Babybel’s 15-year partnership raising money for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day needed to be bigger and better than ever in 2015. In order to reignite the longstanding relationship and surpass previous years, we developed ‘Babybel Yourself,’ an interactive mobile web app. Using ground-breaking facial recognition, face morphing and cutting-edge browser-based technology, the app transformed a user’s face into an interactive laughing cheese.

The mobile web app was the cornerstone of the eight-week promotion, brought to life across numerous online and off-line channels. Digital support included a dedicated URL, digital display media and sponsored Facebook posts. Offline support included in-store touch points and packaging, redesigned to showcase “Babybel Yourself” and the company’s commitment to donate for every promotional pack purchased. The heart of the activation lay within the experience itself. Responsive HTML allowed users to easily “Babybel Yourself” across all platforms from mobile, tablet and desktop to digital out-of-home activity.

We were challenged to push creativity in the 2015 campaign, using the charity’s popularity to drive penetration under their new theme: “Make your face funny for money”. The popular mini cheeses were traditionally associated with wholesome fun, so we needed to be fresher and funnier to resonate with the ‘tween’ audience – without alienating children and parents. Tweens are likely to have phones but aren't necessarily given access to the native app store, so we need to push the limits of mobile web browser technology to raise buckets of life-changing cash for an incredible cause.

Early commercial results demonstrate the impact of ‘Babybel Yourself’ as a significant awareness and attitudinal piece. With a huge number of site visits and the total number of creations and shares surpassing initial expectations, the campaign has achieved its objective of creating an innately shareable experience.

In fact, this campaign has already been crowned as our most influential partnership with Comic Relief in 15 years. And with exceptional image morphing, rendering and graphic acceleration, it was a best-in-class demonstration of the very latest, innovative technology.

So far, we’ve achieved:

• 72,427 site visits

• 19,045 Babybels created

• 751 Babybels created via digital out-of-home activity

• Over 15 million media impressions

• Over 41,000 clicks from media

• Over 4,800 Babybels shared

• +5% sales increase vs. forecast

• Brand growth +42% vs. 2014

• £150,000 pack donations to Comic Relief with an additional £20,000 attained from ‘social share’ donations

The campaign is live until 19.04.15.

The creative execution was largely inspired by Comic Relief’s objective to drive positive change, as we fed off their fuel for this mission: the power of laughter. After all, laughter is contagious and spreads like wild fire – perfect for an integrated campaign.

Focus groups with our target audience established that a significant driver of peer-to-peer behaviour is sharing in a good laugh. So we combined the strong social value of personalisation with simple shareability, to allow our campaign to grow and spread organically. Moreover, we firmly applied the creative execution to the brand by transforming simple selfies into interactive cheeses – all personalised with a choice of laughs. Placing the product at the heart of the idea answered Comic Relief’s ‘Make your face funny for money’ proposition. The promotional campaign ran according to the original plan, in UK grocery retailers across POS and packaging from 10.02.15 to 19.04.15.