The launch of Costa Coffee’s new app required some freshly-ground thinking to establish a powerful emotional connection with a diverse audience.

Crowd was selected by Emirates Leisure Retail to create a digital marketing campaign for the launch of Costa Coffee’s loyalty app in the UAE. Our creative execution used a strong narrative for the post-Covid era, playing on the emotional benefits of sharing coffee, which resonated across the multicultural target audience.

Backed up by data-driven campaign planning and detailed audience segmentation, the campaign exceeded all expectations including the client’s target for smartphone app downloads.

Crowd’s creative solution was a bold integrated campaign developed by our Creative Strategy Team and amplified through multi-channel media execution. The concept was inspired by an existing message, ‘Nothing beats Costa. Except free Costa’, which was initially launched in Kuwait. To resonate in the post-Covid world, we played on the idea that ‘nothing beats’ the simple pleasure of sharing a coffee with friends and family. These ‘unbeatable’ moments range from a purposeful walk to the office, to a catch-up with friends while shopping.

To celebrate the simple joy of sharing a coffee while also highlighting the app’s benefits, we created a 60-second promotional video that reflected a day in the life of a Costa Coffee store experience. The video showcased the UAE’s diverse audience, featuring local Emiratis and expats from around the world. It was published online, in both English and Arabic, across the region.

The campaign’s visual story was executed in a modular style, allowing us to create bite-sized content for specific audiences on social media and display advertising. Data-driven campaign planning ensured that we reached our target audiences on the right platform, with the right creative, at the right time of day. This helped to boost regional brand-related searches, improve digital visibility, and drive traffic directly to both Apple and Google Play stores through advanced performance marketing strategies.

The campaign used a focused segmentation formula, with tailored content for specific audiences: Local Arab, Expat Arab, Western and Asian. These four groups were then split into Solo, Group and Family audiences, creating a total of 12 segments. This highly targeted approach ensured the messaging was relevant and impactful for each audience, supported by Crowd’s consumer marketing specialists in Dubai.

By focusing on the emotional connections associated with sharing coffee, the campaign was impactful across the diverse audience, generating 4.5 million impressions on Facebook and Instagram, driven by paid social and search campaigns led by Crowd’s Paid Media team in the UAE. Through a data-driven segmentation strategy which targeted the right content to the right audience at the right time the campaign significantly increased app downloads while also reducing costs.