How Baskin Robbins is Using Digital Technology to Connect with Its Customers

Omnichannel marketing is a great way for brands which don’t have a great fit for ecommerce to leverage the power of the associated technology to connect with their audiences in new ways.

As a purveyor of ice-cream products, Baskin Robbins certainly falls into this category, and has launched a few interesting ideas to bring the brand to a bigger audience.

A Shift in Strategy

Baskin Robbins has always taken a product focused approach to its marketing but has recently changed that ethos in response to the changing habits of its customers.

To achieve this the ice-cream brand wanted to create an ad campaign which would resonate with a millennial and generation Z audience. And, if there’s one thing young people like when it comes to the material they share online, it’s memes – named for the Richard Dawkins coined term for an element of culture or behavior passed on by non-genetic means. One such meme, known as “Got Me Like” features images of people and animals experiencing some kind of emotion with a phrase such as “Work Got Me Like” for example.

89% of Millennials are more likely to make a purchase if it is seen to be promoted by friends and family rather than through traditional advertising – something only 16% of millennials say they trust. It’s this preference which should be driving brands to create shareable social media campaigns which will resonate with this demographic.

The “Got Me Like” meme was the one Baskin Robbins wanted to use for its new ad campaign to help it move from a product to an emotion focused strategy.

“We set out to create a campaign that gets attention and gets people talking about the brand in a new and different way,” said Senior Vice President and Creative Director at Baskin Robbins’ marketing partner 22squared, Curt Mueller. Our partners at Baskin-Robbins had the vision and passion to embrace a totally new creative direction. Our friends at Psyop helped us create an entirely new language for the brand; one that represents how we want a younger audience to see Baskin-Robbins, an iconic brand with a rich history.”

The campaign features bright colors, music, dance, internet memes, and animation to try and recreate the feeling people experience when consuming Baskin Robbins. They created over 50 animations and content pieces, combining the visual style of internet memes and the classic Baskin Robbins brand colors. It was made specifically to appeal to a younger demographic, one which has been shown to place value on experiences over things and tied directly into the sort of content they like to share online.

“Our new ‘Baskin Robbins Got Me Like’ campaign does a great job of translating the joy our customers feel when they visit our shops into our advertising in a way that is fresh and relevant for today’s consumer,” said Senior Director of Consumer Engagement at Baskin Robbins, Dave Nagel. “The joyful spirit of the work is contagious, and we feel it truly celebrates all of the delicious ways guests can enjoy our premium ice cream flavors in-store.”

Malaysia

Also looking for a way to target customers with a whimsical social media campaign, the Malaysian arm of Baskin-Robbins created a new campaign based around the often-used internet superlative “OMG.”

The campaign was invented to promote Baskin-Robbins’ free scoop night, which was originally conceived to celebrate Malaysia’s success in the London 2012 Olympics. The free scoop night was resurrected following the 2017 SEA games.

A #FreeScoopNight hashtag was promoted on Facebook and Instagram along with shareable meme-like images featuring the OMG tagline. Traditionally intended to be an acronym for “Oh My God!” Baskin-Robbins expanded OMG to included meanings such as “Oh My Gold”, “On My Game”, and the Malaysian phrase “Oh Malaysiaku Gemar”.

The campaign was also promoted on TV and in newspapers and resulted in a 30km queue for Free Scoop Night with more than 100,000 scoops of ice-cream being handed out – a 49% increase on the 2012 campaign.

Final Thoughts

Creating engaging social media campaigns are a great way of leveraging the power of omnichannel by using digital tools to boost brick and mortar businesses – even for those industries which don’t naturally lend themselves to ecommerce.

You can meet General Manager of Baskin-Robbins Australia, Ben Flintoff at eTail Australia 2020. Ben will partake in the session: "Creative Boardroom: Building eCommerce partnerships that work - How to develop profitable partnerships to boost your brand equity and create new revenue streams".

Please download the agenda today for more information and insights.