would be announced a few days prior to them being imposed. During which, we will need to very quickly be able to tweak current plans to suit the current situation.

For us, I think it helps that our priority - which is to support our customers, riders, and merchant partners - never changed despite the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic has made it even more important for us to do so. This was also our ever-present compass that helped us to stay focused even when marketing plans need to change. In everything that we do, we always ask ourselves first and foremost if this would help to add value to our key stakeholders in the community, and that has allowed us to make sound decisions, even if they are last-minute ones.