PG Morning Moods

Background

PG Tips wanted to raise awareness of some of the speciality teas it sold as well as its regular teabags.

The strategy was to focus on the different needs people have for a hot drink in the morning – waking up, getting going, currying favour in the office, relieving illness etc – and position PG Tips perfect for those moments.

Twitter was identified as the media platform where consumers were already talking about their moods in the morning. Now the task was to find a way to insert PG Tips into those conversations.

Idea

PG Tips joined the GIFolution. 100 million GIFs were shared on Twitter in 2015 alone.

They were easy to engage with and, like emojis, had evolved a language of their own, shortcut messages about how people felt about things. The brand owned an asset in the star of their long-running ad campaign, Monkey.

Now Monkey was put to work to communicate sad, sleepy, sassy, confident, happy. Using Twitter like a normal human being rather than like a brand and partnering with Giphy, who powered the Twitter GIF menu, the knitted ambassador appeared first when anyone mentioned they were sad, sorry, feeling meh, feeling good, raring to go or whatever.

As well as taking part in organic conversations, a team of writers responding in real-time to morning tweets, paid Twitter posts pushed PG Tips at new audiences.

Results

By keeping it authentic, timely and humorous, Monkey achieved an unprecedented amount of interaction. There were over one million organic views on Giphy in just 6 weeks and 99 million organic views when the campaign finished. Top trending GIFs included 'Excited Monkey', 'Zen Monkey' and 'No Monkey'.

Paid results led to a reach of 1.5m people at an average frequency of 1-2 in just 6 weeks. There were just under four million impressions in 6 weeks. Average Engagement Rate was 3.04%, above Twitter's industry standard of 2-3%. Overall VTR rate was 17%, above the 15% industry benchmark. Fans and celebrities such as Rudimental, Edith Bowman, Lauren Pope, Sarah Millican, and even the anchors of Good Morning Britain, all engaged with the campaign. For a modest budget of £50,000, an often brand-averse audience engaged with and shared the content.

Our Thoughts

Love it! In the world of social sharing, what you share speaks volumes about you. Share a laugh with someone and it is an expression of empathy.

And that's what these GIFs do so beautifully, allow people to share the experience of a grim Monday morning with each other. Or the anticipation of a fabulous day ahead. Or the problems of a hangover.

There's a Monkey GIF for pretty much every human mind-state and that's why the idea got traction. Because it's an idea about people, not about a product.

Of course, the agency couldn't have pulled it off if Monkey wasn't already well-established as a cheeky but friendly brand icon.

Created originally by the London agency Mother, Monkey was nearly given his own TV show by the BBC. A pilot was filmed. Maybe the time has come for it to be released?