CASE STUDY
20
www.coffeelife.net.cn
Dr James Duan
Business Director, Ogilvy Interactive Worldwide
Case study
The International Coffee Organization (ICO) was founded
in London in 1963. It is an inter-governmental body
whose members are coffee exporting and importing
countries. One of the ICO’s objectives is to develop
demand for coffee in emerging markets, particularly in
China. The ICO holds an International Coffee Festival
every year in China to promote coffee culture in the
country. In the year 2000, the theme of the Festival was
to ‘meet on the coffee net’. The ICO launched a website
during the Festival as part of its ongoing public relations
campaign.
Background
China has a population exceeding 1.2 billion. As a result
of its ‘open door’ policy, China’s economic growth has
been among the strongest in the world in the past two
decades, and it has become one of the world’s largest
markets for consumer goods.
Multinationals such as Maxwell House and Nestlé
entered the Chinese coffee market more than a decade
ago. There is no shortage of coffee types. About 85% of
consumer demand is for soluble coffee, especially in the
form of coffee mixes. However, the coffee market in China
is still at the embryonic stage. Total coffee consumption
has been stagnant in relation to other drinks, lagging well
behind the world average by a large gap.
In China coffee is considered a typical western drink.
The scene of highly visible Westerners drinking coffee at
Starbucks and at other coffee bars throughout China has
reinforced this impression. But although there is a high
level of awareness of coffee drinking in big cities, most
people in China have limited knowledge about the
beverage. Few have ever tasted it, and far fewer could be
classified as heavy drinkers.
Several reasons exist for this resistance to coffee.
Foremost is China’s thousand-year-old tea culture,
presenting a major barrier to coffee acceptance. Another
is the high cost of coffee. For instance, a cup of coffee
usually costs between 22 and 27 Chinese yuan (A$5–6).
A third reason lies in the coffee itself. It is understood to
have an unpleasant ‘bitter’ taste, is bad for digestion and
causes sleeping problems.
Despite these negative perceptions, research shows
there is a growing interest in all forms of coffee
consumption. Coffee bars and coffee shops are
flourishing in major cities. Coffee is becoming
emblematic of modern lifestyle, which deeply influences
young and fashion-conscious Chinese consumers. Many
people believe coffee is able to refresh the mind. To
some, drinking coffee is also a signifier of a happy and
active life.
The annual coffee festival has become an established
event in China, and the idea of the coffee culture has
captured the imagination of the new generation Chinese.
An increasing number of companies, coffee shops, bars
and restaurants have been involved in this event. The ICO
launched a website during the 2000 Festival, with the
aim of building a platform for the ongoing promotion of
coffee culture in China.
Why Internet?
This is the first time that the ICO has used the Internet to
promote the Festival. This has resulted from several
factors. First, the Internet has taken off at a rapid pace in
China becoming a hot phenomenon in people’s lives. The
total number of Internet users increased from 12 million
in 1998 to 16 million in April 2000, and a majority of
these users dwelt in 20 or so primary cities. Secondly, the
image of the Internet itself is modern and western, which
coincides with the perceptions of coffee in China. Thirdly,
the demographics of the Internet users match that of
the target audience, i.e. young, active, well-educated and
with high disposable incomes (see Tables 1 and 2).
Fourthly, the Internet is an ideal tool to spread detailed
information about coffee. An average net user spends
over 16 hours online each week (Table 3), much longer
than conventional mass media. Fifthly, surfing the
Internet is a kind of virtual experience, so it is possible to
20 䡲 Electronic Commerce in Inter national Mar keting
TABLE 1 Internet users by age
<18
18–24
25–30
31–35
36–40
41–50
51–60
>60
1.65%
46.77%
29.18%
10.03%
5.59%
5.07%
1.30%
0.41%
Source: China Internet Network Information Center (June 2000).
TABLE 2 Internet users by education
Under
High School
High
School
2–3 Years
Diploma
Bachelor’s
Degree
Master’s
Degree
Doctorial
Degree
2.54%
12.79%
32.81%
45.93%
4.94%
0.99%
Source: China Internet Network Information Center (June 2000).
TABLE 3 Time spend on the Internet each week (hours)
<1
0.02%
1–5
6–10
11–20
>20
20.70%
26.01%
30.72%
22.55%
Source: China Internet Network Information Center (June 2000).
connect coffee culture with this interesting phenomenon.
Finally, the website could serve as a permanent platform
for future promotions.
The campaign plan
The objective of Festival 2000 was to influence the
consumer to think of coffee as the preferred drink. During
the Festival, the ICO aimed to spread knowledge about
coffee, help consumers understand the benefits of coffee
and encourage them to try coffee products. The ICO
hoped that the campaign would help to build a positive
image about coffee culture as being intelligent, modern
and even a little mysterious. As a secondary objective,
the campaign would help the related businesses to
connect with their targets.
As mentioned earlier, the theme of the campaign was
to ‘meet on the coffee net’. This was not simply understood as meeting people online. It was also about
meeting the ‘surfer’ him or herself by venturing onto the
Internet. Through the combination of the Internet, coffee
and adventure, people could gain information and
experience, and express their own understanding of what
coffee is all about. Therefore, lifestyle and coffee culture
were the focus of the campaign.
The profile of the target audience was:
Demographics
䡲 20 to 35 years;
䡲 higher education (bachelor degree or above);
䡲 professionals with medium to high monthly income.
Psychographics:
䡲 fashion-conscious;
䡲 advocate Western lifestyle;
䡲 drinking coffee is associated with their life-style
values;
䡲 their knowledge about coffee is limited;
䡲 Internet is a part of their life, surfing the web is a
regular activity.
The website
The website was launched during the Festival in April
2000. Figure 1 shows a map of the website.
The website introduced coffee knowledge, including
coffee history, plantation, production, product etc.
Business information, such as listing coffee product
multinationals, was included. Comprehensive information
news about coffee consumption in China was also
included, particularly the activities and news releases
during the Festival.
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To help viewers ‘taste coffee life’ online, every coffee
type was assigned to a different life style. For instance,
black coffee was associated with ‘a business man who is
fighting for his career path’. Table 4 gives the examples of
such associations for other coffee types. The concept
of ‘meeting on the Net’ was executed through various
creative strategies. Through the use of color, portraits,
scenes, music, animation, etc., viewers were able to view
different life-style models. They could also feel the
romantic atmosphere surrounding the magic of coffee,
and share their feelings with others.
A BBS (Bulletin Board System) was developed to
encourage interactivity. The BBS allowed users to share
opinions and information with the community. Viewers
could post messages whenever they liked on the BBS.
They could also make free links to their home page and
post news of their interests. Coffee business organisations used the BBS to send invitations to consumers to
attend their events during the Festival. Many viewers were
able to fill out offer forms to receive free samples from
sponsors. It is worth pointing out that building a
customised interface such as a BBS on the web was very
expensive, compared with the development of information pages or online catalogues.
Drive-to-web strategy
Even the best websites need a well-designed and wellexecuted drive-to-web strategy to take the target viewers
to the site. For the Coffeelife website, banners were used
as the key strategy to attract traffic. That is, the ICO paid
other websites for the banners that it placed on these
websites. A popular website normally charged 166
Chinese yuan (A$36) for a thousand impressions.
Although banner ads risk having a low click-through rate
(the average was about 3% at the time), they offered the
ICO the potential to target its message by choosing the
right website to identify individual Internet users. Two
banners were designed for the campaign. The first banner
was targeted at those who were interested in coffee,
those who had a strong opinion about coffee, and those
who knew coffee to some extent, but wanted to gain indepth knowledge.
The second banner was designed to attract young
people who did not yet have a fixed life style or developed
life values. These were searching for a life style and
atmosphere that suited them, and regular Net surfing was
already a feature in their lives. The two banners received
awards for their designers’ creative thinking.
These banners were placed at popular portal sites
during the Festival to gain maximum exposure in Chinese
cities. Coffeelife.net.cn was also linked to related
websites, such as Maxwell House, Nescafé, etc. In offline
support, the ICO promoted the website through newsletters, exhibitions in primary business locations and
radios.
Results
During the Festival, the site attracted 12 000 page views
every day from about 20 000 different people. On
average, each viewer read about 10 pages, and 10% of
the viewers visited the site more than once. Since the
web promotion stopped, the website content has not
been refreshed. Soon after the Festival, the site’s daily
page view dropped to 4000, and active viewers dropped
to under 1000. During the festival, the BBS and
community sections were very active. The site received
over 1000 postings. A large number of electronic cards
were also down-loaded.
Questions
1 Is the Internet an appropriate promotional
tool for the ICO?
2 Evaluate the drive-to-web strategy.
3 What should the ICO do to attract return
visits by the viewers?
4 What should the ICO do for its online campaign more?
TABLE 4 Image associations for different coffee types
Black Coffee
a business man, fighting for his career path
Instant Coffee
a young man, active and busy
Espresso
a middle-aged man, successful in life
Ice Coffee latte
a 16 year old student, life is joyful and easy
Mocha Coffee
a young woman, just beginning her new family
Cappuccino
a charming girl, attractive