How Jollibee's Arline Adeva gauges effectiveness

We're only a week away from from the 2021 Tangrams Strategy and Effectiveness Awards shortlist on February 23rd as part of next week's Spikes X Campaign virtual event, followed by the full Tangrams winners announcement on March 1.

Ahead of these key dates, Campaign asked leading Tangrams and Spikes jurors to share more about the fields they judge and how they incorporate their analysis into their own marketing work. 

Arline Adeva is assistant VP and head of brand communications, PR and digital marketing at Jollibee Foods who is serving as a 2021 Tangrams jury member for Effectiveness. 

What do you look for as a judge when it comes to a campaign’s effectiveness?

I look for several things. For one, the depth and quality of insight anchored on solid strategy and quality research and how it was brought to life creatively down to the execution across all key touchpoints. It’s also how the campaign addressed a clearly identified business need or perception challenge while remaining consistent with what the brand stands for and its values; and how it made use of cost effective and innovative tools such as data and analytics. It’s a great bonus for me also if the campaign’s purpose evolved to benefit also the community or the nation as a whole.

How closely do creativity and effectiveness go hand in hand?

It’s very much interrelated in my opinion. Creativity is a great foundation to ensure that whatever you do resonates well with your target market and will stand out above the clutter given that there are so many branded messages being sent out there every minute of every day, competing for everyone’s attention. Effectiveness is the product of a strong creative idea that’s further bolstered by a well-laid out plan and strong amplification efforts to further drive the message home. It’s not enough that you have a great ad or a digital video, you need to make sure it can be seen and the right people will be able to engage with it.

How do you judge the effectiveness of your campaigns at Jollibee?

Like all other brands, we have numerous ad effectiveness, PR and social metrics. We benchmark not just against what our competitors do, what other big brands do but also against our own previous records. We look at effectiveness based on the campaign objectives we have laid down at the start—whether to boost sales (via increased penetration or frequency) or drive brand love (via equity attributes and total engagement). And beyond these hard numbers, we also know if our campaign is effective based on the testimonials or feedback that find their way to us and the industry recognitions we get to affirm our great work.

What in your mind made the now famous Kwentong Jollibee campaigns so effective?

Kwentong Jollibee—which is one of our most successful brand love campaigns—has always been founded on strong, powerful and relevant truths. We make sure that the storylines we choose are very relatable to each segment of our primary target markets even as we are also mindful of a seamless brand integration that never gets in the way of the story. The narrative resonates with Filipinos and even people from other nationalities as we make sure that the stories  and lessons that we showcase in these films are universal. Great thought goes into production, musical scoring, and the talents who will bring the characters to life.

We’re also proud to share that the whole Kwentong Jollibee process (from the storyline to the treatment) has always been a collaboration effort of the Jollibee team with our creative agency McCann World Group Philippines and the amazing directors we’re fortunate to work with in each of these shorts. Because at the end of the day, we all want to come up with a finished product—a Kwentong Jollibee short film in this case—that we can all be proud of.

What kind of campaigns might resonate more in the Philippines and be more effective than in other markets?  How important is localisation to effectiveness?

Filipinos are suckers for great love stories as we are very emotional people that’s why this Valentine series—which is now on its fifth year—continues to gain a huge following here in the Philippines. Although we’re also very happy to note that based on the many reaction videos made from various parts of the world, it appears these kinds of long-form videos also resonate strongly with non-Filipinos—as many of these reactors were gushing over the same lines or romantic scenes, getting affected with the plot twist and smiling or crying all over again. This only goes to show that campaigns and stories hinged on universal themes of love or family have a great chance of success especially when the stories are well told.

Localisation is very important especially if you want to establish a great connection with your target audience. They will be naturally drawn to stories that are familiar to them or will remind them of the same situation that they once found themselves in or make them remember memories through various life stages or milestones. These will trigger them to not just watch your material till the end but also share their own stories and spread the word to families and friends. This is even more crucial for global campaigns with hyper targeted messaging depending on what the campaign objectives are.

Give us one non-Jollibee campaign you really like and tell us why.

I’m a big fan of the John Lewis adverts and look forward to them every Christmas like many people from all over the world. The brand's 2018 advert featuring Elton John was one of my favorites as it is very heartwarming and the execution—all those details in the production—that brought to life a simple and powerful brand message was really world-class.