Communicating value

project
11.04.2019
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ARBOUX Victoria
ARUMALLA Neha
CAILLAUD Brune
CHARCIAREK Célia
MOREL Julie
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Presentation of the campaign

Introduction
In December 2018, Mondelez launched its chocolate spread through its famous brand
Milka: PataMilka. As the chocolate spread market is monopolized by Ferrero, the challenge is big!
We will see that for this launching, Mondelez has made a major effort on its communication
campaign.

The brand
1. Milka
Milka is a famous chocolate bar brand owned by Mondelez. It is sold in the mass market
supermarkets and valued among children and families. The brand identifies itself with the famous
purple cow that symbolizes authenticity from the Alps and tenderness. In the same spirit, the
brand created the marmot mascot 20 years ago and humor as well as innocence were present in
the ads. The mascots are truly associated to the brand as 71% of French people remembered
the marmot mascot from the 1998 campaign (IFOP survey, december 2018).

2. The new product : Patamilka

This new product is a chocolate and hazelnuts spread that directly threatens Nutella. Milka
claims that their chocolate spread is more responsible as it contains less critical ingredients.
Patamilka is sold in supermarkets since the beginning of 2019 at a lower price than Nutella
(Carrefour).

The campaign
1. Teasing
Milka choosed to use the “marmot” mascot to promote its new product. We can identify a
“teasing” period during which only the marmot appeared with no explanations of the product it
represented. Only humoristic posts were made using this marmot and remembering everyone the
campaigns from 20 years ago.

2. The campaign
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After the teasing, Milka finally revealed the Patamilka through it video advertising that was
supported with numerous actions on social media as well as street marketing events.

In order to study this campaign, we will try to identify the importance and roles of each
marketing support. We will firstly analyse the TV advertising to finally look into the social media
content published for this launching campaign.
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The Advertisement analysis

In January 2019, Milka diffused a new TV ad to launch their new

product: the “Patamilka”. This one was imagined by Buzzman agency
which appealed to Hervé de Crécy, a famous director who won an Oscar
in 2010 for “Logorame”, a short-animated movie. Mathematic studio,
specialist of 3D, also contributed to this production. This advertising is very
special as it highlights the key values of the brand.

To communicate about its new product, Milka made the choice to focus its communication on
an iconic come-back: its famous mascot, the “marmot”. It appeared for the first time in 1998, in a
legendary TV spot which has impressed memories of an entire generation. This advertising gave
to Milka its popularity. Since then, the brand has started to move towards a funny, and tenderness
communication.

The atmosphere of this short movie can be defined as “fantastic” and “humoristic”. In the 1998
storytelling, a hiker discovers an original factory in the Swiss alpine pastures, where Milka
chocolate is produced by the “lilac-cow” (the mascot of the brand) and its friends. We can see a
marmot putting the chocolate bars in silver foil. This advertising finished on an iconic scene: the
hiker who tells what he saw to two women in a supermarket. Obviously, they don’t believe him. It
explains the famous sentence now used as expression in the French language: « And then, the
marmot puts the chocolate bar in the silver foil!» : it’s means that we do not believe someone’s
words. This is one of the most famous advertising replica. Thus, this advertising had a big impact
on consumers’ minds.

The company decided to remake this iconic ad with few changes. In fact, we can talk about a
“mirror effect” as it’s exactly the same model that people were able to watch twenty years ago.
However, this time, humans and marmots exchange their roles. It is the marmot who discovers
the “secret place” where the spread is made and it is a young boy who toasts the bread in place
of putting the chocolate bar in the silver foil. This way, they reuse the famous replica and it’s the
marmot who describes what it saw: “And then, the boy puts the spread on the bread!”

Through this advertising, Milka aims to play on emotions. The objective is to create nostalgia
and reach a transgenerational public. In fact, this fairy tale evokes childhood memories. All the
ingredients are gathered to please all the French people. As usual, Milka wants to play on the fact
that a part of childhood is present in all of us, young and old.
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Across all communications, Milka cross values of fun, happiness, tenderness, Savoir-Faire
and share. We can definitely see that on this advertising. As a matter of fact, the traditional
machine to produce the chocolate, the animals and the familial factory illustrate the authenticity
of the brand as well as the natural and Swiss landscape. Moreover, we can say that this
storytelling is based on share and conviviality. Indeed, we suppose that Milka wants to bring
generations together. Finally, the young boy and gourmet chocolate recipe express the
tenderness value of Milka.

This advertising is a melting-pot of every value and origin of the brand. Thus, the main
objective of this advertising is to reinstall the strong storytelling, reinforce the solid brand image
and finally, communicate on the new spread.

The social media analysis

After that first analysis and among all the media used to support this campaign, we decided
to focus on social media. Indeed, Milka used them a lot to promote its new product Patamilka,
especially Facebook. The idea was to raise awareness and increase the visibility of the new
product, it was a way to communicate about it. To achieve these objectives many actions were
done.
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First of all, on the 17th of December 2018, a teasing was released on Facebook. It was a
short video explaining that the marmot was coming back. In this video, it was possible to see the
old ad watched by a new remastered marmot. It is the beginning of a funny and emotional digital
campaign, especially based on nostalgia. However, at this moment, we didn’t know what was the
purpose of this come-back. Milka played a lot with this aspect! In fact, until the launching of the
new product, Milka gave us false clues explaining this come-back. They published different funny
posts by using famous things revisited by the marmot (see appendix 2 & 3). These one was based
on humour and had for main objective to make us smile. It worked: the posts performed really
well. At the same time, Milka created a hashtag: #Etlamarmotte (see appendix 1). This one allows
everybody to take part and follow the Marmot lifestyle.

After that, two days before the launching of Patamilka, Milka made a last teasing to share
the place and time of the big come-back. - Sunday, just before “le 20H”, be ready -. That way, the
marmot was finally coming back on the 7th of January, at 8pm on TF1 (see appendix 4). Then, in
order to create even more visibility, this new ad was released on Facebook (see appendix 5).
with a contest to increase the number of comments.

Following this, other videos and photos of the funny marmot continued to be published
on Facebook. Contest was also organized. All these actions was made to entertain the community
and continue the promotion. If we compare the number of likes, shares and comments before and
after this campaign on Milka’s posts on Facebook, we can clearly see that numbers are much
higher than before (from a hundred likes to more than a thousand).

Regarding their use of Milka’s France Instagram, it is a little different. Indeed, their first
post regarding Patamilka was on the 31st of January, which was 24 days after the launching of
their video promotion. On top of that, they never use the marmot on their pictures. Indeed, it is
only food pictures and the strategy is not based on humour. They have shown more of lifestyle
than the iconic “Marmot”. Yet, they are well taken and some symbolize childhood as you can see
in appendix 6 and 7. At the end, their new Patamilka posts on Instagram earned more likes than
their previous posts. At least, it raised some awareness and reactions. Furthermore, there is a
special hashtag for Patamilka on Instagram: #patamilka that everybody can use to share their
pictures and experiences with this new chocolate spread. For example, Patamilka did a street
marketing campaign in collaboration with “Buss de presse” agency (See Appendix 9). This
campaign created buzz and increased awareness. By using the different hashtags, people posted
their funny pictures with Marmot and posted them on social media.This way, we can say that it is
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a very good tool to support the promotion! As “Share” is one of the strong values of the brand,
this collaborative communication is really appropriate.

Concerning Twitter, Milka used it the same way as Facebook. In fact, they posted the
same content. However, the number of views, shares, comments and likes were lower than on
Facebook but still numerous, especially the number of likes (see appendix 8).

To conclude, we can affirm that the entire campaign through social media adds value by
reinforcing the image of the brand. Indeed, with this digital campaign, Milka is once again
perceived as an emotional and kind brand, raising nostalgia and fun from a generation to another.
By using these strong values through their campaign, Milka successfully promoted their new
product.

Conclusion
As a conclusion, we can say that the main event of 2019 for Milka is the “marmot” come-
back more than the Patamilka itself. The brand used this product launch more as an occasion to
advertise on the brand through nostalgia more than to promote the new product which is not an
innovation and is facing a very difficult competency with Nutella. Milka took the opportunity of its
emergence on a new market to promote the entire brand remembering everyone of its historic
values.

Appendix
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Advertising

● 1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7xG7uVOfVs
● 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYI1mxSFVqk

Social media
Appendix 1:

Appendix 2 and 3:
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Appendix 4:

Appendix 5:

Appendix 6 and 7:
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Appendix 8:

Appendix 9:

Project diary
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MARCH APRIL
2 2 2 2 2 3 3 1 1
TASK WHO ? 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
Choose a brand and Everybo
campaign dy
Create and manage the
diary Célia
Presentation of the
campaign Célia
Presentation of the
campaign Victoria
Analyse of the
advertisement campaign Victoria
Analyse of the
advertisement campaign Brune
Analyse of the social
media campaign Neha
Analyse of the social
media campaign Julie
Conclusion Célia
Rereading Célia
Everybo
Meetings dy

Sources
- http://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2019/01/29/20010-20190129ARTFIG00069-milka-barilla-
gavottes-ces-marques-qui-veulent-concurrencer-le-nutella.php
- http://www.packshotmag.com/films/milka-patamilka-la-marmotte-est-de-retour/
- http://www.fairesavoirfaire.com/marche-epicerie/2019/01/25/generation-marmotte-avec-
milka-qui-lance-patamilka-la-nouvelle-pate-a-tartiner_7459
- https://www.milka.fr/
- https://www.facebook.com/chocolat/
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- https://www.instagram.com/milka_fr/?hl=fr
- https://www.milka.fr/brand/history
- https://www.carrefour.fr/s?q=patamilka
- https://www.carrefour.fr/s?q=nutella
-