The FMCG Company building an engaged community of cooking enthusiasts

The Company uses Amity Social Cloud to transform their Line (the top messaging App in Thailand) Official Account into a community for cooking enthusiasts (especially mums) so they can boost their customer engagement, their brand affinity, sell socially and collect valuable customer insights.

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<big-nr>900k<big-nr>
Message interactions with the Bot each month

<big-nr>140k<big-nr>
New followers each month on average

<big-nr>85%<big-nr>
Adoption rate of new features by exploring users

Due to privacy reasons we cannot disclose this FMCG Company, hence, for now, their name will be known simply as “The Company”. Being one of the largest multinational consumer goods companies in the world, they operate in 190+ countries, with over 400 brands. We are proud to be collaborating with one of their leading food and beverages (F&B) brands championing a wide variety of delicious foods.

<sprscript-green>Challenge<sprscript-green>

Rising above the other fish by boosting brand preference

With Line being the top messaging platform in Thailand, having a Line Official Account is a must-have for any company, organization or brand that wants to get closer to its customers. However, with the overwhelming amount of messages from contacts and Official Accounts, standing out in this channel can be a real challenge.

The Company needed a strategy that would set them apart while keeping their users engaged so that they can boost their ideal brand audience - mothers.

<cs-quote>“We weren’t getting the engagement that we needed and especially for the industry that we operate in, keeping your customers active and close to you is incredibly vital.”<cs-quote>

<text-size-regular>– CPO at The Company<text-size-regular>

UI screenshots of an in-app community of cooking-enthusiasts to boost ideal brand audience

<sprscript-green>How it started<sprscript-green>

Building a motherly community of cooking-enthusiasts

Knowing the need for long-term consumer engagement, The Company decided to use their Line Official Account to project a need for their products instead of pushing generic messaging and promotions. Also, since a large number of their customers use Line to discuss food, including mothers who frequently ponder over their dinner choices, they decided to give recipe recommendations with their own products!

To do this, they chose to use the Amity Social Cloud which made the implementation much easier and gave them the opportunity to design eye-catching use-cases. To get customers excited, they started by giving the Bot a personality. Meet Mae Aim, the mother-like (or as Thais would say “Aunty”) food guru who always greets you with a warm welcome, has the best cooking tips and knows the ins and outs of healthy living!

Customers could ask Mae Aim for generic or specific recipe recommendations - for example, they could ask for recipes with a specific taste (spicy, sour, sweet), by cooking style (boiling, baking), type of cuisine (Japanese, Thai), type of ingredients, (Chicken, Fish), and to filter for allergies or intended audience (Kids, Friends). Mae Aim would then provide all the details so that customers can read the recipe, save it to their cookbook, share it with friends or (later on) buy the ingredients online.

It was a win-win! Customers got all the help they could get in the kitchen while The Company saw their brand loyalty go through the roof. The recipes were a big success with lots of views from excited moms, totalling an average of about 9,000 saved recipes per month.

UI screenshots of an in-app community of cooking-enthusiasts to boost ideal brand audience

<sprscript-green>How it is going<sprscript-green>

Collecting valuable customer insights by getting to know them better

Mae Aim Bot has been the “Super Mom” in many ways, helping The Company increase their product consumption and brand awareness among Thai moms simply by helping them with daily recipes- over 20 million people follow the Bot, with nearly 150,000 new users accessing the Bot each month. Most of all, in times of desperate dinner ideas or quick healthy meals, Mae Aim is more than happy to assist Thai moms and the community.

When The Company started thinking about their strategy, they wanted to implement a few easy use-cases to bring value to customers’ everyday life and to keep creating personalized messages. As their community grew, The Company realized that customers didn’t really mind providing more personal information, so they decided to start introducing more exciting use-cases to help collect valuable insights and drive sales. As part of their Profile, customers were first asked to add personal information such as how good they were in the kitchen (all moms are) and allergies or what type of food they preferred. By doing this, Mae Aim could be of even greater help in collecting the data for The Company.

The Company started sending various quizzes asking questions like “what's the customers favorite style of cooking” or “what are their after work activities.” To make sure that these questions were being answered, they decided to use a clickable image format, (one of the many talents of Amity Social Cloud) making it easier and more enticing for the customer to provide answers.

Seeing over 86% of users explored the cookbooks, one of the latest use-cases added was allowing customers to create and share their own recipes, hoping that the Mae Aim Bot can soon be the one-stop for all cooking needs of The Company’s customers.

<sprscript-green>What's next?<sprscript-green>

The delicious story continues with many more cooks to come

Adjusting to COVID-19, The Company has improved on making day-to-day life more convenient, allowing cooks to choose a recipe and, at the press of a button, be directed to a partner’s site with countless ingredients ready for checkout. They continue to stir the pot, providing solutions for every cooking challenge and hoping to become the go-to space for all kitchen dwellers. 

<cs-quote>“We are very happy with the insights and results that came out of this partnership, we definitely needed something that would differentiate us and make our users feel connected. We are already planning future endeavours and they look very promising.”<cs-quote>

<text-size-regular>– CEO at The Company<text-size-regular>