The Woolworths Group leveraged the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to remind Australians of the link between fresh food and performance through its campaign: Fresh Fuels the Best in All of Us: The Paris 2024 Games.
To reinforce the message and target a younger demographic, the supermarket pivoted to TikTok as part of its strategy to meet audiences where they are and inspire customers of the importance of nutritious food in supporting the performance of athletes and everyday Australians.
The campaign proved successful for the supermarket chain in its sponsorship awareness and engagement results. It is also a finalist at the TikTok Ad Awards in the Greatest Brand Effectiveness Campaign category.
Andrew Hicks, chief marketing officer of Woolworths Group said: “At Woolworths, we are passionate about meeting our customers where they are and we knew that TikTok would be a primary place for many customers to spend time and engage with Games content.
“We took the opportunity to show up a little differently on TikTok, stretching our brand tone and personality to ensure we captured attention, in a platform-appropriate manner, whilst maintaining the essence of our distinct brand codes.
Leaning into entertaining and relatable content
Woolworths took to TikTok with its ‘Fresh Fuels the Best in All of Us’ proposition and leaned into creating entertaining and relatable content on the platform.
The campaign introduced the ‘Fresh Ambassadors’, a playful cast of fresh fruits and vegetables acting as coaches and commentators during the games, celebrating the efforts of Australians to eat well and perform their best.
The ‘Fresh Ambassadors’ featured in interview-style TikTok videos with Olympic and Paralympic athletes, such as Vanessa Low and Maurice Longbottom, and they showed how food fuels their performance.
Woolworths drove reach with key TikTok media placements by securing 80% of the Share of Voice through TikTok’s Top View during the Olympics Opening Ceremony.
Strong impact and engagement
The campaign’s authentic, fun, and shareable approach was successful in its sponsorship awareness objective and health and wellbeing messaging.
Fresh Fuels the Best in All of Us ads proved to have a strong impact and engagement success as it resulted in a 12.8% uplift in ad recall (compared to an 8.6% benchmark), a 6.9% increase in brand association (above the 0.9% benchmark), and an 8.4% rise in sponsorship awareness (surpassing the 2.7% benchmark).
Woolworths Group CMO Hicks added: “We were very pleased to see the impact that the campaign had on TikTok including the joy our campaign brought to so many Australians.”