LONDON: Mondelez, the snack foods giant, is to overhaul its approach to social media following a successful Facebook trial earlier this year for one of its chocolate brands.

The "Have a Fling" promotion for Cadbury's Crème Egg saw Mondelez invest "four to five times" more on its UK activity on the social networking site, which resulted in the same purchase consideration as television but at one third of the cost.

"We launched the trial to find a new approach to our media mix that was going to reach 18-to-24 year olds," Jerry Daykin, European social media manager at Mondelez, told Marketing Week.

"Facebook doesn't just have to be a deep engagement platform for an audience – it can be something that broadcasts an engaging marketing message en masse," he added.

Daily posts, user feedback and user-generated content were all harnessed to use as Promoted Posts in order to reach potential customers who were not yet fans of the brand page. There was also activity around selected TV events.

The result was that brand consideration on TV increased by 20% over three months, while the increase attributable to Facebook rose 18%.

Mondelez was further able to show, via research from Kantar, that consumers exposed to both TV and Facebook were 66% more likely to purchase than the expected combined effect of both channels.

Sonia Carter, head of European digital marketing and social media at Mondelez, described the approach as a "gamechanger".

"We wanted to make sure that rather than trying to get across the entire campaign message in every single post, we were creating a rhythm throughout the course of the campaign," Carter explained.

"At the same time, we were looking at cross-media efficiencies – so making TV perform better, but also making it work harder for Facebook," she added.

For the future, Carter said she expected that Mondelez brands would be increasing investment in Facebook and treating their posts as "potentially having the same reach as a TV ad".

Mondelez's commitment to social media was further highlighted recently when the brand announced a partnership with Twitter that aimed to develop its real-time marketing expertise, with Twitter employees working alongside Mondelez staff in various territories.

Data sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff