Five Tastes fires up Asian inspired cooking in a brand new content-driven campaign via Thread

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Five Tastes Minisodes group.jpgSimplot has recently launched a new content-driven campaign for its new brand Five Tastes via Thread Communications.

The idea behind the Five Tastes campaign was to demonstrate its authenticity by putting it to the ultimate taste test in Asia.

Five Tastes Minisodes serving.jpgTara Lordsmith, general manager marketing at Simplot said the content-led Five Tastes campaign was the first of its kind for Simplot.

The range includes meal kits, cooking sauces and pastes to cook authentic Asian cuisine.

Says Lordsmith: “We wanted to take a really entrepreneurial approach for the launch of Simplot’s first ever, new-to-market brand, so the idea of taste testing it in Asia and turning this experience into content was really appealing.”

Three Australian couples were recruited to take the product to Thailand to cook it for the locals. Newlyweds Brodie and Ash from Queensland were challenged to cook Five Tastes Pad Thai on a street cart in Bangkok’s busiest eat street Soi 38. Melbourne primary school teachers Chris and Steven cooked a traditional Five Tastes Green Curry for a Thai wedding in Chiang Mai. The third couple, mums from Perth Lara and Di, were taken to Northern Thailand to catch frogs and cook them in a traditional Red Curry for the local rice farmers.

Their experiences will be shared on social media and captured in three online ‘minisodes’. The minisodes will be supported by a 60″ trailer and 30″ television commercial to air as part of an SBS Food sponsorship over the next 16 weeks.

Media Release - Five Tastes .jpgA strong digital seeding campaign as well as online and magazine ads will further support the Five Tastes launch. In addition a word-of-mouth campaign will see nearly1000 key food influencers among the first to trial the range and share their opinions on and offline.

Says Lordsmith: “Rather than us telling people what the product is like, this campaign puts it out there and asks people to tell us – and their peers, what they think. It’s a risky approach butwe’re confident that Five Tastes is up to the challenge, and we hope it will inspire Australians to cook more Asian-style meals at home more often.”

Director of Thread, Sue Peden said Five Tastes was an innovative product so required an innovative launch approach.

Says Peden: “Our campaign focuses on building awareness among key influencers within our target – not only to achieve word-of-mouth reach, but most importantly to leverage the power of peer-to-peer recommendation to generate sales.

“It’s quite brave for an FMCG product launch and it’s been great to work with a client like Simplot who has embraced this thinking.

Creative Media, the producers of Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam (2009-10) and Luke Nguyen’s Greater Mekong (2011-2012), were engaged to produce the content.

Says Peden: “Creative Media were the perfect partners to us in this brief – not only because of their intimate knowledge of Asia and food but because they specialise in making TV shows, not ads.”

Thread has also produced a series of Five Tastes recipe demonstration videos and a brand story video as part of the launch.

The Five Tastes range, which will include meal kits, cooking sauces and pastes, will seek to dominate in the highly fragmented, $197.6m* Asian shelf stable category (*Retail World 46th Annual Report 2012).