Case Study: How Swiggy Instamart awareness campaign leveraged the cookbook concept | #casestudy

The idea was to create an inclusive cookbook on Valentine’s Day, that split recipes into two halves, chalking out work for both genders, as they cook together as a part of the Swiggy Instamart awareness campaign.

Conceptualized by Dentsu Webchutney, Swiggy Instamart launched an awareness campaign to engage couples through ‘The Better Half Cookbook’ initiative to remove the gender gap in the kitchens.

Category Introduction

The overall e-grocery market is pegged at 3Bn USD in 2020 and is estimated to grow to 24Bn USD by 2025. The category already serves over 200,000 customers.

Brand Introduction

Instamart powered by Swiggy aims to do instant deliveries (30 – 45 minutes), day and night serviceability (7 am – 1 am) with 2000+ unique products across categories such as fruits & vegetables, snacks, ice creams, beverages, instant meals

It is available in Bengaluru and Gurugram and can be accessed through the ‘Instamart’ tile within the Swiggy app. The cloud grocery initiative aims to service hyperlocal grocery demands.

Agency

Dentsu Webchutney

Swiggy Instamart awareness campaign Summary

The objective of the campaign was to garner brand awareness of Swiggy Instamart’s presence in these two cities and its core proposition of getting groceries delivered in 30-45 minutes.

To bring equality in the kitchen, Swiggy Instamart launched The Better Half Cookbook that splits into two halves, to give partners an equal responsibility to cook the meal. Each partner has to follow only their side of the instructions to see their meal come together.

Problem Statement

88% of women in India do all the cooking single-handedly at home. They spend 577% more time in a day on household work than men, according to OECD data. For 1600 years, cooking has been looked at as a one-person job. Swiggy Instamart and Dentsu Webchutney’s awareness and engagement campaign wanted to obliterate this kitchen inequality by rethinking how cooking is looked at as a chore itself.

Thus, the initiative intended to impact the ingrained gender inequality in the country and enable couples to celebrate their love in a fair and equal way.

Brief

Through Swiggy Instamart, the brand wanted to redefine the way people order groceries. The task was to launch this service through an awareness campaign that establishes Instamart as the go-to grocery delivery service for Indian homes, translating into an increased market share in these two cities.

Creative Idea

Cookbooks have been around since the 4th Century AD. For over 1600 years, they have been published assuming it’s only one person who’s doing the cooking. In the Indian context, this one person is more often than not, a woman.

To make kitchens equal, Swiggy Instamart and Dentsu Webchutney launched The Better Half Cookbook, which splits the dishes into two halves, giving the partners an equal responsibility to cook the meal.

The cookbook features recipes from around the world.

Also read: Case Study: How JSW Paints engagement campaign leveraged IPL last year to garner visibility across digital platforms

Challenges

Since the grocery delivery market is highly saturated with many big and local players, the launch of a service that’s operational in only two cities was a strategic challenge with budget constraints and lockdown realities.

Execution

As per the Swiggy Instamart campaign, each partner had to follow only their side of the instructions on the cookbook to see their meal come together, together. Since each recipe is split into exact half, the time spent together to cook it also gets divided into exact half, leaving couples with more time to relish their food together. The cookbook also features interesting ideas on how the couple can spend some quality ‘we-time’ with the time they save by cooking the meal together.

To participate in the initiative, the users in Bengaluru and Gurugram had to share a picture of themselves and better halves cooking in their kitchens with the hashtag #TheBetterHalfCookbook while tagging Swiggy. The winners stood a chance to receive the cookbooks across the two cities.

In addition to this, the ingredients for each of the recipes in the cookbook could be ordered directly from the book with a simple QR scan, and the order would get delivered by Swiggy Instamart,

Taking the initiative to the next leg, Swiggy Instamart also launched the made-for-earpods audio experience. Called the Better Half Earpodcast, this format (nicknamed “.we” files) enables two home chefs to listen to their side of the instruction by splitting their earpods. Each ear pod plays only one side of the instructions to cook the recipe with your better half in just half the time.

The platform engaged with other brands through fun banter and conversations on Twitter around the subject.

As an extended activation to the Swiggy Instamart awareness campaign, the brand leveraged YouTube and the way the video dishes are consumed on the platform. Instead of merely collaborating with chefs and food influencers, the brand modified hundreds of old recipes from top food creators on YouTube while leaving a comment on the most trending recipe videos across YouTube, better halving it in the process. The platform rewrote the recipe for ‘two people to cook it together’ on the videos of Nisha Madhuika, Ranveer Brar, Kunal Kapur, and Pooja Dhingra among others.

The YouTube tactic helped the platform to fulfill its objective that any recipe can be better half’d if you are ready to work together, cook with your better half to spend some quality and make kitchens equal for both genders.

Results

• 100 million better halves reach
• 51% rise in brand queries
• 14% rise in engagement
• 13% rise in orders

Quotes

Shikha Gupta, Creative Director, Swiggy said, “Gender roles continue to plague even the most ‘modern’ nations and sections of society. This idea doesn’t just aim to start a conversation about equality but actually aims to spark a change. If men feel crippled in the kitchen despite having the intent to help, this cookbook serves as the first step towards making that change. I’d say ‘Change begins in the kitchen’ and this cookbook is living proof of that.”

“There is an evident gender chore gap that exists in Indian households. If we had to strike equality in the kitchen, we had to rethink the way cooking as a chore itself has been looked at—a one-person job. Like dishes have a meat/vegetarian/vegan version… our aim is for every recipe on the internet to have a ‘Better Half’ version. And we’re getting there… one book, one podcast & one comment at a time”, said, P.G Aditiya, NCD, Dentsu Webchutney

“We realized that many men do want to help, but aren’t accustomed to doing household work courtesy social conditioning, and fear they might mess up if they try to help. That’s why the role of these partners is largely relegated to doing work such as frying papads or setting the table. Especially when it comes to men who have the intent to help out, we do not want them to feel crippled. We wanted to create something that helps men contribute equally and meaningfully in the kitchen without feeling like a sous-chef or a sidekick”, said, Pooja Manek, ACD, Dentsu Webchutney

Comments