Aligning and Localising the De'Longhi brand

Overview

Founded in 1902, De’Longhi is an Italian appliance manufacturer specialising in coffee machines. With roots tracing back to its rich Italian heritage, De’Longhi has combined the best of style, sophistication and functionality, cementing itself as once of the world’s leading coffee authority. The quality of the coffee machines made by De’Longhi speaks for itself and their brand name is well-received by coffee lovers.

Challenges

Branding misalignments surfaced between the Italian HQ of De’Longhi and their counterparts in Singapore and Malaysia due to cultural and expression differences between the two regions. Hence, De’Longhi Singapore and Malaysia needed to localise its brand positioning for the consumers in the Singapore and Malaysia market. De’Longhi Singapore and Malaysia also faced stiff competition amongst competitors in the region despite its strong Italian backing. Thus, Adwright was appointed to handle branding and ad duties in Singapore and Malaysia for a year, with the ultimate aim of increasing brand awareness and strengthening market position.

Solutions

Adwright conducted a brand audit with the regional key management personnel (KMP) of De’Longhi to align De’Longhi’s global communications that will resonate with Asia. The findings were translated into a regional brand guide. With the KMP’s interpretation of De’Longhi’s tone of voice—taken from De’Longhi’s brand book, their tone of voice was localised to fit our regional context, yet at the same time not losing the original essence of the brand book. A set of brand imagery was then formed.

Brand Audit and Regional Brand Guide

The regional brand guide also included a comprehensive three-layered communication strategy to aid De’Longhi in reaching out to their consumers better. This enabled De’Longhi to build and strengthen their emotional connection with their audiences and ultimately bring the De’Longhi experience to life.

Advertising and Amplification

With rising Covid-19 cases and stricter social restrictions imposed by both the Singapore and Malaysia government at that time, we had to think out of the box to create a solution that could amplify the brand story of De’Longhi when the global team engaged Brad Pitt as brand ambassador. 

The idea of “From Bean to Cup” had to be well ingrained in all our communication channels, and amplified across all. Hence, the big idea was to increase awareness of De’Longhi’s Perfetto Campaign and exposure of our global ambassador, Brad Pitt, in both Singapore and Malaysia, build emotional connection with our audiences by serving them their perfect cup of coffee, and to bring the coffee sensorial experience to life during Singapore’s Heightened Alert Phase.

Adwright created a Communication Strategy with two main goals: Amplification and Experience. Since we were not able to conduct a physical media launch, we took to the digital arena to do a Global Virtual Launch, kickstarting the biggest brand campaign in De’Longhi’s history. Next, high traffic display locations in Singapore, including the busy Orchard Road, were selected strategically as the media for OOH. Together with bus shelter ads, television and digital buys, we made sure the face of the sexiest man on Earth lit up the streets of Singapore and Malaysia.

We also had a De’Longhi’s Perfetto Coffee Truck deliver the Perfetto coffee experience— through an Instagram-worthy refurbished Volkswagen T1 Samba Bus—right to the doorsteps of our key media and influencers. Attendees got to try first-hand at the latest coffee machine La Specialista Prestigio, with real Baristas present to flaunt their brewing skills and interact with them

Lastly, a Pop-up event was held at TANGS to engage the audiences through six different zones: Taste profiling, smell, sight, sound, taste and touch.

Results

We managed to reach 180 million impressions/eyeballs with only $400k of media investment for Singapore and Malaysia. 29 journalists from 26 media titles Covering News Dailies, Lifestyle Luxury, Luxury, and Marketing Trade also attended the virtual media session. Furthermore, 25 online articles were posted with 96 pieces of social posts and coverage. Additionally, we managed to broadcast feature on the widely-listened radio station Money FM89.3. Altogether, there was a total of $887K in PR value with sales growth of 47.5% in Singapore and Malaysia.

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