SINGAPORE – GSK Consumer Healthcare and Grey Group Singapore breaks category norms to launch ‘ Horlicks Nutriquest’, a 360 marketing campaign that is built around a fully immersive game for kids, designed to help educate them on the importance of nutrition. This innovative campaign created for Horlicks focuses on bringing the brand campaign “kids want to be tall, strong, and sharp” to life in a new and engaging way reaching kids as well as their moms.
The game, game trailer, in-store retail engagement, digital and social media have been created by a team of experts from around the world including Grey, Ground Control (animated trailer), Possible Games (game development) and Yessian Music, making this a first for the brand in pulling together a global team of digital creators.
Horlicks’ purpose is to help fulfill the potential of children by providing nutritional requirements by supplementing their existing diets to help them grow tall, strong and sharp. It can be a challenging task for parents to teach young children the importance of nutrients in a stimulating way so the brand decided to take another look at nutrition education and identified gamification as the way to ensure the brand would resonate with children in 2016.
Horlicks ‘Nutriquest’ is a truly immersive experience across all touch points with a powerful storyline and impressive set of engaging characters. The entire campaign focuses around the story of Dr. Greedy and his Metaloids taking over The Horlicks Factory. In order to stop the evil genius, four heroes – Omair, Akin, Ida, and Damien – unite. These Tall, Strong and Sharp kids must complete 30 levels, which are split into three different worlds – City, Jungle and The Horlicks Factory – to defeat Dr. Greedy and his Metaloids. They will need help along the way so in all communication materials, the heroes invite other kids to join them, asking them the question “Are you tall, strong and sharp enough to beat Dr. Greedy?”
Consumers are called to join their quest by playing the ‘Nutriquest’ game and ensuring the heroes make it to the end. Upon downloading the application, users are required to either select one of the heroes or create their own character to begin the mission. Throughout each stage, users will collect ‘Nutricoins’ and
Tall, Strong and Sharp ‘Boosters’ that will enable them to excel through the levels and take back the Horlicks factory.
Overall, the game’s design and functionality displays technical craft, graphics and music that can be compared to the best (paid for) apps that consumers are currently buying on the app stores.
Each character is designed in line with popular culture through complex CGI processes and the music was produced by a recognized sound producer, Yessian Music and Sound Design, in New York, ensuring all aspects of the game are truly world class.
In addition to the game, a two minute game trailer was developed by internationally renowned director, Thierry Marchand from ground(ctrl), who was previously nominated for an Oscar and has worked with DreamWorks.
The campaign’s use of digital and social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Vimeo, as well as tailor made in-store theater, limited edition merchandise and special display systems, seeks to grab the attention of many.
“The Horlicks 360 marketing campaign aims at driving brand love of kids and mothers by leveraging a gaming platform that has never been seen at this scale before in the healthcare industry,” said Till Hohmann, Executive Creative Director of GSK, Vice President, Grey Group Asia Pacific. “The level of craft in the campaign alongside the gaming experience offered is a bold step by a brand that is committed to changing category norms. In partnership, Grey and GSK Consumer Healthcare are dedicated to delivering work that sets a high benchmark with a new younger target market and showing our competition how it’s done!”
“Horlicks’ brand purpose is to nourish the world’s potential,” said Michael Duffy, Global Business Lead Family Nutrition, GSK. “We do this by providing moms with science-backed nutrition for her children that she can trust. Engaging with kids in fun and informative ways so they can relate to us, and even love us as a brand, is equally important. Both of these objectives are strongly supported by a tight focus on education around nutrition science. Horlicks Nutriquest achieves both of these, building engagement with kids as well as educating them around the benefits of Horlicks as a solution that can help them nourish their potential. We have tapped into a very relevant part of their world in gaming and are delivering a step change in how we communicated the science behind our products with this digitally innovative platform.”
