Manila, Philippines – Turning 45 is a milestone in itself, but global Filipino fast-food chain Jollibee wanted their fans in on the celebration – with the help of its iconic red bee mascot. To celebrate its 45th birthday in style, Jollibee partnered with GrabAds, the advertising arm of Southeast Asian superapp, Grab, for a dynamic and innovative full-funnel campaign.
The month-long campaign, ‘Jollibee’s 45th Birthday Blowout’, ran from October to November 2023 and leveraged GrabAds’ diverse advertising formats to ignite customer excitement, boost purchase intent, and drive more sales. The campaign resulted in a 25x return on ad spend (ROAS).
The objective: Deliver a nationwide celebration for Jollibee via Grabads
Tapping into the unique ecosystem features and capabilities of GrabAds’ retail media network (RMN), including rich first-party transaction data, Jollibee ads were strategically served to consumers who had the intent to order food on Grab, making them more likely to seek out Jollibee’s offers.
Jollibee’s campaign with GrabAds also tapped into creative ad formats on the Grab platform, including GrabFood pop-ups, Masthead, and Native Homepage ads. The key campaign highlight was the delivery icon branding, which replaced Grab’s green rider icon that shows the real-time location of the delivery-partner, with Jollibee’s well-beloved red bee mascot.
These ads targeted hungry Filipinos across different stages of their buying journey – from discovery to purchase. Customers were also treated with freebies from Jollibee such as fries, pancakes, peach mango pie and Coke Float when they spent a minimum of PHP500 on Jollibee on GrabFood as part of the celebration during the campaign period.
Gianfranco Go, senior marketing manager at Jollibee Food Corporation, said, “Turning 45 is a huge milestone for Jollibee. As a Philippines’ homegrown brand, we wanted this birthday to be a national celebration. We were thrilled to see the fantastic results from the campaign with GrabAds. Their creative use of our iconic Jollibee mascot brought the campaign to life, truly resonating with our customers and driving strong engagement.”
He added, “This digital activation campaign is a first of its kind in the Philippines’ quick service restaurant industry, and we look forward to collaborating with GrabAds again for more innovative ad campaigns in the future.”
The results: Achieving 2.2x increase in purchase intent compared to Kantar norms
Over the one-month campaign, Jollibee successfully celebrated its 45th birthday across multiple ad touchpoints on Grab, leading to a 2.2-fold increase in purchase intent. The campaign achieved remarkable success in driving recommendations, likely attributed to Jollibee being a well-loved local brand in the Philippines. The brand’s embodiment of Filipino identity and culture resonated strongly with the local audience, particularly with the emphasis on celebrating Jollibee’s birthday, potentially driving the audience to recommend Jollibee.
Jollibee was also able to achieve both brand-building and performance goals with a single campaign, according to a brand lift study conducted with Kantar, one of the world’s leading media insights and research for advertising. Key results included:
- 25 times return on advertising spend (ROAS)
- 13% uplift in platform sales
- 17% increase in ad recall, which is 3 times higher than Kantar norms
- 8% increase in purchase intent, which is 2 times higher than Kantar norms
Ken Mandel, regional managing director and head of GrabAds and enterprise, commented, “It was a pleasure to have teamed up with Jollibee for their 45th birthday celebration to design a bespoke birthday campaign, which of course featured their iconic red bee mascot. This campaign was built on GrabAds’ unique retail media ecosystem, which made it possible to offer our customers innovative ad formats like delivery icon branding and a full-funnel campaign that engaged consumers across their buying journey.”
He added, “With first-party data that is powered by real consumer transactions, we were able to strategically target consumers who were already looking for something to eat, resulting in a strong uplift in both purchase intent and platform sales, and highlighting the success of our collaboration.”
