Brand Communications of Buavita

There are numerous brand communications that Buavita has do trials throughout the years, so I will simplify it and divided it into two groups, the online and offline brand communications. Not only that, but I will also try to sequence it based on the time it was published or marketed to show the brand credentials, as at the end of this project, I was intended to make a brand credential worksheet, although, at this time, I will only specify on the brand communication aspects of Buavita. Followed by the analysis of the effectiveness of the communication channels, and recommendation on what Buavita could do alternatively, and hopefully, helpful for the brand itself.

I will start to unveil the Buavita online brand communication strategy throughout the years, and I will focus on only some part of crucial online brand-building tools, which will be integrated into digital marketing to attract and engage new and existing customers of Buavita via online channels. The digital marketing that I found includes websites and SEO, Blogs, online video contents, image marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

For the online video contents, it was mainly published by the Buavita official YouTube account, and it was mainly advertisement videos from the earliest 2011, until as of late 2020. There might be some TVC that hasn’t been upload through YouTube means, therefore I will only state what I found from their official accounts and non-official accounts.

1. 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq7PoPfNvKs

This earliest online advertisement videos starred an urban mom and her children, estimated to be between 5–12 years old, drinking the orange Buavita. And this commercial highlights the ingredients included 8 times more of real fruit juice, not only a pulp.

2. 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxJtoL1JVtY

In this 2013 online published TVC, shown a group of middle-class and affluent women (MAC) that attended an outdoor party, interestingly, the mom doesn’t come with her children like the previous TVCs but instead showing a group of men that also attended and taking glances at the groups of women. This is because Buavita wants to deliver the benefits of antioxidants, that could be used as collagen, hence the user skins will get whiter. I also want to highlight why Buavita uses MAC, it is because, in early 2013, the MACs socioeconomic category in Indonesia are rising (cited from BCG).

3. 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_zaD8D23xg

Buavita has frequently maximized its campaign in Ramadhan month, and this year, they published 3 new flavors for the special Ramadhan version, the soursop, passionfruit, and coconut versions. Although in this commercial the coconut version only highlights the freshness after consumption, not other health benefits as previous commercials are done.

4. 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ymW8f9pEw

It has been a common knowledge that the closest association of Vit C is orange fruit, but actually, the fruits that contain the highest Vit C is guava, therefore in this intermezzo advertising, Buavita wants to emphasize the myriad of guava Buavita benefits.

5. 2016

This advertising is the one that still used until now, it was the scene that shows the interactions of children and a young mom, which discuss the difference between Buavita and other juices. The mom then proceeds to highlight the core values of the brand, mentioning the thickness of the juice, the 3 times more fruits.

6. 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDlKIWv0tIg

This recent TVC is a re-make of the 2016 ones. If you see, almost all of it is identic, except the message that it across, this time Buavita highlight the 100% contains Vitamin C in its orange juice Buavita. Also, in 2020, Buavita uses the campaign slogan #NutrisiDariAalam

2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zthQnt2cypc

Besides that, Buavita also promotes the Apple flavor, which shows family amid quarantine, and the children were studying and father working via online means, which means the eyes protection never been so important. Therefore, similar to the orange ones, they promote the 100% contain Vit A.

Besides the advertising campaign video, there are also signature marketing contents communicated by Buavita through online means, they are the video recipes and cooking show. For the cooking recipe and show, it mostly integrated published on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and Buavita official website. This strategy has been done since 2014 and Buavita seems seen the effectivity, as the target market of urban moms frequent search also engages in the cooking recipe.

As for the cooking show, Buavita frequently used famous chef, and in the past years, Buavita has only contracted two chefs, it was Chef Edwin Lau, who is famous for sharing healthy diet recipes, and now hired Chef Yuda, which famous for relatively not an expensive recipe and fast to make. Each persona is also quite different, the then brand ambassador of Chef Edwin Lau is a model-turn-to-chef and is starring in many television shows, to share information about a healthy diet and also have starred in the famous men’s magazine. Meanwhile, Chef Yuda has a distinctive portfolio on his past collaboration with brands like Nestle, Quaker Oats, etc.

For the SEO, Buavita has released a myriad of articles to boost their search, one of the strategies they use is the media partners. Through online and offline media such as SWA, they partner to documentaries the many events that Buavita done. One of the examples is when the new variants soursop, passionfruit, and coconut launched, and they make a similar to press conference event, which also invited the 2014 brand ambassadors Pasutri Darius Sinathrya dan Donna Agnesia. The brand ambassador at this time is a couple that adopts a healthy lifestyle, routine in doing sports, shown in their social media contents.

Besides media partners, Buavita also establishes a My Article column in their official website, it mostly compromises of stories and information around the topic of a healthy lifestyle, balanced diet sharing methods, illness remedies using fruits, and tucked in the benefits of Buavita juice articles. Those topics were decided based on the relevancy of the brand image and the pain point or concern that Buavita target market, urban mom has. The articles also adjust to the celebration month, such as Ramadhan month, where the articles mostly compromise on fruits that compatible to drunk for the energize, and other benefits of the fruits, associated with Buavita.

Next is the image marketing, actually it concludes in almost all of the brand communication that Buavita did, but I want to emphasize more on what kind of image that Buavita wants to portray to their target market, that hopefully could enhance their brand image and sync it to customer perception of the brand. First is the use of the family portrait, as Buavita wants to congruence the brand image with the target market needs that will eventually align with customer motivation.

As the secondary target market of Buavita is also an active woman that adapt a healthy life, and it is not only consuming it but also the routine at doing sports. Therefore, Buavita tries to use this image use where women do sports such as yoga and jogging, as both are including in two of the most sports that urban mom does per research. Buavita wants to portray the healthy lifestyle that strongly associated with doing sports, therefore by using these pictorials, the brand hopes to boost the brand association with the healthy and original sources of fruits.

Throughout the years, a complimentary drink strategy, like how Teh Botol Sosro and Teh Pucuk Hurum successfully played is a dream-come-true for many or almost any bottled water product class. Therefore, Buavita wants to play in disease-complementary drinks such as when getting a fever, etc. And the “teman makan” strategy, as it was shown in many of the posts are using food, especially the main course one and the Buavita besides it. This argument also supported by the fact that Buavita has done an online competition of people taking pictures of Buavita to accompany their favorite foods, and the most interesting one gets the prize. This free promotional campaign has the objective to gain the association of main course food with buavita, like how the Teh Botol Sosro played in the past, although they are more strategize on the distribution channel section.

Utmost optimized by any c2c brand is social media marketing enhancement. Buavita itself is optimizing the Instagram and Facebook. On Instagram, the content that was published many times was, of course, the highlight of the benefits explicitly, such as the 100% of vitamin A, disease remedies, etc. But not only that, but Buavita also posts content related to sales promotions and events online or offline. Buavita usually only leaves 1 highlight per upcoming events, to avoid a too-crowded Instagram page, as they look for cleaner and light feeds. Then their bio does not need to write the product definition, but just a persuasive statement about consuming Buavita to fulfill your daily needs of Vit C, with the recent hashtag #NutrisiDariAlam. Not only that, but Buavita also partnering with famous Instagram account like hometesterclubid, where most gender followers are young adult women, have high average likes of 100 or more, and is specifically an Instagram that gives pre-launch products to the winners. In this 2020 pandemic situation, where sell of Buavita has recorded to be increasing, Buavita wants to promote its 1-liter bottled juice.

Now, I have done tell you almost all of the online marketing that Buavita has done, although I think there are myriad strategies that might be not have been covered, and this is only the overview.

So next, I will go talk about the offline brand communication, and it compromises of word-of-mouth, events and experiences, and public relations and publicity.

Let me start from the myriad of events and experiences, and I should also highlight that I only identify the major and few of them. I will also be grouping them into attended events, seminars, sponsorship, and most of them are below-the-line (BTL).

1. Fruit mission, an event that initiates with Kompas, they bike together in the car-free-day, and all of them using matching clothes.

2. Fruits Day, where Indomaret offers sales promotion of Buavita, a buy-1-get-1 of 1-liter juice. Furthermore, there is also a grand prize, and the winners will get to meet Erisa Mayori and Irfan Hakim.

3. Photography competition, the event was purposed to promote the benefits of Buavita Royale. Because the new product development focus on working urban women, that needs vitamin to increase their focus, which will bring inspiration for their work as a result. Therefore, this photography competition promotes the benefits of the new Buavita Royale and to closely associate the drink fort more focus works.

There are also 14 galleries of events, the Gallery events in this context was where Buavita made a mini booth inside of a supermarket, and it usually promotes Buavita as a way of samples or challenges, and community development.

Buavita partnering with Hijup.com and Laiga magazine invites Chef Edwin Lau to do a cooking workshop with the mom includes in Buavita communities and others. In the Hiab Beauty workshop, they not only do cooking but also deliver healthy lifestyle presentations and tucked in the Buavita benefits as well.

For the sponsorship, Buavita has funds for 1st Color Run in Jakarta that hype then between the teenagers to young adults, tech-savvy, and from the middle-to-up household. This event also promotes bring happiness and healthy acts (ofc by running) that also aligned with Buavita. Way more, the Buavita also built a small booth to give some samples and selling Buavita products for the audiences.

Now although this is quite similar to advertising video than event and experience, it shows how Buava offers a generic beverage to moms in the supermarket area and lets them choose which one they felt is the real juice. From that, they made a documentary video that shows most of the moms choose the Buavita ones.

Celebrity endorsement is inevitable be it through online and offline means. Buavita has done numerous cooking shows, therefore they have hired two chefs, it was Chef Edwin Lau and the utmost recent Chef Yuda. Both chefs was hired due to the relevancy of their image with the brand message that Buavita wants to the envoy, the healthy, practical f&b. Not only them, but Buavita also had using brand ambassador of Pasutri Darius Sinathrya dan Donna Agnesia, as a couple that adopts a healthy-lifestyle image. This couple was hired as Buavita just launched a new product development, which is coconut, passionfruit, and soursop version.

Besides that, Buavita also does co-branding and licensing. In one of the examples of utmost recent Buavita x Gulu Gulu, they penetrate the existing market and selling the core-product of each brand. By collaborating with Gulu Gulu, Buavita wants to emphasize the mixology benefits of Buavita, as their indirect competitor, the milk ones for the urban mom are using the same strategy of buying the product for a variety of reasons, to be consumed-directly or mixology. In addition to that, Buavita also does a licensing with animation character Disney like the utmost recent Buavita x Frozen character collaboration to attract children who seek to buy the products to their parents.