New Zealand’s rugby’s influence was a key ingredient in Westgold’s award-winning social marketing campaign to raise awareness of its butter in Japan.

Westgold’s “Buttering up the Japanese Market” campaign has won the award for Best Paid Social Campaign in the international Drum Awards Digital Advertising APAC. The award is for an innovative strategy or campaign that engaged a target audience.

Westgold’s Senior Brand Manager Leanne Clemens says knowing that in Japan more men traditionally do the supermarket shop compared to other markets paid off with how the campaign to raise awareness of Westgold butter, was pitched.

“We made our grass-fed, clean-butter story relevant to the Japanese consumer by producing content that understood cultural and social norms,” she says.

“New Zealand’s visibility in Japan is through our rugby and we needed the male shopper to join the ‘footy dots’ and TRY our butter.”

Leanne Clemens says the campaign used well known Japanese influencers and New Zealand rugby players, including those playing in the Japanese league as well as “likeable” former All Blacks, to promote how to use Westgold butter in savoury locally inspired recipes.

“This helped us position Westgold as a premium product in recipes, highlighting how great it tastes, along with the health benefits of our grass-fed butter.”

To support the influencer campaign, the team also ran branded video and display content to gain reach and familiarise the audience with Westgold butter.

Leanne Clemens says the results of the campaign were outstanding “We started with low brand awareness in Tokyo, 10 per cent in April 2021, and increased it to 15 per cent in November 2021 – a 50 per cent increase in prompted awareness. We well exceeded our target. It was an excellent campaign,” she says.

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Diane Keenan +64 27 2353711