Kinder launches a new breed of CPG brand site with haveyouplayedtoday.ca

Last week we helped Kinder launch a new breed of CPG site at haveyouplayedtoday.ca. Our objective was to create a website experience that balanced the need to bring the brand philosophy of “simple play” to life while creating a platform for in-market promotions.

We picked Joomla as our CMS / community platform as the developer support & modules available aligned well with the information architecture designs we had created. Joomla allowed us for example to enable consumer ratings on articles, RSS feeds for all content pages, and an events module that allowed us to start with a robust community event listing for “playful events near you” – across Canada.

The contest we launched the site with gives consumers the chance to win $5,000 by submitting their stories and ideas around how to ensure there is play time in their kids everyday life. Keeping in the spirit of the site philosophy, top submissions will be published on the site to go with articles re-published from today’s parent and other sources.

“To date, most CPG marketers have been reluctant to move a significant portion of their marketing budgets online because the Internet is not a primary sales channel for their products,” said Carolina Petrini, SVP of consumer packaged goods solutions at comScore. “However, many brands have found success by attracting a wide audience online through effective promotions and site activities that appeal to consumers’ lifestyles.”

“Savvy brand marketers are beginning to understand the importance of the online channel as a means of engaging consumers, which will ultimately lead to offline sales,” she concluded.  (source: comScore)

We’ve given consumers a way to engage with Kinder and we are looking forward to launching phase 2 of the site in about six weeks which will also include extensions into other social media platforms.