NESTLE IS THAT REALLY YOU?

We don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Nestlé, the Swiss ambassador of wholesome homogenized goodness, has been approving interesting ideas of late.

Remember adobo’s Ad of the Month for March? That’s a Nestlé Cream spot. Look at the Ad of the Month for June. Yes, indeed, it’s an ad for Nescafé 3 in 1. That’s two great ads in a row—which begs the question: What have they been drinking at Rockwell?

Nandy Villar, managing director of McCann Erickson, sees nothing out of the ordinary. But he does admit that for the last two years, Nestlé has been warming up to new ideas.

Take the Nestlé Cream “Offering,” for instance. It began with a typical brief. McCann responded with two proposals. One fit snugly within the clients’ box. The other one defied containment yet made perfect sense to Filipino sensibilities.

With March being an off-season for cream products, McCann Worldgroup CCO Raul Castro and his team persuaded then-Director for Communications Noy Dy-Liaco and his brand people that the time was ripe for the unconventional approach. The experiment paid off handsomely, with good consumer feedback and an even more pleasing spike in sales.

The food giant’s other agency, Publicis, traced the shift in its mindset to around 2005, when it assigned Business Executive Manager Bruno Olirhoek to lead the coffee business.

Creative director on Nescafé, JJ Henson, described his new client’s strategies as “very, very aggressive.” That meant a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, not just with ideas but their implementation.

Says Henson, “Case in point: the Nescafé 3 in 1 ‘Freshman’ commercial is just minor vector, or media choice. The major media choice is actually the Internet.”

Nestlé and Publicis set up microsites within Friendster to allow the college kids to create their own alien alter egos. On this “click-click” site, they can mingle with other “alien” netizens, forming a new Nescafé community online.

Because of the brand’s ongoing marketing offensive, Henson says “there’s a lot of opportunity for good work. I can’t say all of the stuff that gets out is great, but a number are above average.”

And what does the global Nestlé team make of the Philippine office’s newfound sophistication?

Sandra Puno, its current Director for Communications, has a telling anecdote.

At a global meeting in Cannes, Puno showed off the results of the “Offering” to her peers. For its boldness, Corporate Communications rewarded her with an “audit”—in layman’s terms, a stinging rap on the knuckles.  By no means was Head Office discouraging good ads with marketplace success, Puno explained. The ad’s macabre humor was simply not in line with the company’s űber-wholesome spin on wellness. 

She may be right. Or the rebuke may be proof positive that both the advertiser and its agencies are headed in the right direction.