Small moments remind Australians of Arnott’s much-loved biscuit brands

Creativity has driven business and brand growth for 157-year old Arnott’s Group and its portfolio of iconic Australian biscuits.

A still from Arnott’s ‘Moments’ campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi

An advertising campaign for Arnott’s Group and its portfolio of biscuits has delivered strong business and brand results since launching on screens in May 2022.

In the first six months since it was aired, Arnott’s market share position in the biscuit category grew by one percentage point, and delivered biscuit volume growth of 2 per cent.

It grew sales dollars in the “high single digits range”, and the campaign achieved a return-on-investment that put Arnott’s in the top 10 per cent of fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) campaigns.

The campaign was created for Arnott’s by The Neighbourhood, a Publicis Groupe-owned agency and model created specifically for the brand, led by creative firm Saatchi & Saatchi Australia and media agency, Spark Foundry.

Chief client officer, The Neighbourhood, Toby Aldred. Chief executive, Spark Foundry Imogen Hewitt. Arnott’s Group chief marketing officer, Jenni Dill

Arnott’s biscuit brands are still much loved by Australians today; its products can be found in 95 per cent of pantries across the country.

The campaign increased purchase intent, message take out and sparked emotional affinity across multiple generations with the brand, and its portfolio of biscuits, among audiences.

It was developed with a goal to increase “modern relevance” for the brand, and, according to chief marketing officer Jenni Dill, as part of a post-Covid push for growth.

Covid was a good time to be in the business of biscuits.

“We experienced some nice sales growth through those Covid lockdown periods,” Ms Dill told The Growth Agenda.

“Post-Covid, we were all worried that everything would come to a halt as people got back to their normal lives and went back out to cafes and restaurants and spent more time outdoors. But we haven’t necessarily seen that happen.”

Prior to this campaign, according to Arnott’s, volume growth had been “relatively static” since Covid.

It was an insight from the social and economic upheaval of Covid that offered a starting point for the creative approach.

“Our products are supposed to be that little enjoyable moment in any given day in anyone’s lives. And we really anchored in on those small moments, because those small moments actually became the big moments through Covid,” said Ms Dill.

In a 60-second video ad, viewers are taken to a series of workplace and home settings showing people enjoying their favourite Arnott’s products to the tune of Dragon’s hit song, I’m Still in Love With You – an apt soundtrack for the Australian brand that’s been around for more than 150 years.

In one scene, a tired parent awakens to his child waiting by his bedside eating a Milk Arrowroot biscuit.

In another scene, a box of Tee Vee Snacks travels across a living room atop a robotic vacuum from one teenager to another.

A father and daughter sit in a play house at a table set for afternoon tea, enjoying a packet of Tiny Teddy biscuits.

In the final scene, a woman working from home sits on a video call, and mid-bite into a Cruskit, she’s asked by a co-worker for her input.

“Laura, what do you think?”, a voice asks, to which she “unmutes” herself, responds “Absolutely”, before returning her microphone to mute to enjoy her snack in peace.

Chief client officer of The Neighbourhood Toby Aldred said, “It’s the small things in life that really count when you’re really pushed to it, and Arnott’s, for over 150 years, is dotted with all these small little rituals that happen around having a cup of tea with your mum or playing outside with your daughter, or having a moment to yourself on the sofa.

“What we set out to try and deliver was to create these modern rituals that reflected what was happening in life now, bring the brand up to date and create new moments in which it can appear in people’s lives.”

By writing these human and product truths into the campaign, Arnott’s was able to see growth quickly.

This is a rare result for brand marketing – a type of advertising that usually aims to create emotional connections with audiences in the long-term, rather than drive immediate term sales.

However, as the results suggest, this campaign has achieved both.

“As a marketer, particularly in the FMCG market, you’ve got to be able to do both,” Ms Dill said.

“If you’re not delivering results in the short term, you don’t earn the right to do it in the long term. It’s that simple.

“If you are clear on your consumers, your brands, the role you can play and opportunity you have, then I firmly believe that you can deliver great work that works in the short term and in the long term.”

“That’s the magic of what we’ve been able to deliver with The Neighbourhood.

“We saw the results almost immediately.”

Ms Dill said long and short term results don’t always need to be delivered in every campaign, but that “it does make it easier to drive focus and deliver business results if you can”.

“You need to find the right balance between the long and the short for every brand or portfolio,” she added.

The campaign kicked off with television, online and social media video ad placements with a goal to “make an impact, quickly”, said Ms Dill, however the creative has also been made into shorter, bite-size video content, including clips of 15 and six seconds.

Arnott’s customers are a price sensitive bunch according to the company’s data, and record-high input inflation recently forced the business’s hand to increase its prices. However, this campaign also helped insulate the brand from inflationary pressures and the cost-of-living crisis.

“In most impulse categories, price rises equal volume decline. And I think we’ve proven that fairly well in our history,” Ms Dill said.

“It’s the power of the advertising that’s helped us deliver the volume growth, which is just quite simply appealing to more people, more of the time with more of your portfolio with a really powerful message that connects. And that seems to be what’s working.”

Chief executive of Spark Foundry, Imogen Hewitt, whose agency led the media channel selection, ad spot buying and measurement for the campaign, said that including many of Arnott’s biscuit brands within one campaign contributed to its success.

Since its launch, the campaign has reached 40-45 per cent of all TV viewers aged over 25 a month. The total reach for the campaign to date is estimated to be more than 14.5 million Australian adults.

“You are talking about a purchase that can happen 52 weeks of the year, 365 days,” Ms Hewitt said.

“The more that you can support that and keep that consistently front-of-mind for the most people possible, the more you are really activating your best opportunity to get the kind of sales outcomes that we have gone on to deliver.”