The formula milk category in Singapore is hyper-competitive, with almost 40 brands vying for the attention of Singapore’s Tiger Mums1, who are notorious for going to extremes to give their children a head-start in life. As a result, for the past two decades, most brands have chosen to appeal to parents by focusing on the link between ingredients and brain development.

However, what parents overlook is that a healthy digestive system is essential so that the body absorbs these nutrients for growth and development. Through social listening, we learned that while mums knew their child’s gut health was important, they paid attention only when something went wrong.

As the brand whose mission is to nurture children with high-quality milk that is easy to digest, Friso decided to develop a creative campaign to lead the call for parents to pay more attention to the digestive health of their children

While the benefits of good digestive health in young children are medically well-researched and established, we knew that as a topic, it could be dry and dense for parents. What we needed was a fun and engaging creative platform that parents could relate to and connect with…so we began with the end (poop) in mind.

FRISO Good Poop Matters, Baby! was designed to make learning about good gut health fun and accessible for parents who were time-starved and rarely thought of good gut health as something that could be “achieved”. The cheeky and irreverent tone of the campaign was aimed at cutting through the marketing clutter in a category where airbrushed mothers and toddlers were the norm.

The campaign’s two-pronged strategy approached the topic of “good poop” with credibility and creativity, to connect with parents on both a rational and an emotional level.

We identified and recruited medical/nutrition experts who were extremely credible in talking about good digestion, and named them to the Good Poop Advisory Panel on World Digestive Health Day (29 May). This immediately generated media attention in a country where taskforces and advisory boards seem to be formed every other day – though none with a mission quite like theirs.

Journalists started catching on to this fun but important topic, and soon, social media ‘mum-fluencers’ were sent FRISO Good Poop Officer Kits, where they were asked to appoint their own ‘Good Poop Officer’ at home to make good digestion and poop a priority for their children. Together, this created a swirl of conversation around the importance of good gut health, led by the brand.

We targeted general dailies for broad awareness as well as parenting media and influencers for their direct outreach to parents and identified World Digestive Health Day (29 May) as a media hook. Outreach started more than 2 weeks before World Digestive Health Day to secure and facilitate interviews for the FRISO Good Poop Advisory Panel across print, broadcast (TV and radio) and online media.

Shortly after setting the stage on World Digestive Health Day, the FRISO Good Poop Officer kits went out to the social media ‘mum-fluencers’ to continue the momentum on good digestion and good poop.

The scale of this campaign was within the Singapore market, and ran over a period of 3 months.

Via earned media, we secured 18,299,570 impressions via 24 pieces of earned coverage in Singapore. As a result, FRISO’s share of voice on earned media grew 31% to lead the category during the campaign period.

Social volume around the FRISO brand observed a +12% lift from previous quarter prior to the campaign. Social chatter was primarily led by campaign-related mentions, as parents actively engaged with the social posts on FRISO’s owned social media platforms, influencers’ content and various media outlets’ social accounts.

Business Outcomes – refer to confidential information section.

As this was also the first time FRISO took the earned media route in Singapore to reach parents, the campaign also paved the way in securing relationships with key opinion leaders and experts to link FRISO with good digestive health in children, effectively earning a place in the consideration set of parents when it comes to purchasing formula milk.