The Challenge
Tim Hortons, a world-renowned Canadian food and beverage brand, took its first leap into the South East Asian market in Bangkok, Thailand.
Whether it’s Timbits, coffee or bakery items, Tim Hortons brings the best of Canada to Thailand.
Tim Hortons wanted to create a campaign to generate brand awareness in the highly competitive Thai market.
Thais knew very little about the brand and its history. The first challenge was introducing locals to the brand by exciting the market about Tim Hortons’ products, especially their hero products such as coffee and Timbits.
Primal was asked to give Tim Hortons a voice, so that the brand would be top of mind when consumers thought about cafes in Thailand.
Our Approach
Pre-launch
To introduce the brand to the Thai audience, we brainstormed and researched how to connect the local market to the brand. We used the brand’s core as the starting point.
As a result, we discovered that Thailand and Canada have many shared values, including kindness, national sports, unique cuisine, the importance of family, diversity and openness.
The campaign direction played on the similarities of both nations. So, in the first phase, we developed a strategy to create a bond between Thais and the brand to educate them on its values and identity. To do this, we introduced Uncle Tim, an uncle from Canada who comes to Thailand for the first time. The first content, ‘A Trip from Canada to Thailand’, was the beginning of Uncle Tim’s trip from Canada, landing in Bangkok, bringing his favourite products with him.
As his first time in Thailand, he travelled around Bangkok and started to experience Thai culture. Soon he began to connect the dots between his land, his products and Thailand. In the end, seeing the similarities and the wonderful differences, he decides to establish Tim Hortons in Bangkok.
The plan ran from pre-launch to post-launch in 5 steps: create engaging and relevant content and campaigns, drive positive interaction through community management, reach the right people to capture prospects, drive activation through strong calls to action, and improve repeat purchase through community advocacy. Every activity was measured, analysed and optimised.
Brand Launch
In the launch phase, we promoted the hero products for people to discover the wide range of unique items that are ready to be served at Tim Hortons. We highlighted the well known ‘Original Red Cup’ to create brand recall.
The creative assets reflected the playfulness and liveliness of the brand’s Timbits, doughnuts and other coffee items to create an enjoyable, easy-going, down-to-earth image.
Brand Showcase
After the brand launch, the creative content shifted towards a product showcase to drive people in-store. We paired the products with the audience insights we got in the previous phase to show products that would appeal to our target audiences. This meant that the content gave a strong overall picture of the wide range of products served in-store.
We also targeted other potential customer groups, including those that craved smoothies, had a sweet tooth and enjoyed a healthy lifestyle. Our focus was mostly on females in their 20s. We created lively stop motion videos for a variety of smoothies including matcha, strawberry and mango, showing the raw ingredients to the actual product. The intention was to make the videos shareable so that the audience would share them with their friends.
Outcomes Achieved
Primal planned and executed a creative campaign across various social media platforms using the theme of “The journey from Canada to Bangkok” to connect the brand with its new location.
In addition, we planned a media push to capture our target audience’s attention to generate high awareness online.
Reach, impressions, brand mentions and share of voice (the brand’s share of the online conversation) all rose. Before the launch the largest competitor held an 84% share of voice; the launch campaign took Tim Hortons to 11%.
- 27M+Audience Reached
- 33.5M+Impressions on Facebook
- 67,736%Growth in Followers (Highest Growth Amongst Competitors)
- 350KIncrease in Engagement
Key Insights
- Thailand and Canada share values: kindness, national sports, unique cuisine, the importance of family, diversity and openness. The campaign played on those similarities.
- A character made an unfamiliar brand easy to meet. Uncle Tim, an uncle from Canada on his first trip to Thailand, introduced Tim Hortons’ values and identity.
- The well known ‘Original Red Cup’ and the hero products led the launch, to create brand recall.
- Audience insights from the launch decided which products the showcase content showed. The stop motion smoothie videos were made to be shared.
- The launch campaign took Tim Hortons to an 11% share of voice, against a largest competitor at 84% before the launch.
“Despite the fierce competition in Thailand’s food and beverage market, Tim Hortons will triumph thanks to its globally recognised menu, including Timbits and a wide variety of beverages, which Thai people are bound to love.”
