With the Paris 2024 Olympics in action, Mediaweek is catching up with the standout brand partners powering the Summer Games to hear first-hand from their marketing guns about running campaigns on the world’s biggest sporting stage. Today, we’re with Surini Perera, marketing director at General Mills, parent company of Australian Olympic Team partner, Old El Paso.
What does being an Olympics partner mean for your brand?
At Old El Paso, we represent such a huge proportion of this great nation. With 95% aided brand awareness, we are consumed day-in, day-out by communities from all walks of life, and we’re really proud of that.
Particularly for such a strong sporting nation, the Olympic Games is a huge uniter of communities and Old El Paso meals are a great uniter at family dinner tables. The Olympics’ motto is ‘faster, higher stronger – together’. ‘Together’ was added to the motto in 2021 – an indicator of sentiment and that it’s more than the win, it’s the journey and togetherness that’s important. That nuance and the way families are a community, plus the fact mealtimes are about bringing people together, makes this a nice tie-in with our brand.
Walk us through your campaign for the Olympics. What are the key elements and what inspired the creative direction?
Make Some Noise for your Home Team is a full 360-degree campaign, encompassing above-the-line and below-the-line activations, partnerships leading up to the Olympics, over the main games period, followed by return home flighting. The visual direction is inspired by our ongoing brand communications which are still in market, we believe that consistency is key, therefore it is important that even though we support different aperture moments that it all laddering up to the same look and feel and our enduring brand platform of Make Some Noise.
We’re working with a group of incredible Australian athletes – all of whom are huge fans of the Old El Paso brand and regular consumers of Mexican inspired food. Mackenzie Arnold, Patty Mills and Logan Martin launched our above-the-line campaign, appear on pack and have been working closely with the brand team to deliver great collaborative content.
We’ve also recently re-engaged long-standing brand ambassador, Australian tennis doubles player, Matt Ebden.
Mackenzie Arnold
Patty Mills
Using our ambassadors, we’ve been driving content and hype for the three months leading up to the games, supported by in-store activations and consumer promotions. In April, we launched limited edition packs across six key products, changing our iconic yellow and red packs to yellow and green to show our support for Team Australia.
Having strong existing brand equity in market has allowed us to flex our brand in this way for a short, promotional period of time, whilst still staying true to the brands distinctive cues.
Logan Martin
What objectives did you set out to achieve with this campaign?
ROI for Old El Paso is aligned to short and long-term goals. Consumption of product is important, but our marketing ambition is to also drive brand consideration. Estimates are that 230 million of its tacos are eaten each year, with the top-selling product its Hard n Soft Taco Kit at 3 million packs per year.
Our long term ambition is to be in the top 10 meals in Australia, being part of cultural conversations is a key enabler to progressing against that ambition.
What is the weighting of your media mix, and what has driven this decision?
Mass-reaching broadcast channels are driving awareness of our partnership across TV, OLV, and OOH. Our ambassador program has been seeded across social and digital channels in collaboration with the athletes, leveraging their authentic brand style and audience, as well as building on existing Old El Paso brand equity. To contextualise our messaging and show up in new, interesting ways with our ever-growing audience, we’ve also partnered with Rolling Stone magazine, Nine WWOS, 9Honey, and ARN network (Will & Woody radio show)
Across the national retailer network, we’ve supported the campaign on and offline since April, with a month-long promo including a prize of a return trip to Paris – capturing demand at the point of purchase. We were incredibly excited to launch our limited edition packs, that will be available in stores until September.
Is FTA TV coverage an important part of the campaign?
Absolutely – broadcast TV is still a major part of the Old El Paso media plan year-on-year. Driving a mass message about ‘Taco Tuesday’ is a huge part of our brand strategy, so utilising mass reaching channels to remind Aussies to eat more Mexican more regularly is key.
What aspect of this campaign and partnership are you most proud of?
We believe storytelling matters and meals provide important moments of connection – mealtimes are perfect moments for this. Our mission is to inspire then enable mealtime moments filled with fun and vibrancy. We call it ‘good noise’, and we’re hopeful the authentic nature of the partnership with the Australian Olympic team helps embed that across Australia, encouraging more Aussies to connect with each other around their home team.
How do you plan to build upon or expand this campaign moving forward? How does this campaign align with your broader marketing strategy?
Old El Paso has always centred on creating fun and vibrant meal times, this is our brand truth and our key message – this is going to be enduring. Olympics is a vehicle to talk about fun and vibrancy that Old El Paso can bring. Your Home team taps into both national pride as well bringing and using our meals at the table and linking ourselves to those moments.
Post the Covid isolation and with families being as time poor as ever, the connection between loved ones has never been more valuable. We will continue to encourage and celebrate prioritising these moments – because we believe that they are important.
Credits:
M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment